RSON'S-f 
 -SSAYSv
 
 tTT^H
 
 RALPH WALDO
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS 
 1895
 
 ALTEMUS' 
 BOOKBINDBRY 
 PHILADELPHIA
 
 VO 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 HISTORY, 7 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 SELF-RELIANCE, 43 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 COMPENSATION, 85 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS, 117 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 LOVE, 151 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 FRIENDSHIP, 171 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 PRUDENCE 197 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 HEROISM, 217 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 THE OVER-SOUL, 237 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 CIRCLES, 265 
 
 ESSAY XL 
 INTELLECT, 285 
 
 ESSAY XIL 
 ABT, 307 
 
 (3)
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 There is no great and no small 
 To the Soul that maketh all : 
 And where it conaeth, all things are; 
 And it cometh everywhere.
 
 I am owner of the sphere, 
 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 
 Of Ceesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
 
 Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.
 
 ESSAY I. 
 HISTORY. 
 
 THERE is one mind common to all individual 
 men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to 
 all of the same. He that is once admitted to the 
 right of reason is made a freeman of the whole 
 estate. What Plato has thought, he may think ; 
 what a saint has felt, " he may feel ; what at any 
 time has befallen any man, he can understand- 
 Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party 
 to all that is or can be done, for this is the only 
 and sovereign agent. 
 
 Of the works of this mind history is the record. 
 Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of 
 days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all 
 his history. Without hurry, without rest, the 
 human spirit goes forth from the beginning 
 to embody every faculty, every thought, every 
 emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate 
 events. But always the thought is prior to the 
 fact; all the facts of history pre exist in the mind 
 as laws. Each law in turn is made by circum- 
 stances predominant, and the limits of nature give 
 power to but one at a time. A man is the whole 
 
 (7)
 
 8 ESSAY I. 
 
 encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thou- 
 sand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, 
 Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already 
 in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, 
 kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely 
 the application of his manifold spirit to the muni- 
 fold world. 
 
 This human mind wrote history and this must 
 read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If 
 the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be 
 explained from individual experience. There is a 
 relation between the hours of our life and the 
 centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn 
 from the great repositories of nature, as the light 
 on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions 
 of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends 
 on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal 
 forces, so the hours should be instructed by the 
 ages, and the ages explained by the hours. Of 
 the universal mind each individual man is one 
 more incarnation. All its properties consist in 
 him. Every step in his private experience flashes 
 a light on what great bodies of men have done, 
 and the crises of his life refer to national crises. 
 Every revolution was first a thought in one man's 
 mind, and when the same thought occurs to 
 another man, it is the key to that era. Every re- 
 form was once a private opinion, and when it 
 shall be private opinion again, it will solve 
 the problem of the age. The fact narrated 
 must correspond to something in me to be cred- 
 ible or intelligible. We as we read must become
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest, and king, martyr 
 and executioner, must fasten these images to some 
 reality in our secret experience, or we shall see 
 nothing, learn nothing, keep nothing. What 
 befell Asdrubal or Csesar Borgia, is as much an 
 illustration of the mind's powers and depravations 
 as what has befallen us. Each new law and 
 political movement has meaning for you. Stand 
 before each of its tablets and say, "Here is one of 
 my coverings. Under this fantastic, or odious, or 
 graceful mask, did my Proteus nature hide itself." 
 This remedies the defect of our too great nearness 
 to ourselves. This throws our own actions into 
 perspective: and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the 
 balance and the waterpot, lose all their meanness 
 when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see 
 my own vices without heat in the distant persons 
 of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline. 
 
 It is this universal nature which gives worth to 
 particular men and things. Human life as contain- 
 ing this is mysterious and inviolable, and we hedge 
 it round with penalties and laws. All laws de- 
 rive hence their ultimate reason, all express at 
 last reverence for some command of this supreme 
 illimitable essence. Property also holds of the 
 soul, covers great spiritual facts, and instinc- 
 tively we at first hold to it with swords and laws, 
 and wide and complex combinations. The ob- 
 scure consciousness of this fact is the light of all 
 our day, the claim of claims ; the plea for educa- 
 tion, for justice, for charity, the foundation of 
 friendship and love, and of the heroism and gran-
 
 IO ESSAY /. 
 
 deur which belongs to acts of self-reliance. It is 
 remarkable that involuntarily we always read as 
 superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the 
 romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures, in 
 the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the 
 triumphs of will, or of genius, anywhere lose our 
 ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that 
 this is for our betters, but rather is it true that in 
 their grandest strokes, there we feel most at home. 
 All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip 
 of a boy that reads in the corner, feels to be true 
 of himself. We sympathize in the great moments 
 of history, in the great discoveries, the great re- 
 sistances, the great prosperities of men ; because 
 there law was enacted, the sea was searched, 
 the land was found, or the blow was struck for ws, 
 as we ourselves in that place would have done or 
 applauded. 
 
 So is it in respect to condition and character. 
 We honor the rich because they have externally 
 the freedom, power and grace which we feel to be 
 proper to man, proper to us. So all that is said 
 of the wise man by stoic or oriental or modern 
 essayist, describes to each man his own idea, de- 
 scribes his unattained but attainable self. All 
 literature writes the character of the wise man. 
 All books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are 
 portraits in which the wise man finds the linea- 
 ments he is forming. The silent and the loud 
 praise him, and accost him, and he is stimulated 
 wherever he moves as by personal allusions. A 
 wise and good soul, therefore, never needs look
 
 HISTORY. II 
 
 for allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. 
 He hears the commendation, not of himself, but 
 more sweet, of that character he seeks, in every 
 word that is said concerning character, yea, 
 further, in every fact that befalls, in the running 
 river, and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, 
 homage tendered, love flows from mute nature, 
 from the mountains and the lights of the firma- 
 ment. 
 
 These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and 
 night, let us use in broad day. The student is 
 to read history actively and not passively ; to 
 esteem his own life the text, and books the com- 
 mentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history 
 will utter oracles, as never to those who do not 
 respect themselves. I have no expectation that 
 any man will read history aright, who thinks that 
 what was done in a remote age, by men whose 
 names, have resounded far, has any deeper sense 
 than what he is doing to-day. 
 
 The world exists for the education of each man. 
 There is no age or state of society or mode of 
 action in history, to which there is not somewhat 
 corresponding in his life. Everything tends in 
 a most wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and 
 yield its whole virtue to him. He should see that 
 he can live all history in his own person. He 
 must sit at home with might and main, and not 
 suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, 
 but know that he is greater than all the geography 
 and all the government of the world ; he must 
 transfer the point of view from which history is
 
 12 ESSAY L 
 
 commonly read, from Rome and Athens and 
 London to himself, and not deny his conviction 
 that he is the Court, and if England or Egypt 
 have anything to say to him, he will try the case ; 
 if not, let them forever be silent. He must attain 
 and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield 
 their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. 
 The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature 
 betrays itself in the use we make of the signal 
 narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining 
 ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, 
 no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. 
 Babylon and Troy and Tyre and even earl}' Rome 
 are passing already into fiction. The Garden of 
 Eden, the Sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry 
 thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what 
 the fact was, when we have thus made a constel- 
 lation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign ? 
 London and Paris and New York must go the 
 same way. " What is History," said Napoleon, 
 "but a fable agreed upon?" This life of ours is 
 stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, 
 War, Colonization, Church, Court, and Com- 
 merce, as with so many flowers and wild orna- 
 ments, grave and gay. I will not make more ac- 
 count of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find 
 Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, 
 the genius and creative principle of each and of 
 all eras in my own mind. 
 
 We are always coming up with the facts that 
 have moved us" in history in our private experi- 
 ence, and verifying them here. All history be-
 
 HISTORY. 13 
 
 comes subjective ; in other words, there is properly 
 no History; only Biography. Every soul mutt 
 know the whole lesson for itself must go over the 
 whole ground. What it does not see, what it does 
 not live, it will not know. What the former age 
 has epitomized into a formula or rule for manipu- 
 lar convenience, it will lose all the good of verify- 
 ing for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. 
 Somewhere or other, some time or other, it will 
 demand and find compensation for that loss by 
 doing the work itself. Ferguson discovered many 
 things in astronomy which had long been known. 
 The better for him. 
 
 History must be this or it is nothing. Every 
 law which the state enacts, indicates a fact in 
 human nature ; that is all. We must in our own 
 nature see the necessary reason for every fact, 
 see how it could and must be. So stand before 
 every public, every private work ; before an ora- 
 tion of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, be- 
 fore a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, 
 of Marmaduke Robinson, before a French Reign 
 of Terror, and a Salem hanging of witches, before 
 a fanatic Revival, and the Animal Magnetism in 
 Paris, or in Providence. We assume that we 
 under like influence should be alike affected, and 
 should achieve the like ; and we aim to master in- 
 tellectually the steps, and reach the same height 
 or the same degradation that our fellow, our proxy 
 has done. 
 
 All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity re- 
 specting the pyramids, the excavated cities, Stone-
 
 14 ESSAY /. 
 
 henge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, is the 
 desire to do away this wild, savage and preposter- 
 ous There or Then, and introduce in its place the 
 Here and the Now. It is to banish the Not me, 
 and supply the Me. It is to abolish difference and 
 restore unity. Belzoni digs and measures in the 
 mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can 
 see the end of the difference between the mon- 
 strous work and himself. When he has satisfied 
 himself, in general and in detail, that it was made 
 by such a person as himself, so armed and so mo- 
 tived, and to ends to which he himself in given 
 circumstances should also have worked, the prob- 
 lem is then solved ; his thought lives along the 
 whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs, 
 passes through them all like a creative soul, with 
 satisfaction, and they live again to the mind, or 
 are now. 
 
 A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by 
 us, and not done by us. Surely it was by man, 
 but we find it not in our man. But we apply 
 ourselves to the history of its production. We 
 put ourselves into the place and historical state 
 of the builder. We remember the forest dwellers, 
 the first temples, the adherence to the first type, 
 and the decoration of it as the wealth of the na- 
 tion increased : the value which is given to wood 
 by carving led to the carving over the whole 
 mountain of stone of a cathedral. When we have 
 gone through this process, and added thereto the 
 Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its processions, 
 its Saints' days and image-worship, we have, as it
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 were, been the man that made the minister ; we 
 have seen how it could and must be. We have the 
 sufficient reason. 
 
 The difference between men is in their principle 
 of association. Some men classify objects by color 
 and size and other accidents of appearance ; others 
 by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause 
 and effect. The progress of the intellect consists 
 in the clearer vision of causes, which overlooks 
 surface differences. To the poet, to the philoso- 
 pher, to the saint, all things are friendly and 
 sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men 
 divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and 
 slights the circumstance. Every chemical sub- 
 stance, every plant, every animal in its growth, 
 teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Why, being as we are surrounded by this all- 
 creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, 
 should we be such hard pedants, and magnify a 
 few forms? Why should we make account of 
 time, or of magnitude, or of form? The soul knows 
 them not, and genius, obeying its law, knows how 
 to play with them as a young child plays with 
 graybeards and in churches. Genius studies the 
 causal thought, and far back in the womb of 
 things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that 
 diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. Genius 
 watches the monad through all his masks as he 
 performs the metempsychosis of nature. Genius 
 detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, 
 through the grub, through the egg, the constant
 
 16 ESSAY I. 
 
 type of the individual ; through countless indi- 
 viduals the fixed species ; through many species 
 the genus; through all genera the steadfast 
 type ; through all the kingdoms of organized 
 life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable 
 cloud, which is always and never the same. She 
 casts the same thought into troops of forms, as * 
 poet makes twenty fables with one moral. Beauti- 
 fully shines a spirit through the bruteness and 
 toughness of matter. Alone omnipotent, it con- 
 verts all things to its own end. The adamant 
 streams into softest but precise form before it, but, 
 whilst I look at it, its outline and texture are 
 changed altogether. Nothing is so fleeting as form. 
 Yet never does it quite deny itself. In man we 
 still trace the rudiments or hints of all that we 
 esteem badges of servitude in the lower races, yet 
 in him they enhance his nobleness and grace ; as 
 lo, in JEschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the 
 imagination, but how changed when as Isis in 
 Egypt she meets Jove, a beautiful woman, with 
 nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar 
 horns as the splendid ornament of her brows. 
 
 The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the 
 diversity equally obvious. There is at the surface 
 infinite variety of things ; at the centre there is 
 simplicity and unity of cause. How many are the 
 acts of one man in which we recognize the same 
 character. See the variety of the sources of our 
 information in respect to the Greek genius. Thus 
 at first we have the civil history of that people, as 
 Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch have
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 given it a very sufficient account of what man- 
 ner of persons they were, and what they did. 
 Then we have the same soul expressed for us 
 again in their literature ; in poems, drama, and 
 philosophy : a very complete form. Then we have 
 it once more in their architecture, the purest sen- 
 suous beauty, the perfect medium never over- 
 stepping the limit of charming propriety and 
 grace. Then we have it once more in sculpture^ 
 " the tongue on the balance of expression," those 
 forms in every action, at every age of life, rang- 
 ing through all the scale of condition, from god to 
 beast, and never transgressing the ideal serenity, 
 but in convulsive exertion the liege of order and 
 of law. Thus, of the genius of one remarkable 
 people, we have a fourfold representation, the 
 most various expression of one moral thing : and 
 to the senses what more unlike than an ode of 
 Pindar, a marble Centaur, the Peristyle of the 
 Parthenon, and the last actions of Phocion? Yet 
 do these varied external expressions proceed from 
 one national mind. 
 
 Every one must have observed faces and forms 
 which, without any resembling feature, make a 
 like impression on the beholder. A particular 
 picture or copy of verses, if it do not awaken the 
 same train of images, will yet superinduce the 
 same sentiment as some wild mountain walk, al- 
 though the resemblance is nowise obvious to the 
 senses, but is occult and out of the reach of the 
 understanding. Nature is an endless combination 
 and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the
 
 1 8 ESSAY I. 
 
 old well known air through innumerable varia- 
 tions. 
 
 Nature is full of a sublime family likeness 
 throughout her works. She delights in startling 
 us with resemblances in the most unexpected 
 quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem 
 of the forest, which at once reminded the eye of 
 a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the 
 brow suggested the strata of the rock. There are 
 men whose manners have the same essential splen- 
 dor as the simple and awful sculpture on the 
 friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the 
 earliest Greek art. And there are compositions of 
 the same strain to be found in the books of all 
 ages. What is Guide's Rospigliosi Aurora but a 
 morning thought, as the horses in it are only a 
 morning cloud. If any one will but take pains to 
 observe the variety of actions to which he is 
 equally inclined in certain moods of mind, and 
 those to which he is averse, he will see how deep 
 is the chain of affinity. 
 
 A painter told me that nobody could draw a 
 tree without in some sort becoming a tree ; or 
 draw a child by studying the outlines of its form 
 merely, but, by watching for a time his motions 
 and plays, the painter enters into his nature, and 
 can then draw him at will in every attitude. So 
 Roos "entered into the inmost nature of a sheep." 
 I knew a draughtsman employed in a public sur- 
 vey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks 
 until their geological structure was first explained 
 to him.
 
 HISTORY. 19 
 
 What is to be inferred from these facts but this ; 
 that in a certain state of thought is the common 
 origin of very diverse works ? It is the spirit 
 and not the fact that is identical. By descend- 
 ing far down into the depths of the soul, and not 
 primarily by a painful acquisition of many man- 
 ual skills, the artist attains the power of awak- 
 ening other souls to a given activity. 
 
 It has been said that "common souls pay with 
 what they do ; nobler souls with that which they 
 are." And why? Because a soul, living from a 
 great depth of being, awakens in us by its ac? 
 tions and words, by its very looks and manners, 
 the same power and beauty that a gallery of 
 sculpture, or of pictures, are wont to animate. 
 
 Civil history, natural history, the history of art, 
 and the history of literature, all must be ex- 
 plained from individual history, or must remain 
 words. There is nothing but is related to us, 
 nothing that does not interest us kingdom, col- 
 lege, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all 
 things are in man. It is in the soul that architect- 
 ure exists. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. 
 Peter's are lame copies after a divine model. 
 Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpart of 
 the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem 
 is the poet's mind ; the true ship is the ship- 
 builder. In the man, could we lay him open, we 
 should see the sumcent reason for the last flourish 
 and tendril of his work, as every spine and tint in 
 the sea-shell pre-exist in the secreting organs of 
 the fish. The whole of heraldry and of chivalry
 
 20 ESSAY L 
 
 is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall 
 pronounce your name with all the ornament that 
 titles of nobility could ever add. 
 
 The trivial experience of every day is always 
 verifying some old prediction to us, and convert- 
 ing into things for us also the words and signs 
 which we had heard and seen without heed. Let 
 me add a few examples, such as fall within the 
 scope of every man's observation, of trivial facts 
 which go to illustrate great and conspicuous facts. 
 
 A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, 
 said to me, that the woods always seemed to her 
 to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended 
 their deeds until the wayfarer has passed onward. 
 This is precisely the thought which poetry has cele- 
 brated in the dance of the fairies which breaks off 
 on the approach of human feet. The man who 
 has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds 
 at midnight, has been present like an archangel at 
 the creation of light and of the world. I remem- 
 ber that being abroad one summer day, my com- 
 panion pointed out to me a broad cloud, which 
 might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the 
 horizon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub 
 as painted over churches, a round block in the 
 centre which it was easy to animate with eyes and 
 mouth, supported on either side by wide stretched 
 symmetrical wings. What appears once in the at- 
 mosphere may appear often, and it was undoubt- 
 edly the archetype of that familiar ornament. I 
 have seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning 
 which at once revealed to me that the Greeks drew
 
 HISTORY. 21 
 
 from nature when they painted the thunderbolt in 
 the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along 
 the sides of the stone wall which obviously gave 
 the idea of the common architectural scroll to 
 abut a tower. 
 
 By simply throwing ourselves into new circum- 
 stances we do continually invent anew the orders 
 and the ornaments of architecture, as we see how 
 each people merely decorated its primitive abodes. 
 The Doric temple still presents the semblance of 
 the wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. 
 The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The 
 Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the 
 mounds and subterranean houses of their fore- 
 fathers. " The custom of making houses and 
 tombs in the living rock " (says Heeren, in his 
 Researches on the Ethiopians), "determined very 
 naturally the principal character of the Nubian 
 Egyptian architecture to the colossal form which 
 it assumed. In these caverns already prepared 
 by nature, the eye was accustomed to dwell on 
 huge shapes and masses, so that when art came to 
 the assistance of nature, it could not move on a 
 small scale without degrading itself. What 
 would statues of the usual size, or neat porches 
 and wings have been, associated with those gi- 
 gantic halls before which only Colossi could sit as 
 watchmen, or lean on the pillars of the interior?" 
 
 The Gothic church plainty originated in a rude 
 adaptation of the forest trees with all their boughs 
 to a festal or solemn arcade, as the bauds about 
 the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes
 
 22 ESSAY I. 
 
 that tied them. No one can walk in a road 
 cut through pine woods, without being struck 
 with the architectural appearance of the grove, 
 especially in winter, when the bareness of all 
 other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In 
 the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as 
 readily the origin of the stained glass window 
 with which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in 
 the colors of the western sky seen through the 
 bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor 
 can any lover of nature enter the old piles of 
 Oxford and the English cathedrals without feeling 
 that the forest overpowered the mind of the 
 builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and plane 
 still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its 
 locust, its pine, its oak, its fir, its spruce. 
 
 The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone 
 subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in 
 man. The mountain of granite blooms into an 
 eternal flower with the lightness and delicate 
 finish as well as the aerial proportions and per- 
 spective of vegetable beauty. 
 
 In like manner all public facts are to be indi- 
 vidualized, all private facts are to be generalized. 
 Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and 
 Biography deep and sublime. As the Persian im- 
 itated in the slender shafts and capitals of his 
 architecture the stem and flower of the lotus and 
 palm, so the Persian Court in its magnificent era 
 never gave over the Nomadism of its barbarous 
 tribes, but traveled from Ecbatana, where the
 
 HISTORY. 23 
 
 spring was spent, to Susa in summer, and to 
 Babylon for the winter. 
 
 In the early history of Asia and Africa, No- 
 madism and Agriculture are the two antagonistic 
 facts. The geography of Asia and Africa neces- 
 sitated a nomadic life. But the nomads were the 
 terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages 
 of a market had induced to build towns. Agri- 
 culture, therefore, was a religious injunction be- 
 cause of the perils of the state from nomadism. 
 And in these late and civil countries of England 
 and America, the contest of these propensities 
 still fights out the old battle in each individual. 
 We are all rovers and all fixtures by turns, and 
 pretty rapid turns. The nomads of Africa are 
 constrained to wander by the attacks of the gad- 
 fly, which drives the cattle mad, and so compels 
 the tritye to emigrate in the rainy season and drive 
 off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The 
 nomads of Asia follow the pasturage from month 
 to month. In America and Europe the nomadism 
 is of trade and curiosity. A progress certainly 
 from the gad-fly of Astaboras to the Anglo and 
 Italomania of Boston Bay. The difference be- 
 tween men in this respect is the faculty of rapid 
 domestication, the power to find his chair and bed 
 everywhere, which one man has, and another has 
 not. Some men have so much of the Indian left, 
 have constitutionally such habits of accommoda- 
 tion, that at sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, 
 they sleep as warm, and dine with as good appe- 
 tite, and associate as happily, as in their own
 
 24 ESSA Y I. 
 
 house. And to push this old fact still one degree 
 nearer, we may find it a representative of a per- 
 manent fact in human nature. The intellectual 
 nomadism in the faculty of objectiveness or of eyes 
 which everywhere feed themselves. Who hath 
 such eyes, everywhere falls into easy relations 
 with his fellow-men. Every man, everything is 
 a prize, a study, a property to him, and this love 
 smooths his brow, joins him to men and makes 
 him beautiful and beloved in their sight. His 
 house is a wagon ; he roams through all latitudes 
 as easily as a Calniuc. 
 
 Everything the individual sees without him, 
 corresponds to his states of mind, and everything 
 is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward think- 
 ing leads him into the truth to which that fact or 
 series belongs. 
 
 The primeval world, the Fore-World, as the 
 Germans say, I can dive to it in myself as well 
 as grope for it with researching fingers in cata- 
 combs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos 
 of ruined villas. 
 
 What is the foundation of that interest all men 
 feel in Greek history, letters, art and poetry, in 
 all its periods, from the heroic or Homeric age, 
 down to the domestic life of the Athenians and 
 Spartans, four or five centuries later? This 
 period draws us because we are Greeks. It is a 
 state through which every man in some sort 
 passes. The Grecian state is the era of the bodily 
 nature, the perfection of the senses, of the 
 spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the
 
 HISTORY. 25 
 
 body. In it existed those human forms which 
 supplied the sculptor with his models of Hercules, 
 Phoebus, and Jove ; not like the forms abounding 
 in the streets of modern cities, wherein the face 
 is a confused blur of features, but composed of in- 
 corrupt, sharply defined and symmetrical features, 
 whose eye-sockets are so formed that it would be 
 impossible for such eyes to squint, and take furtive 
 glances on this side and on that, but they must 
 turn the whole head. 
 
 The manners of that period are plain and fierce. 
 The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities, 
 courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, 
 swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury is 
 not known, nor elegance. A sparse population 
 and want make every man his own valet, cook, 
 butcher, and soldier, and the habit of supplying 
 his own needs educates the body to wonderful 
 performances. Such are the Agamemnon and 
 Diomed of Homer, and not far different is the 
 picture Xenophon gives of himself and his com- 
 patriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. 
 " After the army had crossed the river Teleboas 
 in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops 
 lay miserably on the ground, covered with it. 
 But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, 
 began to split wood ; whereupon others rose and 
 did the like." Throughout his army seemed to 
 be a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel 
 for plunder, they wrangle with the generals on 
 each new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued 
 as any, and sharper-tongued than most, and so
 
 26 ESSAY I. 
 
 gives as good as he gets. Who does not see that 
 this is a gang of great boys with such a code of 
 honor and such lax discipline as great boys have? 
 The costly charm of the ancient tragedy and 
 indeed of all the old literature is, that the persons 
 speak simply, speak as persons who have great 
 good sense without knowing it, before yet the re 
 flective habit has become the predominant habit 
 of the mind. Our admiration of the antique 
 is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. 
 The Greeks are not reflective but perfect in their 
 senses, perfect in their health, with the finest phys- 
 ical organization in the world. Adults acted 
 with the simplicity and grace of boys. They 
 made vases, tragedies, and statues such as healthy 
 senses should that is, in good taste. Such things 
 have continued to be made in all ages, and are 
 now, wherever a healthy physique exists, but, as, 
 a class, from their superior organization, they have 
 surpassed all. They combine the energy of man- 
 hood with the engaging unconsciousness of child- 
 hood. Our reverence for them is our reverence 
 for childhood. Nobody can reflect upon an un- 
 conscious act with regret or contempt. Bard or 
 hero cannot look down on the word or gesture of a 
 child. It is as great as they. The attraction of 
 these manners is, that they belong to man. and 
 are known to every man in virtue of his being 
 once a child; beside that always there are individ- 
 uals who retain these characteristics. A person 
 of childlike genius and inborn energy is still a 
 Greek, and revives our love of the muse of Hel-
 
 HISTORY. 27 
 
 las. A great boy, a great girl, with good sense, is a 
 Greek. Beautiful is the love of nature in the 
 Philoctetes. But in reading those fine apostro- 
 phes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains, and 
 waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. 
 I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his 
 thought. The Greek had, it seems, the same fel- 
 low beings as I. The sun and moon, water and 
 fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. 
 Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and 
 English, between Classic and Romantic schools 
 seems superficial and pedantic. When a thought 
 of Plato becomes a thought to me, when a truth 
 that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no 
 more. When I feel that we two meet in a percep- 
 tion, that our two souls are tinged with the same 
 hue, and do, as it were, run into one, why should 
 I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count 
 Egyptian years ? 
 
 The student interprets the age of chivalry by 
 his own age of chivalry, and the days of mari- 
 time adventure and circumnavigation by quite 
 parallel miniature experiences of his own. To 
 the sacred history of the world, he has the same 
 key. When the voice of a prophet out of the 
 deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a senti- 
 ment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he 
 then pierces to the truth through all the confu- 
 sion of tradition and the caricature of institutions. 
 
 Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at inter- 
 vals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I 
 see that men of God have always, from time to
 
 28 ESSAY /. 
 
 time, walked among men and made their commis- 
 sion felt in the heart and soul of the commonest 
 hearer. Hence, evidently, the tripod, the priest, 
 the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. 
 
 Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. 
 They cannot unite him to history or reconcile 
 him with themselves. As they come to revere 
 their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own 
 piety explains every fact, every word. 
 
 How easily these old worships of Moses, of 
 Zoroaster, of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate 
 themselves in the mind. I cannot find any antiq- 
 uity in them. They are mine as much as theirs. 
 
 Then I have seen the first monks and anchorets 
 without crossing seas or centuries. More than 
 once some individual has appeared to me with 
 such neglience of labor and such commanding 
 contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, begging in 
 the name of God, as made good to the nineteenth 
 century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the 
 first Capuchins. 
 
 The priestcraft of the East and West, of the 
 Magian, Brahmin, Druid and Inca, is expounded 
 in the individual's private life. The cramping in- 
 fluence of a hard formalist on a young child in 
 repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the 
 understanding, and that without producing indig- 
 nation, but only fear and obedience, and even 
 much sympathy with the tyrrany, is a familiar 
 fact explained to the child when he becomes a 
 man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his 
 youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those
 
 HISTORY. 29 
 
 names and words and forms, of whose influence 
 he was merely the organ to the youth. The fact 
 teaches him how Belus was worshipped, and how 
 the pyramids were built, better than the discovery 
 by (.'hampollion of the names of all the workmen 
 and the cost of every tile. He finds Assyria and 
 the Mounds of Cholula at his door, and himself 
 has laid the courses. 
 
 Again, in that protest which each considerate 
 person makes against the superstition of his times, 
 he reacts step for step the part of old reformers, 
 and in the search after truth finds like them new 
 perils to virtue. He learns again what moral 
 vigor is needed to supply the girdle of a supersti- 
 tion. A great licentiousness treads on the heels 
 of a reformation. How many times in the history 
 of the world has the Luther of the day had to la- 
 ment the decay of piety in his own household. 
 " Doctor," said his wife to Martin Luther one 
 day, " how is it that whilst subject to papacy, we 
 prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst now 
 we pray with the utmost coldness and very sel- 
 dom ? " 
 
 The advancing man discovers how deep a prop- 
 erty he hath in all literature, in all fable as well 
 as in all history. He finds that the poet was no 
 odd fellow who described strange and impossible 
 situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen 
 a confession true for one and true for all. His 
 own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully 
 intelligible to him, yet dotted down before he 
 was born. One after another he comes up in his
 
 30 ESSAY I. 
 
 private adventures with every fable of 
 
 of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of 
 
 Scott, and verifies them with his own head and 
 
 hands. 
 
 The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper 
 creations of the Imagination and not of the 
 Fancy, are universal verities. What a range of 
 meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the 
 story of Prometheus ! Beside its primary value 
 as the first chapter of the history of Europe (the 
 mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the in- 
 vention of the mechanic arts, and the migration 
 of colonies), it gives the history of religion with 
 some closeness to the faith of later ages. Pro- 
 metheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He 
 is the friend of man ; stands between the unjust 
 "justice" of the Eternal Father, and the race of 
 mortals; and readily suffers all things on their ac- 
 count. But where it departs from the Calvinistic 
 Christianity, and exhibits him as the defier of 
 Jove, it represents a state of mind which readily 
 appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught 
 in a crude, objective form, arid which seems the 
 self-defence of man against this untruth, namely, 
 a discontent with the believed fact that a God ex- 
 ists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence 
 is onerous. It would steal, if it could, the fire of 
 the Creator, and live apart from him, and inde- 
 pendent of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the 
 romance of skepticism. Not less true to all time 
 are all the details of that stately apologue. 
 Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the poets.
 
 HISTORY. 31 
 
 Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing 
 the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its in- 
 sane angels into our world as to an asylum, and 
 here they will break out into their native music 
 and utter at intervals the words they have heard 
 in heaven ; then the mad fit returns, and they 
 mope and wallow like dogs. When thegodscome 
 among men, they are not known. Jesus was not; 
 Socrates and Shakespeare were not. Antaeus was 
 suffocated by the grip of Hercules, but every 
 time he touched his mother earth, his strength 
 was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in 
 all his weakness, both his body and his mind are 
 invigorated by habits of conversation with nature. 
 The power of music, the power of poetry to un- 
 fix, and as it were, clap wings to all solid nature, 
 interprets the riddle of Orpheus, which was to his 
 childhood an idle tale. The philosophical percep- 
 tion of identity through endless mutations of 
 form, makes him know the Proteus. What else 
 am I who laughed or wept yesterday, who slept 
 last night like a corpse, and this morning stood 
 and ran? And what see I on any side but the 
 transmigrations of Proteus ? I can symbolize my 
 thought by using the name of any creature, of any 
 fact, because every creature is man, agent or pa- 
 tient. Tantalus is but a name for you and me. 
 Tantalus means the impossibility of drinking the 
 waters of thought which are always gleaming and 
 waving within sight of the soul. The transmi- 
 gration of souls : that too is no fable. I would it 
 were ; but men and women are only half human.
 
 32 ESSAY 7. 
 
 Every animal of the barn -yard, the field and the 
 forest, of the earth and of the waters that are un- 
 der the earth, has contrived to get a footing and 
 to leave the print of its features and form in some 
 one or other of these upright, heaven -facing 
 speakers. Ah, brother, hold fast to the man and 
 awe the beast ; stop the ebb of thy soul ebbing 
 downward into the forms into whose habits thou 
 hast now for many years slid. As near and proper 
 to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was 
 said to sit in the roadside and put riddles to every 
 passenger. Jf the man could not answer she 
 swallowed him alive. If he could solve the rid- 
 dle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but 
 an endless flight of winged facts or events ! In 
 splendid variety these changes come, all putting 
 questions to the human spirit. Those men who 
 cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or 
 questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber 
 them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of 
 routine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obedi- 
 ence to facts has extinguished every spark of that 
 light by which man is truly man. But if the man 
 is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and 
 refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes 
 of a higher race, remains fast by the soul and sees 
 the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple 
 into their places; they know their master, and the 
 meanest of them glorifies him. 
 
 See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that 
 every word should be a thing. These figures, he 
 would say, these Chiroiis, Griffins, Phorkyas,
 
 HISTORY. 33 
 
 Helen, and Leda, are somewhat, and do exert a 
 specific influence on the mind. So far then are 
 they eternal entities, as real to-day as in the first 
 Olympiad. Much revolving them, he writes out 
 freely his humor, and gives them body to his own 
 imagination. And although that poem be as vague 
 and fantastic as a dream, yet is it much more at- 
 tractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of 
 the same author, for the reason that it operates a 
 wonderful relief to the mind from the routine of 
 customary images, awakens the reader's inven- 
 tion and fancy by the wild freedom of the design, 
 and by the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of 
 surprise. 
 
 The universal nature, too strong for the petty 
 nature of the bard, sits on his neck and writes 
 through his hand ; so that when he seems to vent 
 a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an 
 exact allegory. Hence Plato said that "poets 
 utter great and wise things which they do not 
 themselves understand." All the fictions of tha 
 Middle Age explain themselves as a masked or 
 frolic expression of that which in grave earnest 
 the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic, 
 and all that is ascribed to it, is manifestly a deep 
 presentiment of the powers of science. The shoes 
 of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of 
 subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues 
 of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, 
 are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right di- 
 rection. The preternatural prowess of the hero, 
 the gift of perpetual youth, and the like, are alike
 
 34 ESSAY I. 
 
 the endeavor of the human spirit " to bend the 
 shows of things to the desires of the mind." 
 
 In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul, a garland 
 and a rose bloom on the head of her who is faith- 
 ful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant. In 
 the story of the Boy and the Mantle, even a ma- 
 ture reader may be surprised with a glow of virtu- 
 ous pleasure at the triumph of the g.entle Genelas; 
 and indeed, all the postulates of elfin annals, that 
 the Fairies do not like to be named ; that their 
 gifts are capricious and not to be trusted ; that 
 who seeks a treasure must not speak ; and the like, 
 I find true in Concord, however they might be in 
 Cornwall or Bretagne. 
 
 Is it otherwise in the newest romance ? I read 
 the Bride of Lammermoor. Sir William Ashton 
 is a mask for a vulgar temptation, Ravenswood 
 Castle, a fine name for proud poverty, and the 
 foreign mission of state only a Bunyan disguise 
 for honest industry. We may all shoot a wild bull 
 that would toss the good and beautiful, by fight- 
 ing down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton 
 is another name for fidelity, which is always beau- 
 tiful and always liable to calamity in this world. 
 
 But along with the civil and metaphysical history 
 of man, another history goes daily forward that 
 of the external world, in which he is not less 
 strictly implicated. He is the compend of time : 
 he is also the correlative of nature. The [sower 
 of man consists in the multitude of his affinities, 
 in the fact that his life is intertwined with the 
 whole chain of organic and inorganic being. In
 
 HISTORY. 35 
 
 the age of the Caesars, out from the Forum at 
 Rome proceeded the great highways north, south, 
 east, west, to the centre of every province of the 
 empire, making each market-town of Persia, Spain 
 and Britain, pervious to the soldiers of the capi- 
 tal : so out of the human heart go, as it were, 
 highways to the heart of every object in nature, 
 to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man 
 is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose 
 flower and fruitage is the world. All his faculties 
 refer to natures out of him. All his faculties 
 predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of 
 the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings 
 of an eagle in the egg presuppose a medium like 
 air. Insulate and you destroy him. He cannot 
 live without a world. Put Napoleon in an island 
 prison, let his faculties find no men to act on, no 
 Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and he would 
 beat the air and appear stupid. Transport him to 
 large countries, dense population, complex inter- 
 ests, and antagonistic power, and yon shall see that 
 the man Napoleon, bounded, that is, by such a 
 profile and outline, is not the virtual Napoleon. 
 This is but Talbot's shadow : 
 
 His substance is not here: 
 For what you see is but the smallest part, 
 And least proportion of humanity : 
 But were the whole frame here, 
 It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 
 Your roof were not sufficient to contain it. 
 
 Henry VI. 
 
 Columbus needs a planet to shape his course
 
 36 ESSAY I. 
 
 upon. Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages 
 and thick-strown celestial areas. One may say a 
 gravitating solar system is already prophesied in 
 the nature of Newton's mind. Not less does the 
 brain of Davy and Gay Lussac from childhood ex- 
 ploring always the affinities and repulsions of par- 
 ticles, anticipate the laws of organization. Does 
 not the eye of the human embryo predict the 
 light ? the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of 
 harmonic sound? Do not the constructive fingers 
 of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, Arkwright predict 
 the fusible, hard, and temperable texture of metals, 
 the properties of stone, water and wood ? the 
 lovely attributes of the maiden child predict the 
 refinements and decorations of civil society ? 
 Here also we are reminded of the action of man 
 on man. A mind might ponder its thoughts for 
 ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the 
 passion of love shall teach it in a day. Who 
 knows himself before he has been thrilled with in- 
 dignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent 
 tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a 
 national exultation or alarm? No man can ante- 
 date his experience, or guess what faculty or feel- 
 ing a new object shall unlock, any more than he 
 can draw to-day the face of a person whom he 
 shall see to-morrow for the first time. 
 
 I will not now go behind the general statement 
 to explore the reason of this correspondency. 
 Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, 
 namely, that the mind is One ; and that nature
 
 HISTORY. 37 
 
 is its correlative, history is to be read and 
 written. 
 
 Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate 
 and reproduce its treasures for each pupil, for 
 each new-born man. He, too, shall pass 
 through the whole cycle of experience. He 
 shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. 
 History no longer shall be a dull book. It 
 shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. 
 You shall not tell me by languages and titles 
 a catalogue of the volumes you have read. 
 You shall make me feel what periods you have 
 lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. 
 He shall walk, as the poets have described that 
 goddess, in a robe painted all over with won- 
 derful events and experiences ; his own form and 
 features by their exalted intelligence shall be that 
 variegated vest. I shall find in him the Fore- 
 world ; in his childhood the Age of Gold ; the 
 Apples of Knowledge ; the Argonautic Expedi- 
 tion ; the calling of Abraham ; the building of the 
 Temple ; the Advent of Christ ; Dark Ages ; the 
 Revival of Letters ; the Reformation ; the dis- 
 covery of new lands, the opening of new sciences, 
 and new regions in man. He shall be the priest 
 of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages 
 the blessing of the morning stars and all the 
 recorded benefits of heaven and earth. 
 
 Is there somewhat overweening in this claim ? 
 Then I reject all I have written, for what is the 
 use of pretending to know what we know not? 
 But it is the fault of our rhetoric that we can-
 
 38 ESSAY I. 
 
 not strongly state one fact without seeming to 
 belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge 
 very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the 
 lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the 
 lichen on the log. What do I know sympa- 
 thetically, morally, of either of these worlds of 
 life ? As long as the Caucasian man perhaps 
 longer these creatures have kept their counsel 
 beside him, and there is no record of any word or 
 sign that has passed from one to the other. Nay, 
 what does history yet record of the metaphysical 
 annals of man? What light does it shed on those 
 mysteries which we hide under the names Death 
 and Immortality? Yet every history should be 
 written in a wisdom which divined the range of 
 our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. I 
 am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our 
 so-called History is. How many times we must 
 say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople. What 
 does Rome know of rat and lizard ? What are 
 Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring 
 systems of being ? Nay, what food or experience 
 or succor have they for the Esquimau seal-hunter, 
 for the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the 
 stevedore, the porter? 
 
 Broader and deeper we must write our annals 
 from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the 
 ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would 
 trulier express our central and wide-related 
 nature, instead of this old chronology of 
 selfishness and pride to which we have too long 
 lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us,
 
 HISTORY. 39 
 
 shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science 
 and of letters is not the way into nature, but from 
 it, rather. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and 
 unschooled farmer's boy, comes much nearer 
 to these, understand them better than the dis- 
 sector or the antiquary.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 Ne te quaesiveris extra. 
 
 ' Man is his own star, and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and perfect man, 
 Command all light, all influence, all fate, 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 
 Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune.
 
 Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat: 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and fet.
 
 ESSAY IL 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 I EEAD the other day some verses written by 
 an eminent painter which were original and not 
 conventional. Always the soul hears an admoni- 
 tion in such lines, let the subject be what it may. 
 The sentiment they instil is of more value than 
 any thought they may contain. To believe ycur 
 own thought, to believe that what is true for you 
 in your private heart, is true for all men, that is 
 genius. Speak your latent conviction and it shall 
 be the universal sense ; for always the inmost 
 becomes the outmost, and our first thought is 
 rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last 
 Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is 
 to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, 
 Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books 
 and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what 
 they, thought. A man should learn to detect and 
 watch that gleam of light which flashes across his 
 mind from within, more than the lustre of the 
 firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses 
 without notice his thought, because it is his. In 
 every work of genius we recognize our own 
 
 (43)
 
 44 ESSAY II. 
 
 rejected thoughts : they come back to us with a 
 certain alienated majesty. Great works of art 
 have no more affecting lesson for us than this. 
 They teach us to abide by our spontaneous im- 
 pression with good humored inflexibility then 
 most when the whole cry of voices is on the 
 other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say 
 with masterly good sense precisely what we have 
 thought and felt all the time, and we shall be 
 forced to take with shame our own opinion from 
 another. 
 
 There is a time in every man's education 
 when he arrives at the conviction that envy is 
 ignorance ; that imitation is suicide ; that he 
 must take himself for better, for worse, as his 
 portion ; that though the wide universe is full 
 of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come 
 to him but through his toil bestowed on that 
 plot of ground which is given to him to till. 
 The power which resides in him is new in nature, 
 and none but he knows what that is which he can 
 do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for 
 nothing one face, one character, one fact makes 
 much impression on him, and another none. It is 
 not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture 
 in the memory. The eye was placed where one 
 ray should fall, that it might testify of that par- 
 ticular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost 
 syllable of his confession. We but half express 
 ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea 
 which each of us represents. It may be safely 
 trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 45 
 
 be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his 
 work made manifest by cowards. It needs a di- 
 vine man to exhibit anything divine. A man is 
 relieved and gay when he has put his heart into 
 his work and done his best ; but what he has said 
 or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It 
 is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the 
 attempt his genius deserts him ; no muse be- 
 friends; no invention, no hope. 
 
 Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron 
 string. Accept the place the divine Providence 
 has found for you ; the society of your contem- 
 poraries, the connection of events. Great men have 
 always done so and confided themselves childlike 
 to the genius of their age, betraying their percep- 
 tion that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, 
 working through their hands, predominating in 
 all their being. And we are now men, and must 
 accept in the highest mind the same transcendent 
 destiny ; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards 
 fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and 
 benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay plas- 
 tic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and 
 advance on Chaos and the Dark. 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this 
 text in the face and behavior of children, babes 
 and even brutes. That divided and rebel mind, 
 that distrust of a sentiment because our arith- 
 metic has computed the strength and means 
 opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their 
 mind being whole, their eye is as yet uncon- 
 quered, and when we look in their faces, we are
 
 46 ESSAY II. 
 
 disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody ; all 
 conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes 
 four or five out of the adults who prattle and 
 play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty 
 and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
 charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its 
 claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. 
 Do not think the youth has no force because 
 he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the 
 next room, who spoke so clear and emphatic? 
 Good Heaven ! it is he ! i't is that very lump of 
 bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has done 
 nothing but eat when you were by, that now 
 rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It seems 
 he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. 
 Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make 
 us seniors very unnecessary. 
 
 The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a 
 dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to 
 do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy 
 attitude of human nature. How is a boy the 
 master of society! independent, irresponsible, 
 looking out from his corner on such people and 
 facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on 
 their merits, in the swift summary way of boys, 
 as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, trouble- 
 some. He cumbers himself never about conse- 
 quences, about interests : he gives an indepen- 
 dent, genuine verdict. You must court him : he 
 does not court you. But the man is, as it were, 
 clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon 
 as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 47 
 
 a committed person, watched by the sympathy 
 or the hatred of hundreds whose affections must 
 now enter into his account. There is no Lethe 
 for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his 
 neutral, godlike independence ! Who can thus 
 lose all pledge, and having observed, observe 
 again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbrib- 
 able, unaffrighted innocence, must always be for- 
 midable, must always engage the poet's and the 
 man's regards. Of such an immortal youth the 
 force would be felt He would utter opinions on 
 all passing affairs, which being seen to be not pri- 
 vate but necessary, would sink like darts into the 
 ear of men, and put them in fear. 
 
 These are the voices which we hear in solitude, 
 but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter in to 
 the world. { Society everywhere is in conspiracy 
 against the manhood of every one of its members. 
 Society is a joint-stock company in which the 
 members agree for the better securing of his bread 
 to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and 
 culture of the eater. ) The virtue in most request 
 is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It 
 loves not realities and creators, but names and cus- 
 toms. 
 
 Whoso would be a man must be a nonconform- 
 ist. He who would gather immortal palms must 
 not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must 
 explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last 
 sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Ab- 
 solve you to yourself, and you shall have the suff- 
 rage of the world. I remember an answer which
 
 ESS Ay II. 
 
 when quite young I was prompted to make to ; 
 valued adviser who was wont to importune me 
 with the dear old doctrines of the church. On 
 my saying, " What have I to do with the sacred- 
 ness of traditions, if I live wholly from within ? " 
 my friend suggested " But these impulses may 
 be from below, not from above." I replied, " They 
 do not seem to me to be such ; but if I am the devil's 
 child, I will live then from the devil." No law 
 can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good 
 and bad are but names very readily transferable 
 to that or this ; the only right is what is after 
 my constitution, the only wrong what is against 
 it. A man is to carry himself in the presence 
 of all opposition as if every thing were titular 
 and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think 
 how easily we capitulate to badges and names, 
 to large societies and dead institutions. Every 
 decent and well-spoken individual affects arid 
 sways me more than is right. I ought to go up- 
 right and vital, and speak the rude truth in all 
 ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of 
 philanthropy, shall that pass ? If an angry bigot 
 assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and 
 comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, 
 why should I not say to him, " Go love thy infant ; 
 love thy wood-chopper ; be good-natured and 
 modest ; have that grace ; and never varnish your 
 hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible 
 tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy 
 love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless 
 would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 49 
 
 than the affectation of love. Your goodness 
 must have some edge to it else it is none. The 
 doctrine of hatred must be preached as the 
 Counteraction of the doctrine of love when that 
 pules and whines. I shun father and mother and 
 wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I 
 would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. 
 I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, 
 but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Ex- 
 pect me not to show cause why I seek or why I 
 exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, 
 as a good man did to day, of my obligation to put 
 all poor men in good situations. Are they my 
 poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, 
 that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give 
 to such men as do not belong to me and to whom 
 I do not belong. There is a class of persons to 
 whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and 
 sold ; for them I will go to prison, if need be ; but 
 your miscellaneous popular charities; the educa- 
 tion at college of fools ; the building of meeting- 
 houses to the vain end to which many now stand ; 
 alms to sots ; and the thousandfold Relief Socie- 
 ties ; though I confess with shame I sometimes 
 succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar 
 which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to 
 withhold. 
 
 Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the 
 exception than the rule. There is the man and 
 his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, 
 as some piece of courage or charity, much as they 
 would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appear- 
 4
 
 50 ESSAY II. 
 
 ance on parade. Their works are done as an 
 apology or extenuation of their living in the 
 world, as invalids and the insane pay a high 
 board. Their virtues are penances. 1 do not 
 wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an 
 apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a 
 spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a 
 lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that 
 it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to 
 be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and 
 bleeding. My life should be unique ; it should be 
 an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask 
 primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse 
 this appeal from the man to his actions. I know 
 that for myself it makes no difference whether I 
 do or forbear those actions which are reckoned ex- 
 cellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege 
 where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as 
 my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need 
 for my own assurance or the assurance of my fel- 
 lows any secondary testimony. 
 
 What I must do, is all that concerns me, not 
 what the people think. This rule, equally ardu- 
 ous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for 
 the whole distinction between greatness and mean- 
 ness. It is the harder, because you will always 
 find those who think they know what is your duty 
 better than you know it. It is easy in the world 
 to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy in soli- 
 tude to live after our own ; but the great man is 
 he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with per- 
 fect sweetness the independence of solitude-
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages that have 
 become dead to you, is, that it scatters your force. 
 It loses your time and blurs the impression of 
 your character. If you maintain a dead church, 
 contribute to a dead Bible-Society, vote with a 
 great party either for the Government or against 
 it, spread your table like base housekeepers, 
 under all these screens, I have difficulty to detect 
 the precise man you are. And, of course, so much 
 force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do 
 your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, 
 and } r ou shall reinforce yourself. A man must 
 consider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of 
 conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate 
 your argument. I hear a preacher announce for 
 his text and topic the expediency of one of the 
 institutions of his church. Do I not know before- 
 hand that not possibly can he say a new and spon- 
 taneous word ? Do I not know that with all this 
 ostentation of examining the grounds of the insti- 
 tution, he will do no such thing ? Do I not know 
 that he is pledged to himself not to look but at 
 one side; the permitted side, not as a man, but as 
 a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and 
 these airs of the bench are the emptiest affecta- 
 tion. Well, most men have bound their eyes with 
 one or another handkerchief, and attached them* 
 selves to some one of these communities of opin- 
 ion. This conformity makes them not false in a 
 few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in 
 all particulars. Their every truth is not quite 
 true. Their two is not the real two, their four
 
 52 ESSAY II. 
 
 not the real four : so that every word they say 
 chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to 
 set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to 
 equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to 
 which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of 
 face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gen- 
 tlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying 
 experience in particular which does not fail to 
 wreak itself also in the general history ; I mean, 
 " the foolish face of praise," the forced smile 
 which we put on in company where we do not feel 
 at ease in answer to conversation which does not 
 interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously 
 moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, 
 grow tight about the outline of the face and make 
 the most disagreeable sensation, a sensation of re- 
 buke and warning which no brave young man will 
 suffer twice. 
 
 For non-conformity the world whips you with 
 its displeasure. And therefore a man must know 
 how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look 
 askance on him in the public street or in the 
 friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin 
 in contempt and resistance like his own, he might 
 well go home with a sad countenance , but the 
 sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, 
 have no deep cause, disguise no god, but are put 
 on and off as the wind blows, and a newspaper 
 directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude 
 more formidable than that of the senate and the 
 college. It is easy enough for a firm man who 
 knows the world to brook the rage of the culti-
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. S3 
 
 vated classes. Their rage is decorous and pru- 
 dent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable 
 themselves. But when to their feminine rage the 
 indignation of the people is added, when the igno- 
 rant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelli- 
 gent brute force that lies at the bottom of society 
 is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of 
 magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a 
 trifle of no concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust 
 is our consistency ; a reverence for our past act or 
 word, because the eyes of others have no other 
 data for computing our orbit than our past acts, 
 and we are loath to disappoint them. 
 
 But why should you keep your head over your 
 shoulder? Why drag about this monstrous corpse 
 of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat 
 you have stated in this or that public place? Sup- 
 pose you should contradict yourself; what then ? 
 It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on 
 your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure 
 memory, but bring the past for judgment into the 
 thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. 
 Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics you 
 have denied personality to the Deity : yet when 
 the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them 
 heart and life, though they should clothe God with 
 shape and color. Leave your theory as Joseph his 
 coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 
 \ A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little 
 I minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers 
 I and divines. With consistency a great soul has
 
 54 ESSAY If. 
 
 simply nothing to do. He may as well concern 
 himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon 
 your guarded lips ! Sew them up with packthread, 
 do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what you 
 think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and 
 to-morro'w speak what to-morrow thinks in hard 
 words again, though it contradict everything you 
 said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, 
 you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunder- 
 stood ! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then 
 to be misunderstood ? Pythagoras was misunder- 
 stood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and 
 Copernicus, ;md Galileo, and Newton, and every 
 pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be 
 great is to be misunderstood. 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. All 
 the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of 
 his being as the inequalities of Andes and Him- 
 maleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. 
 Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. 
 A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian 
 stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it 
 still spells the same thing. In this pleasing con- 
 trite wood-life which God allows me, let me record 
 day by day my honest thought without prospect 
 or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found 
 symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. 
 My book should smell of pines and resound with 
 the hum of insects. The swallow over my win- 
 dow should interweave that thread or straw he 
 carries in his bill into my web also. \ We pass for 
 what we are. Character teaches above our wills.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 55 
 
 Men imagine that they communicate their virtue 
 or vice only by overt actions and do not see that 
 virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. 
 
 Fear never but you shall be consistent in what- 
 ever variety of actions, so they be each honest and 
 natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions 
 will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. 
 These varieties are lost sight of when seen at a 
 little distance, at a little height of thought. One 
 tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best 
 ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is 
 only microscopic criticism. See the line from a 
 sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the 
 average tendency. Your genuine action will ex- 
 plain itself and will explain your other genuine 
 actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act 
 singly, and what you have already done singly, 
 will justify you now. Greatness always appeals 
 to the future. If I can be great enough now to 
 do right and scorn e} 7 es, I must have done so 
 much right before, as to defend me now. Be it 
 how it will, do right now. Always scorn appear- 
 ances, and you always may. The force of charac- 
 ter is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue 
 work their health into this. What makes the 
 majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, 
 which so fills the imagination ? The conscious- 
 ness of a train of great days and victories behind. 
 There they all stand and shed an united light on 
 the advancing actor. He is attended as by a vis- 
 ible escort of angels to every man's eye. That is 
 it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice,
 
 56 ESSAY II. 
 
 and dignity into Washington's 'port, and America 
 into Adam's eye. Honor is venerable to us be- 
 cause it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient vir- 
 tue. We worship it to-day, because it is not of 
 to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because 
 it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is 
 self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an 
 old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young 
 person. 
 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last of 
 conformity and consistency. Let the words be 
 gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of 
 the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the 
 Spartan fife. Let us bow and apologize never 
 more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. 
 I do not wish to please him ; I wish that he should 
 wish to please me. I will stand here for human- 
 ity, and though I would make it kind, I would 
 make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the 
 smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the 
 times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, 
 and office, the fact which is the upshot of all his- 
 tory, that there is a great responsible Thinker and 
 Actor moving wherever moves a man ; that a true 
 man belongs to no other time or place, but is the 
 centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. 
 He measures you, and all men, and all events. 
 You are constrained to accept his standard. Ordi- 
 narily everybody in society reminds us of some- 
 what else or of some other person. Character, 
 reality, reminds you of nothing else. It takes 
 place of the whole creation. The man must be so
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 57 
 
 much that he must make all circumstances indif- 
 ferent, put all means into the shade. This all 
 great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, 
 a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces 
 and numbers and time fully to accomplish his 
 thought; and posterity seem to follow his steps 
 ris a procession. A man Caesar is born, and for 
 ages after, we have a Roman Empire. Christ is 
 born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to 
 his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and 
 the possible of man. An institution is the length- 
 sued shadow of one man ; as, the Reformation, of 
 Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wes- 
 ley ; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called 
 " the height of Rome ; " and all history resolves 
 itself very easily into the biography of a few stout 
 and earnest persons. 
 
 Let a man then know his worth, and keep 
 things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, 
 or skulk up and down with the air of a charity- 
 boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world 
 which exists for him. But the man in the street 
 finding no worth in himself which corresponds to 
 the force which built a tower or sculptured a mar- 
 ble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To 
 him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an 
 alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equi- 
 page, and seem to say like that, " Who are you, sir ? " 
 Yet they all are his, suito: '. for his notice, peti- 
 tioners to his faculties that they will come out and 
 take possession. The picture waits for my ver- 
 dict ; it is not to command me, but I am to settle
 
 58 ESS Ay ii. 
 
 its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot 
 who was picked up dead drunk in the street, car- 
 ried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and 
 laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated 
 with all obsequious -ceremony like the duke, and 
 assured that he had been insane, owes its popu- 
 larity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the 
 state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, 6ut 
 now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and 
 finds himself a true prince. 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In 
 history, our imagination makes fools of us, plays 
 us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and es- 
 tate are a gaudier vocabulary than private John 
 and Edward in a small house and common day's 
 work ; but the things of life are the same to both : 
 the sum total of both is the same. Why all this 
 deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gus- 
 tavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they 
 wear out virtue ? As great a stake depends on 
 your private act to-day, as followed their public 
 and renowned steps. When private men shall act 
 with vast views, the lustre will be transferred 
 from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 
 
 The world has indeed been instructed by its 
 kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of na- 
 tions. It has been taught by this colossal sym- 
 bol the mutual reverence that is due from man to 
 man. The joyful lo alty with which men have 
 everywhere suffered the* king, the noble, or the 
 great proprietor to walk among them by a law of 
 his own, make his own scale of men and things,
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 59 
 
 and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with 
 money but with honor, and represent the Law in 
 his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they 
 obscurely signified their consciousness of their 
 own right and comeliness, the right of every 
 man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action ex-" 
 erts is explained when we inquire the reason of 
 self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the 
 aboriginal Self on which a universal reliance may 
 be grounded ? What is the nature and power 
 of that science-baffling star, without parallax, 
 without calculable elements, which shoots a ray 
 of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if 
 the least mark of independence appear? Ths in- 
 quiry leads us to that source, at once the essence 
 of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence 
 of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. 
 We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, 
 whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep 
 force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot 
 go, all things find their common origin. For the 
 sense of being which in calm hours rises, we 
 know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from 
 things, from space, from light, from time, from 
 man, but one with them, and proceedeth ob- 
 viously from the same source whence their life 
 and being also proceedeth. We first share the 
 life by which things exist, and afterwards see 
 them as appearances in nature, and forget that 
 we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain 
 of action and the fountain of thought. Here are
 
 60 ESSAY II. 
 
 the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man 
 wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot 
 be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie 
 in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes 
 us organs of activity and receivers of its truth. 
 When we discern justice, when we discern truth, 
 we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage 
 to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we 
 seek to pry into the soul that causes, all meta- 
 physics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence 
 or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man 
 discerns between the voluntary acts of his mind, 
 and his involuntary perceptions. And to his in- 
 voluntary perceptions, he knows a perfect respect 
 is due. He may err in the expression of them, 
 but he knows that these things are so, like day 
 and night, not to be disputed. All my wilful ac- 
 tions and acquisitions are but roving; the most 
 trivial reverie, the faintest native emotion are do- 
 mestic and divine. Thoughtless people contra- 
 dict as readily the statement of perceptions as of 
 opinions, or rather much more readily ; for, they 
 do not distinguish between perception juid notion. 
 They fancy that I choose to see this or that 
 thing. But perception is not whimsical, but 
 fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it 
 after me, and in course of time, all mankind, 
 although it may chance that no one has seen it 
 before me. For my perception of it is as much a 
 fact as the sun. 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine spirit 
 are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 6l 
 
 helps. It must be that when God speaketh, he 
 should communicate not one thing, but all things; 
 should fill the world with his voice ; should scat- 
 ter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre 
 of the present thought ; and new date and new 
 create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple. 
 and receives a divine wisdom, then old things 
 pass awa} 7 , means, teachers, texts, temples fall; 
 it lives now and absorbs past and future into the 
 present hour. All things are made sacred by re- 
 lation to it, one thing as much as another. All 
 things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, 
 and in the universal miracle petty and particular 
 miracles disappear. This is and must be. Jf, 
 therefore, a man claims to know and speak of 
 God, and carries you backward to the phraseol- 
 ogy of some old mouldered nation in another 
 country, in another world, believe him not. Is 
 the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness 
 and completion? Is the parent better than the 
 child into whom he has cast his ripened being? 
 Whence then this worship of the past? The 
 centuries are conspirators against the sanity and 
 majesty of the soul. Time and space are but 
 physiological colors which the eye maketh, but 
 the soul is light ; where it is, is day ; where it 
 was, is night; and history is an impertinence and 
 an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful 
 apologue or parable of my being and becoming. 
 
 Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer 
 upright. He dares not say, " I think," " I am," but 
 quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before
 
 62 ESSAY If. 
 
 the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These 
 roses under my window make no reference to 
 former roses or to better ones ; they are for what 
 they are ; they exist with God to-day. There is 
 no time to them. There is simply the rose ; it is 
 perfect in every moment of its existence. Before 
 a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts : in the 
 full-blown flower, there is no more ; in the leafless 
 root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and 
 it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is 
 no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; 
 he does not live in the present, but with reverted 
 eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches 
 that surround them, stands on tiptoe to foresee 
 the future. He cannot be happy and strong un- 
 til he too lives with nature in the present, above 
 time. 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see what 
 strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, 
 unless he speak the phraseology of I know not 
 what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not 
 always set so great a price on a few texts, on a 
 few lives. We are like children who repeat by 
 rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, 
 as they grow older, of the men of talents and 
 character they chance to see, painfully recollect' 
 ing the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, when 
 they come into the point of view which those had 
 who uttered these sayings, they understand them, 
 and are willing to let the words go ; for, at any 
 time, they can use words as good, when occasion 
 comes. So was it with us, so will it be, if we
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 63 
 
 proceed. If we live truly, we shall see truly. 
 It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, 
 as it is for the weak to be weak. When we 
 have new perception, we shall gladly disbur- 
 then the memory of its hoarded treasures as old 
 rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice 
 shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and 
 the rustle of the corn. 
 
 And now at last the highest truth on this subject 
 remains unsaid ; probably, cannot be said ; for all 
 that we say is the far off remembering of the intui- 
 tion. That thought, by what I can now nearest 
 approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, 
 when you have life in yourself, it is not by any 
 known or appointed way ; you shall not discern 
 the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the 
 face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; the 
 way, the thought, the good shall be wholly 
 strange and new. It shall exclude all other be- 
 ing. You take the way from man not to man. 
 All persons that ever existed are its fugitive min- 
 isters. There shall be no fear in it. Fear and 
 hope are alike beneath it. It asks nothing. There 
 is somewhat low even in hope. We are then in 
 vision. There is nothing that can be called grat- 
 itude nor properly joy. The soul is raised over 
 passion. It seeth identity and eternal causation. 
 It is a perceiving that Truth and Right are. 
 Hence it becomes a Tranquillity out of the 
 knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of 
 nature ; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea ; vast 
 intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no ac-
 
 64 ESS Ay II. 
 
 count. This which I think and feel, underlay 
 that former state of life and circumstances, as it 
 does underlie my present, and will always all cir- 
 cumstance, and what is called life, and what is 
 called death. 
 
 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power 
 oeases in the instant of repose ; it resides in the 
 moment of transition from a past to a new state ; 
 in the shooting of the gulf; in the darting to an 
 aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul 
 becomes ; for, that forever degrades the past ; turns 
 all riches to poverty ; all reputation to a shame ; 
 confounds the saint with the rogue ; shoves Jesus 
 and Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate 
 of self-reliance ? Inasmuch as the soul is present, 
 there will be power not confident but agent. To 
 talk of reliance, is a poor external way of speak- 
 ing. Speak rather of that which relies, because 
 it works and is. Who has more soul than I, mas- 
 ters me, though he should not raise his finger. 
 Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of 
 spirits; who has less, I rule with like facility. 
 We fancy it rhetoric when we speak of eminent 
 virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, 
 and that a man or a company of men plastic and 
 permeable to principles, by the law of nature must 
 overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rick 
 men, poets, who are not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact whicli we so quickly 
 reach on this as on every topic, the resolution of 
 all into the ever blessed ONE. Virtue is the gov- 
 ernor, the creator, the reality. All things real are
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 6$ 
 
 so by so much of virtue as they contain. Hard- 
 ship, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, 
 personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my 
 respect as examples of the soul's presence and im- 
 pure action. I see the same law working in na- 
 ture for conservation and growth. The poise of 
 a planet, the bended tree recovering itself from 
 the strong wind, the vital resources of every veg- 
 etable and animal, are also demonstrations of the 
 self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All 
 history from its highest to its trivial passages is the 
 various record of this power. 
 
 Thus all concentrates ; let us not rove ; let us 
 sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and as- 
 tonish the intruding rabble of men and books and 
 institutions by a simple declaration of the divine 
 fact. Bid them take the shoes from off their feet, 
 for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge 
 them, and our docility to our own law demon- 
 strate the poverty of nature and fortune beside 
 our native riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in 
 awe of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at 
 home, to put itself in communication with the in- 
 ternal ocean^ but it goes abroad to beg a cup of 
 water of the urns of men. We must go alone. 
 Isolation must precede true society. I like the si- 
 lent church before the service begins, better than 
 any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste 
 the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct 
 or sanctuary. So let us always sit. Why should 
 we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or 
 5
 
 66 ESSAY II. 
 
 father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, 
 or are said to have the same blood ? All men 
 have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for 
 that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to 
 the extent of being ashamed of it. But your iso- 
 lation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that 
 is, must be elevation. At times the whole world 
 seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with 
 emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, 
 fea'r, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet 
 door and say, " Come out unto us." Do not spill 
 thy soul ; do not all descend ; keep thy state 5 
 stay at home in thine own heaven ; come not for 
 a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of 
 conflicting appearances, but let in the light of thy 
 law on their confusion. The power men possess 
 to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. 
 No man can come near me but through my act. 
 " What we love that we have, but by desire we 
 bereave ourselves of the love." 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of 
 obedience and faith, let us at least resist our tempt- 
 ations, let us enter into the state of war, and 
 wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy in 
 our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our 
 smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this 
 lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no 
 longer to the expectation of these deceived and de- 
 ceiving people with whom we converse. Say to 
 them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O 
 friend, I have lived with you after appearances 
 hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 67 
 
 known unto you that henceforward I obey no law 
 less than the eternal law. I will have no cove- 
 nants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nour- 
 ish my parents, to support my family, to be the 
 chaste husband of one wife, but these relations I 
 must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I 
 appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I 
 cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. 
 If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the 
 happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to de- 
 serve that you should. I must be myself. I will 
 not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust 
 that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly 
 before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices 
 me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I 
 will love you ; if you are not, I will not hurt you 
 and myself with my hypocritical attentions. If you 
 are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave 
 to your companions ; I will seek my own. I do 
 this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is 
 alike your interest and mine and all men's, how- 
 ever long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. 
 Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon 
 love what is dictated by your nature as well as 
 mine, and if we follow the truth, it will bring us 
 out safe at last. But so you may give these friends 
 pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my 
 power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all per- 
 sons have their moments of reason when they look 
 out into the region of absolute truth ; then will 
 they justify me and do the same thing. 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of popu-
 
 68 ESSAY II. 
 
 lar standards is a rejection of all standard, and 
 mere antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will 
 use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But 
 the law of consciousness abides. There are two 
 confessionals, in one or the other of which we 
 must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of 
 duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or, in the 
 reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied 
 your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, 
 town, cat, and dog ; whether any of these can up- 
 braid you. But I may also neglect this reflex 
 standard, and absolve* me to myself. I have my 
 own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the 
 name of duty to many offices that are called 
 duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables 
 me to dispense with the popular code. If any 
 one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its 
 commandment one day. 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in him 
 who has cast off the common motives of humanity, 
 and has ventured to trust himself for a task-mas- 
 ter. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his 
 sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, 
 society, law to himself, that a simple purpose may 
 be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others. 
 
 If any man consider the present aspects of what 
 is called by distinction society, he will see the need 
 of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man 
 seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous 
 desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, 
 afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each 
 other. Our age yields no great and perfect per-
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 69 
 
 sons. We want men and women who shall reno- 
 vate life and our social state, but we see that most 
 natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own 
 wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to 
 their practical force, and so do learn and beg day 
 and night continually. Our housekeeping is men- 
 dicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our 
 religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen 
 for us. We are parlor soldiers. The rugged bat- 
 tle of fate, where strength is born, we shun. 
 
 If our young men miscarry in their first enter- 
 prizes, they lose all heart. If the young merchant 
 fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius 
 studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed 
 in an office within one year afterwards in the cities 
 or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his 
 friends and to himself that he is right in being dis- 
 heartened and in complaining the rest of his life. 
 A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, 
 who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, 
 farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a 
 newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and 
 so forth, in successive years, and always, like a 
 cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these 
 city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and 
 feels no shame in not " studying a profession," for 
 he does not postpone his life, but lives already. 
 He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. 
 Let a stoic arise who shall reveal the resources of 
 man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, 
 but can and must detach themselves ; that with 
 the exercise of self -trust, new powers shairappear;
 
 70 ESSAY II. 
 
 that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed 
 healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of 
 our compassion, and that the moment he acts from 
 himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and 
 customs out of the window, we pity him no more 
 but thank and revere him, and that teacher shall 
 restore the life of man to splendor, and make his 
 name dear to all History. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance, a 
 new respect for the divinity in man, must work 
 a revolution in all the offices and relations of men ; 
 in their religion ; in their education ; in their pur- 
 suits ; their modes of living ; their association ; in 
 their property ; in their speculative views. 
 
 1. In what prayers do men allow themselves ! 
 That which they call a holy office, is not so much 
 as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and 
 asks for some foreign addition to come through 
 some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless 
 mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediato- 
 rial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particu- 
 lar commodity anything less than all good, is 
 vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts 
 of life from the highest point of view. It is the 
 soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the 
 spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But 
 prayer as a means to effect a private end, is theft 
 and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity 
 in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man 
 is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then 
 see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer 
 kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 71 
 
 rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true 
 prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap 
 ends. Carataeh, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when, 
 admonished to inquire the mind of the god Au- 
 date, replies, 
 
 " His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors, 
 Our valors are our best gods." 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. 
 Discontent is the want of self-reliance ; it is in- 
 firmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can 
 thereby help the sufferer ; if not, attend your own 
 work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. 
 Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them 
 who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for 
 company, instead of imparting to them truth and 
 health in rough electric shocks, putting them once 
 more in communication with the soul. The secret 
 of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome ever- 
 more to gods and men is the self-helping man. For 
 him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues 
 greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with de- 
 sire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, 
 because he did not need it. We solicitously and 
 apologetically caress and celebrate him, because 
 he held on his way and scorned our disapproba- 
 tion. The gods love him because men hated him. 
 " To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, " the 
 blessed Immortals are swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so 
 are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They 
 say with those foolish Israelites, " Let not God
 
 72 ESSAY II. 
 
 Bpeak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any 
 man with us, and we will obey." Everywhere I 
 am bereaved of meeting God in my brother, be- 
 cause he has shut his own temple doors, and re- 
 cites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's 
 brother's God. Every new mind is a new classifi- 
 cation. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity 
 and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Ben- 
 tham, a Spurzheim, it imposes its classification on 
 other men, and lo ! a new system. In proportion 
 always to the depth of the thought, and so to the 
 number of the objects it touches and brings 
 within reach of the pupil, is his complacenc} 7 . But 
 chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, 
 which are also classifications of some powerful 
 mind acting on the great elemental thought of Duty, 
 and man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvin- 
 ism, Qakerism Swedenborgianism. The pupil takes 
 the same 'delight in subordinating everything to 
 the new terminology that a girl does who has just 
 learned botany, in seeing a new earth and new 
 seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that 
 the pupil will feel a real debt to the teacher, 
 will find his intellectual power has grown by the 
 study of his writings. This will continue until he 
 has exhausted his master's mind. But in all un- 
 balanced minds, the classification is idolized, 
 passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaust- 
 ible means, so that the walls of the system blend 
 to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls 
 of the universe ; the luminaries of heaven seem to 
 them hung on the arch their master built. They
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 73 
 
 cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to 
 see, how you can see ; u It must be somehow 
 that you stole the light from us." They do not 
 yet perceive, that, light unsystematic, indomitable, 
 will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let 
 them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they 
 are honest and do well, presently their neat new 
 pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will 
 lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, 
 all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, 
 will beam over the universe as on the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of 
 Travelling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, 
 remains for all educated Americans. They who 
 made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the 
 imagination, did so not by rambling round crea- 
 tion as a moth round a lamp, but by sticking fast 
 where they were, like an axis of the earth. In 
 manly hours, we feel that duty is our place, and 
 that the merry men of circumstance should follow 
 as they may. The soul is no traveller : the wise 
 man stays at home with the soul, and when his 
 necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him 
 from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home 
 still, and is not gadding abroad from himself, and 
 shall make men sensible by the expression of his 
 countenance, that he goes the missionary of wis- 
 dom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a 
 sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. 
 
 I have no churlish objection to the circumnavi- 
 gation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of 
 study, and benevolence, so that the man is first
 
 74 ESSAY IL 
 
 domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope 
 of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He 
 who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat 
 which he does not carry, travels away from him- 
 self, and grows old even in youth among old 
 things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind 
 have become old and dilapidated as they. He 
 carries ruins to ruins. 
 
 Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our 
 first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. 
 At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can 
 be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. 
 I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on 
 the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there 
 beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelent- 
 ing, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vati- 
 can, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated 
 with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxi- 
 cated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a 
 symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the 
 whole intellectual action. The intellect is vaga- 
 bond, and the universal system of education fos- 
 ters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bod- 
 ies are forced to stay at home. We imitate ; and 
 what is imitation but the travelling of the mind ? 
 Our houses are built with foreign taste ; our 
 shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our 
 opinions, our tastes, < ur whole minds lean, and 
 follow the Past and the Distant, as the eyes of a 
 maid follow her mistress. The soul created the 
 arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 75 
 
 own mind that the artist sought his model. It 
 was an application of his own thought to the 
 thing to be done and the conditions to be ob- 
 served. And why need we copy the Doric or the 
 Gothic model ? Beauty, convenience, grandeur 
 of thought, and quaint expression are as near to 
 us as to any, and if the American artist will study 
 with hope and love the precise thing to be done 
 by him, considering the climate, the soil, the 
 length of the day, the wants of the people, the 
 habit and form of the government, he will cre- 
 ate a house in which all these will find them- 
 selves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be sat- 
 isfied also. 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own 
 gift you can present every moment with the cum- 
 ulative force of a whole life's cultivation ; but of 
 the adopted talent of another, you have only an 
 extemporaneous, half possession. That which 
 each can do best, none but his Maker can teach 
 him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, 
 till that person has exhibited it. Where is the 
 master who could have taught Shakespeare ? 
 Where is the master who could have instructed 
 Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? 
 Every great man is an unique. The Scipionism 
 of Scipio is precisely that part he could not bor- 
 row. If anybody will tell me whom the great man 
 imitates in the original crisis when he performs 
 a great act, I will tell him who else than him- 
 self can teach him. Shakespeare will never be 
 made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that
 
 76 ESSAY II. 
 
 which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope 
 too much or dare too much. There is at this 
 moment, there is for me an utterance bare and 
 grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, 
 or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, 
 or Dante, but different from all these. Not pos- 
 sibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with 
 thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; 
 but if I can hear what these patriarchs say, 
 surely I can reply to them in the same pitch of 
 voice : for the ear and the tongue are two organs 
 of one nature. Dwell up there in the simple 
 and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, 
 and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look 
 abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men 
 plume themselves on the improvement of society, 
 and no man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
 side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only 
 apparent, like the workers of a treadmill. It under^ 
 goes continual changes : it is barbarous, it is civil- 
 ized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but 
 this change is not amelioration. For everything 
 that is given, something is taken. Society ac- 
 quires new arts and loses old instincts. What a 
 contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, 
 thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a 
 bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New 
 Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, 
 and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep un- 
 der. But compare the health of the two men, and
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 77 
 
 you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white 
 man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike 
 the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two 
 the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the 
 blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send 
 the white to his grave. 
 
 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost 
 the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, 
 but loses so much support of muscle. He has got 
 a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to 
 tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical 
 almanac he has, and so being sure of the informa- 
 tion when he wants it, the man in the street does 
 not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does 
 not observe ; the equinox he knows as little ; and 
 the whole bright calendar of the year is without a 
 dial in his mind. His note-books impair his 
 memory ; his libraries overload his wit ; the insur- 
 ance office increases the number of accidents ; and 
 it may be a question whether machinery does riot 
 encumber ; whether we have not lost by refine- 
 ment some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in 
 establishments and forms, some vigor of wild 
 virtue. For eveiy stoic was a stoic ; but in Chris- 
 tendom where is the Christian ? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral stand- 
 ard than the standard of height or bulk. No 
 greater men are now than ever were. A singular 
 equality may be observed between the great men 
 of the first and of the last ages ; nor can all the 
 science, art, religion and philosophy of the nine- 
 teenth century avail to educate greater men than
 
 78 ESSAY II. 
 
 Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty cen- 
 turies ago. Not in time is the race progressive. 
 Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are 
 great men, but they leave no class. He who is 
 really of their class will not be called by their 
 name, but be wholly his own man, and, in his 
 turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inven- 
 tions of each period are only its costume, and do 
 not invigorate men. The harm of the improved 
 machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and 
 Behring accomplished so much in their fishing- 
 boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose 
 equipment exhausted the resources of science and 
 art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a 
 more splendid series of facts than any one since. 
 Columbus found the New World in an undecked 
 boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and 
 perishing of means and machinery which were in- 
 troduced with loud laudation, a few years or cen- 
 turies before. The great genius returns to es- 
 sential man. We reckoned the improvements of 
 the art of war among the triumphs of science," and 
 'yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the Bivouac, 
 which consisted of falling back on naked valor, 
 and disencumbering it of all aids. *' The Emperor 
 held it impossible to make a perfect army," says 
 Las Casas, " without abolishing our arms, maga- 
 zines, commissaries, and carriages, until in imita- 
 tion of the Roman custom, the soldier should re- 
 ceive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, 
 and make his bread himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward.
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 79 
 
 but the water of which it is composed, does not. 
 The same particle does not rise from the valley to 
 the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The 
 persons who make up a nation to-day, next year 
 die, and their experience with them. 
 
 And so the reliance on Property, including the 
 reliance on governments which protect it, is the 
 want of self-reliance. Men have looked away 
 from themselves and at things so long, that they 
 have come to esteem what they call the soul's 
 progress, namely, the religious, learned, and civil 
 institutions, as guards of property, and they de- 
 precate assaults on these, because they feel them 
 to be assaults on property. They measure their 
 esteem of each other, by what each has, not by 
 what each is. But a cultivated man becomes 
 ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he lias, 
 out of ne w respect for his being. Especially he hates 
 what he has, if he see that it is accidental, came 
 to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; then he 
 feels that it is not having ; it does not belong to 
 him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, be- 
 cause no revolution or no robber takes it away. 
 But that which a man is, does always by neces- 
 sity acquire, and what the man acquires is 
 permanent and living property, which does not 
 wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolu- 
 tions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but 
 perpetually renews itself wherever the man is put. 
 " Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, 
 " is seeking after thee ; therefore be at rest from 
 seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign
 
 80 ESSAY II. 
 
 goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. 
 The political parties meet in numerous conven- 
 tions ; the greater the concourse, and .with each 
 new uproar of announcement, The delegation from 
 Essex ! The Democrats from New Hampshire ! 
 The Whigs of Maine ! the young patriot feels 
 himself stronger than before by a new thousand 
 of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers 
 summon conventions, and vote and resolve in mul- 
 titude. But not so, O friends ! will the God deign 
 to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely 
 the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from 
 himself all external support, and stands alone, that 
 I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is 
 weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a 
 man better than a town ? Ask nothing of men, 
 and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column 
 must presently appear the upholder of all that 
 surrounds thee. He who knows that power is in 
 the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked 
 for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiv- 
 ing, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, 
 instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, 
 commands his limbs, works miracles ; just as a 
 man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man 
 who stands on his head. 
 
 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men 
 gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as 
 her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful 
 these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, 
 the chancellors of God. In the Will work and 
 acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of
 
 SELF-RELIANCE. 8 1 
 
 Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A 
 political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of 
 your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or 
 some other quite external event, raises your spirits, 
 and you think good days are preparing for you. 
 Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing 
 can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can 
 bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
 
 COMPENSATION
 
 ESSAY III. 
 COMPENSATION. 
 
 EVEE since I was a boy, I have wished to write 
 a discourse on Compensation ; for, it seemed to 
 me when very young, that, on this subject, Life 
 was ahead of theology, und the people knew more 
 than the preachers taught. The documents too, 
 from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed 
 my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always 
 before me, even in sleep ; for they are the tools in 
 our hands, the bread in our basket, the transac- 
 tions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling- 
 house, the greetings, the relations, the debts and 
 credits, the influence of character, the nature and 
 endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that 
 in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the 
 present action of the Soul of this world, clean 
 from all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of 
 man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal 
 love, conversing with that which he knows was 
 always and always must be, because it really is 
 now. It appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine 
 could be stated in terms with any resemblance to 
 those bright intuitions in which this truth is some- 
 
 (85)
 
 86 ESSAY III. 
 
 times revealed to us, it would be a star in many 
 dark hours and crooked passages in our journey 
 that would not suffer us to lose our way. 
 
 I was lately confirmed in these desires by hear- 
 ing a sermon at church. The preacher, a man 
 esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordi- 
 nary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. 
 He assumed that judgment is not executed in this 
 world ; that the wicked are successful ; that the 
 good are miserable ; and then urged from reason 
 and from Scripture a compensation to be made to 
 both parties in the next life. No offence appeared 
 to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. 
 As far as I could observe, when the meeting 
 broke up, they separated without remark on the 
 sermon. 
 
 Yet what was the import of this teaching? 
 What did the preacher mean by saying that the 
 good are miserable in the present life ? Was it 
 that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, 
 luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the 
 saints are poor and despised ; and that a compen- 
 sation is to be made to these last hereafter, by 
 giving them the like gratifications another da}% 
 bank-stock and doubloons, venison and cham- 
 pagne ? This must be the compensation intended ; 
 for, what else ? Is it that they are to have leave 
 to pray and praise ? to love and serve men ? Why, 
 that they can do now. The legitimate inference 
 the disciple would draw, was ; " We are to have 
 such a good time as the sinners have now ; " or, to 
 push it to its extreme import,-" You sin now ; we
 
 COM PENS A TION, 87 
 
 shall sin by-and-by ; we would sin now, if we 
 could; not being successful, we expect our re- 
 venge to-morrow." 
 
 The fallacy lay in the immense concession that 
 the bad are successful ; that justice is not done, 
 now. The blindness of the preacher consisted of 
 deferring to the base estimate of the market of 
 what constitutes a manly success, instead of 
 confronting and convicting the world from the 
 truth ; announcing the Presence of the Soul ; the 
 omnipotence of the Will : and so establishing the 
 standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood, 
 and summoning the dead to its present tribunal. 
 
 I find a similar base tone in the popular relig- 
 ious works of the day, and the same doctrines as- 
 sumed by the literary men when occasionally they 
 treat the related topics. I think that our popular 
 theology has gained in decorum, and not in prin- 
 ciple, over the superstitions it has displaced. But 
 men are better than this theology. Their daily 
 life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspir- 
 ing soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own 
 experience ; and all men feel sometimes the false- 
 hood which they cannot demonstrate. For men 
 are wiser than they know. That which they hear 
 in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if 
 said in conversation, would probably be questioned 
 in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed com- 
 pany on Providence and the divine laws, he is an- 
 swered by a silence which conveys well enough to 
 an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but 
 his incapacity to make his own statement.
 
 88 ESSAY III. 
 
 I shall attempt in this and the following chapter 
 to record some facts that indicate the path of the 
 law of Compensation ; happy beyond my expecta- 
 tion, if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this 
 circle. 
 
 POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in 
 every part of nature; in darkness and light; in 
 heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in 
 male and female ; in the inspiration and expiration 
 of plants and animals ; in the systole and diastole 
 of the heart ; in the undulations of fluids, and of 
 sound ; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity ; 
 in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. 
 Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle ; 
 the opposite magnetism takes place at the other 
 end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To 
 empty here, you must condense there. An inevi- 
 table dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is 
 a half, and suggests another thing to make it 
 whole ; -as spirit, matter ; man, woman ; subject- 
 ive, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, 
 rest ; yea, nay. 
 
 Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one 
 of its parts. The entire system of things gets rep- 
 resented in every particle. There is somewhat 
 that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day 
 and night, man and woman, in a single needle of 
 the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual 
 of every animal tribe. The reaction so grand in 
 the elements, is repeated within these small 
 boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom, 
 the physiologist has observed that no creatures are
 
 COM PENS A TION. 89 
 
 favorites, but a certain compensation balances 
 every gift and every defect. A surplusage given 
 to one part is paid out of a reduction from another 
 part of the same creature. If the head and neck 
 are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut 
 short. 
 
 The theory of the mechanic forces is another 
 example. What we gain in power is lost in time ; 
 and the converse. The periodic or compensating 
 errors of the planets, is another instance. The 
 influences of climate and soil in political history 
 are another. The cold climate invigorates. The 
 barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, 
 or scorpions. 
 
 The same dualism underlies the nature and con- 
 dition of man. Every excess causes a defect ; 
 every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its 
 sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is 
 a receiver of pleasure, has an equal penalty put on 
 its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with 
 its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain 
 of folly. For everything you have missed, you 
 have gained something else ; and for everything 
 you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, 
 they are increased that use them. If the gatherer 
 gathers too much, nature takes out of the man 
 what she puts into his chest ; swells the estate, 
 but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies 
 and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not 
 more speedily seek a level from their loftiest toss- 
 ing, than the varieties of condition tend to equal- 
 ize themselves. There is always some levelling
 
 90 ESSAY III. 
 
 circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the 
 strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the 
 same ground with all others. Is a man too strong 
 and fierce for society, and by temper and position 
 a bad citizen, a morose ruffian with a dash of the 
 pirate in him ; nature sends him a troop of pretty 
 sons and daughters who are getting along in the 
 dame's classes at the village school, and love and 
 fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. 
 Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and 
 felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, 
 and keeps her balance true. 
 
 The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
 things. But the President has paid dear for his 
 While House. It has commonly cost him all 
 his peace and the best of his manly attributes. 
 To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an 
 appearance before the world, he is content to eat 
 dust before the real masters who stand erect 
 behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more 
 substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? 
 Neither has this an immunity. He who by force 
 of will or of thought is great, and overlooks 
 th msands, has the responsibility of over-looking. 
 With every influx of light, comes new danger. 
 Has he light ? he must bear witness to the light, 
 and always outrun that sympathy which gives 
 him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to 
 new revelations of the incessant soul. He must 
 hate father and mother, wife and child. Plas he 
 all that the world loves and admires and covets ? 
 he must cast behind him their admiration, and
 
 COMPENSATION. 91 
 
 afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and 
 become a by-word and a hissing. 
 
 This Law writes laws of the c ties and nations. 
 It will not be baulked of its end in the smallest 
 iota. It is in vain to build or plot or combine 
 against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged 
 long. Res nolunt diu male administrari. Though 
 no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist 
 and will appear. If the government is Cruel, 
 the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too 
 high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you 
 make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will 
 not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing arti- 
 ficial can endure. The true life and satisfactions 
 of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or felici- 
 ties of condition, and to establish themselves 
 with great indifferency under all varieties of cir- 
 cumstance. Under all governments the influence 
 of character remains the same, in Turkey and 
 New England about alike. Under the primeval 
 despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that 
 man must have been as free as culture could make 
 him. 
 
 These appearances indicate the fact that the 
 universe is represented in every one of its par- 
 ticles. Everything in nature contains all the 
 powers of nature. Everything is made of one 
 hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type 
 under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse 
 as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a 
 bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. 
 Each new form repeats not only the main char-
 
 92 ESSAY III. 
 
 acter of the type, but part for part all the details, 
 all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, 
 and whole system of every other. Every occu- 
 pation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the 
 world, and correlative of every other. Each one 
 is an entire emblem of human life ; of its good 
 and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its 
 end. And each one must somehow accommodate 
 the whole man, and recite all his destiny. 
 
 The world globes itself in a drop of dew. 
 The microscope cannot find the animalcule which 
 is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, 
 smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of 
 reproduction that take hold on eternit}-, all find 
 room to consist in the small creature. So do we 
 put our life into every act. The true doctrine of 
 omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his 
 parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of 
 the universe contrives to throw itself into every 
 point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the 
 affinity, so the repulsion ; if the force, so the lim- 
 itation. 
 
 Thus is the universe alive. All things are 
 moral. That soul which within us is a senti- 
 ment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspi- 
 rations; out there in history we can see its fatal 
 strength. It is almighty. All nature feels its 
 grasp. " It is in the world and the world was 
 made by it." It is eternal, but it enacts itself in 
 time and space. Justice is not postponed. A 
 perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of 
 life. Oi xu&oi J<o? dst EUKtnTdfft. The dice of God
 
 COM PENS A TION. 9 3 
 
 are always loaded. The world looks like a multi- 
 plication-table or a mathematical equation, which, 
 turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what 
 figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, 
 still returns to you. Every secret is told, every 
 crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every 
 wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What 
 we call retribution, is the universal necessity by 
 which the whole appears wherever a part appears. 
 If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you 
 see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to 
 which it belongs, is there behind. 
 
 Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, 
 integrates itself, in a twofold manner ; first, in 
 the thing, or, in real nature ; and secondly, in 
 the circumstance, or, in apparent nature. Men 
 call the circumstance the retribution. The 
 causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen 
 by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance, 
 is seen by the understanding ; it is inseparable from 
 the thing, but is often spread over a long time, 
 and so does not become distinct until after many 
 years. The specific stripes may follow late after 
 the offence, but they follow because they accom- 
 pany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one 
 stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected 
 ripens within the flower of the pleasure which 
 concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, 
 seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the effect 
 already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in 
 the means, the fruit in the seed. 
 
 Whilst thus the world will be whole, and
 
 94 ESS AT III. 
 
 refuses to be disparted, we seek to act partially ; 
 to sunder ; to appropriate ; for example, to 
 gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the 
 senses from the needs of the character. The 
 ingenuity of man has been dedicated always to 
 the solution of one problem, how to detach 
 the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual 
 bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, 
 the moral fair ; that is, again, to contrive to cut 
 clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it 
 bottomless ; to get a one end, without an other 
 end. The soul says, Eat ; the body would feast. 
 The soul says, The man and woman shall 
 be one flesh and one soul ; the body would 
 join the flesh only. The soul says, Have do- 
 minion over all things to the ends of virtue ; the 
 body would have the power over things to its own 
 ends. 
 
 The soul strives amain to live and work through 
 all things. It would be the only fact. All things 
 shall be added unto it, power, pleasure, knowl- 
 edge, beauty. The particular man aims to be 
 somebody; to set up for himself; to truck and 
 higgle for a private good ; and, in particulars, to 
 ride, that he may ride ; to dress, that he may be 
 dressed; to eat, that he may eat; and to govern 
 that he may be seen. Men seek to be great ; they 
 would have offices, wealth, power and fame. They 
 think that to be great is to get only one side of 
 nature the sweet, without the other side the 
 bitter. 
 
 Steadily is this dividing and detaching counter-
 
 COM PENS A TION. 95 
 
 acted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no pro- 
 jector has had the smallest success. The parted 
 water re-unites behind our hand. Pleasure is 
 taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profit- 
 able things, power out of strong things, the mo- 
 merit we seek to separate them from the whole. 
 We can no more halve things and get the sensual 
 good, by itself, than we can get an inside that 
 shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. 
 "Drive out nature with a fork, she comes running 
 back" 
 
 Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, 
 which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and 
 another brags that he does not know ; brags that 
 they do not touch him ; but the brag is on his 
 lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes 
 them in one part, they attack him in another more 
 vital part. If he has escaped them in form, and 
 in the appearance, it is that he has resisted his life, 
 and fled from himself, and the retribution is so 
 much death. So signal is the failure of all at- 
 tempts to make this separation of the good from 
 the tax, that the experiment would not be tried, 
 since to try it is to be mad, but for the circum- 
 stance, that when the disease began in the will, of 
 rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once 
 infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole 
 in each object, but is able to see the sensual allure- 
 ment of an object, and not see the sensual hurt; 
 he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's 
 tail ; and thinks he can cut off that which he 
 would have, from that which he would not have.
 
 96 ESS Ay in. 
 
 " How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest 
 heavens in silence, O thou only great God, sprink- 
 ling with an unwearied Providence certain penal 
 blindnesses upon such as have unbridled de- 
 sires ! " * 
 
 The human soul is true to these facts in thw 
 painting of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, 
 of conversation. It finds a tongue in literature 
 unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Su- 
 preme Mind ; but having traditionally ascribed to 
 him many base actions, they involuntarily made 
 amends to Reason, by tying up the hands of so 
 bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of 
 England. Prometheus knows one secret, which 
 Jove must bargain for ; Minerva, another. He 
 cannot get his own thunders ; Minerva keeps the 
 key of them. 
 
 " Of all the gods I only know the keys 
 That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
 His thunders sleep." 
 
 A plain confession of the in-working of the All, 
 and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology 
 ends in the same ethics ; and indeed it would 
 seem impossible for any fable to be invented and 
 get any currency which was not moral. Aurora 
 forgot to ask youth for her lover, and so though 
 Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not 
 quite invulnerable ; for Thetis held him by the 
 heel when she dipped him in the Styx, and the 
 sacred waters did not wash that part. Siegfried, 
 
 St. Augustine: Confessions, B. I.
 
 COMPENSA TION. 97 
 
 in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf 
 fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the 
 Dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered is 
 mortal. And so it always is. There is a crack in 
 everything God has made. Always, it would 
 seem, there is this vindictive circumstance stealing 
 in at unawares, even into the wild poesy in which 
 the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, 
 and to shake itself free of the old laws, this 
 back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that 
 the law is fatal ; that in Nature, nothing can be 
 given; all things are sold. 
 
 This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who 
 keeps watch in the Universe, and lets no offence 
 go unchastised. The Furies, they said, are at- 
 tendants on Justice, ancl if the sun in heaven 
 should transgress his path, they would punish him. 
 The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, 
 and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with 
 the wrongs of their owners ; that the belt which 
 Ajax gave Hector, dragged the Trojan hero over 
 the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles ; and 
 the sword which Hector gave Ajax, was that on 
 whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that when 
 the Thasians erected a statue to Theogenes, a vic- 
 tor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by 
 night, and endeavored to throw it down by re- 
 peated blows, until at last he moved it from its 
 pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its 
 fall. 
 
 This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. 
 It came from thought above the will of the writer. 
 7
 
 98 ESSAY III. 
 
 That is the best part of each writer, which has 
 nothing private in it. That is the best part of 
 each, which he does not know, that which flowed 
 out of his constitution, and not from his too active 
 invention ; that which in the study of a single 
 artist you might not easily find, but in the study 
 of many, you would abstract as the spirit of them 
 all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in 
 that early Hellenic world, that I would know. 
 The name and circumstance of Phidias, however 
 convenient for history, embarrasses when we come 
 to the highest criticism. We are to see that which 
 ma*n was tending to do in a given period, and was 
 hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the 
 interfering volitions of^ Phidias, of Dante, of 
 Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the mo- 
 ment wrought. 
 
 Still more striking is the expression of this fact 
 in the proverbs of all nations, which are always 
 the literature of Reason, or the statements of an 
 absolute truth, without qualification. Proverbs, 
 like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanc- 
 tuary of the Intuitions. That which the droning 
 world, chained to appearances, will not allow the 
 realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him 
 to say in proverbs without contradiction. And 
 this law of laws which the pulpit, the senate and 
 the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets 
 and all languages by flights of proverbs, whose 
 teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of 
 birds and flies. 
 
 All things are double, one against another.
 
 COMPENSATION. 99 
 
 Tit for tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a 
 tooth ; blood for blood ; measure for measure ; 
 love for love. Give and it shall be given you. 
 He that watereth shall be watered himself. What 
 will you have ? quoth God ; pay for it and take 
 it. Nothing venture, nothing have. Thou shalt 
 be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, 
 no less. Who doth not work shall not eat. 
 Harm watch, harm catch. Curses always recoil 
 on the head of him who imprecates them. If you 
 put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other 
 end fastens itself around your own. Bad counsel 
 confounds the adviser. The devil is an ass. 
 
 It is thus written, because it is thus in life. 
 Our action is overmastered and characterized 
 above our will by the law of nature. We aim at 
 a petty end quite aside from the public good, but 
 our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism 
 in a line with the poles of the world. 
 
 A man cannot speak but he judges himself. 
 With his will, or against his will, he draws his 
 portrait to the eye of his companions by every 
 word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters 
 it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the 
 other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or, 
 rather, it is a harpoon thrown at the whale, un- 
 winding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and 
 if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it 
 will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to 
 sink the boat. 
 
 You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. 
 " No man had ever a point of pride that was not
 
 100 ESS AY III. 
 
 injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in 
 fashionable life does not see that he excludes him- 
 self from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate 
 it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that 
 he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving 
 to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and 
 ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If 
 you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. 
 The senses would make things of all persons ; of 
 women, of children, of the poor. The vulgar 
 proverb, " I will get it from his purse or get it 
 from his skin," is sound philosophy. 
 
 All infractions of love and equity in our social 
 relations are speedily punished. They are pun- 
 ished by Fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations 
 to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meet- 
 ing him. We meet as water meets water, or a 
 current of air meets .another, with perfect diffu- 
 sion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon 
 as there is any departure from simplicity, and at- 
 tempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good 
 for him, my neighbor feels the wrong ; he shrinks 
 from me as far as I have shrunk from him ; his 
 eyes no longer seek mine ; there is war between 
 us ; there is hate in him and fear in me. 
 
 All the old abuses in society, the great and uni- 
 versal and the petty and particular, all unjust 
 accumulations of property and power, are avenged 
 in the same manner. Fear is an instructor of 
 great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. 
 One thing he alwnys teaches, that there is rotten- 
 ness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and
 
 COMPENSATION. IOI 
 
 though you see not well what he hovers for, there 
 is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our 
 laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. 
 Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered 
 over government and property. That obscene 
 bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great 
 wrongs which must be revised. 
 
 Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
 which instantly follows the suspension of our vol- 
 untary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the 
 emerald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the 
 instinct which leads every generous soul to im- 
 pose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vica- 
 rious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of 
 justice through the heart and mind of man. 
 
 Experienced men of the world know very well 
 that it is always best to pay scot and lot as they 
 go along, and that a man often pays dear for a 
 small frugality. The borrower runs in his own 
 debt. Has a man gained anything who has re- 
 ceived a hundred favors and rendered none ? Has 
 he gained by borrowing, through indolence or 
 cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money ? 
 There arises on the deed the instant acknowledg- 
 ment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on 
 the other ; that is, of superiority and inferiority. 
 The transaction remains in the memory of himself 
 and his neighbor ; and every new transaction 
 alters, according to its nature, their relation to 
 each other. He may soon come to see that he 
 had better have broken his own bones than to 
 have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that " the
 
 102 ESSAY III. 
 
 highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask for 
 it. 
 
 A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts 
 of life, and know that it is always the part of pru- 
 dence to face every claimant, and pay every just 
 demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. 
 Always pay ; for, first or last, you must pay your 
 entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a 
 time between you and justice, but it is only a 
 postponement. You must pay at last your own 
 debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosper- 
 ity which only loads you with more. Benefit is 
 the end of nature. But for every benefit which 
 you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who con- 
 fers the most benefits. He is base, and that is 
 the one base thing in the universe, to receive 
 favors and render none. In the order of nature 
 we cannot render benefits to those from whom we 
 receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we 
 receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed 
 for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of 
 too much good staying in } 7 our hand. It will fast 
 corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly 
 in some sort. 
 
 Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 
 Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. 
 What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, 
 is some application of good sense to a common 
 want. It is best to pay in your land a skilful gar- 
 dener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening ; 
 in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation ; 
 in the house, good sense applied to cooking, sew-
 
 COMPENSATION. 103 
 
 ing, serving ; in your agent, good sense applied to 
 accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your 
 presence, or spread yourself throughout your es- 
 tate. But because of the dual constitution of all 
 things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. 
 The thief steals from himself. The swindler swin- 
 dles himself. For the real price of labor is knowl- 
 edge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are 
 signs. These signs, like paper-money, may be 
 counterfeited or stolen, but that which they rep- 
 resent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be 
 counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor can- 
 not be answered but by real exertions of the mind, 
 and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the 
 defaulter, the gambler cannot extort the benefit, 
 cannot extort the knowledge of material and 
 moral nature which his honest care and pains 
 yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do 
 the thing, and you shall have the power ; but they 
 who do not the thing have not the power. 
 
 Human labor, through all its forms, from the 
 sharpening of a stake to the construction of a city 
 or an epic, is one immense illustration of the per- 
 fect compensation of the universe. Everywhere 
 and always this law is sublime. The absolute 
 balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every- 
 thing has its price ; and if that price is not paid, 
 not that thing but something else is obtained, and 
 that it is impossible to get anything without its 
 price, this doctrine is not less sublime in the 
 columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, 
 in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action
 
 104 ESS Ay in. 
 
 and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the 
 high laws which each man sees ever implicated in 
 those processes with which he is conversant, the 
 stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, 
 which are measured out by his plumb and foot- 
 rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the 
 shop bill as in the history of a state, do recom- 
 mend to him his trade, and though seldom named, 
 exalt his business to his imagination. 
 
 The league between virtue and nature engages 
 all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The 
 beautiful laws and substances of the world perse- 
 cute and whip the traitor. He finds that things 
 are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no 
 den in the wide world to hide a rogue. There is 
 no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, 
 and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, 
 and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the 
 ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of 
 every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. 
 You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot 
 wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the 
 ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Always 
 some damning circumstance transpires. The laws 
 and substances of nature, water, snow, wind, 
 gravitation, become penalties to the thief. 
 
 On the other hand, the law holds with equal 
 sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall 
 be loved. All love is mathematically just, as 
 much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. 
 The good man has absolute good, which like fire 
 turns everything to its own nature, so that you
 
 COMPENSATION. 105 
 
 cannot do him any harm ; but as the royal armies 
 sent against Napoleon, when he approached, cast 
 down their colors and from enemies became 
 friends, so do disasters of all kinds, as sickness, 
 offence, poverty, prove benefactors. 
 
 " Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
 Yet in themselves are nothing." 
 
 The good are befriended even by weakness and 
 defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that 
 was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a 
 defect that was not somewhere made useful to 
 him. The stag in the fable admired his horns 
 and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, 
 his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the 
 thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in 
 his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man 
 thoroughly understands a truth until first he has 
 contended against it, so no man has a thorough 
 acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of 
 men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen 
 the triumph of the other over his own want of 
 the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits 
 him to live in society ? Thereby he is driven to 
 entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of 
 self-help ; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he 
 mends his shell with pearl. 
 
 Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not 
 until we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, 
 awakens the indignation which arms itself with 
 secret forces. A great man is always willing to
 
 106 ESSAY III. 
 
 be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of ad- 
 vantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, 
 tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn 
 something ; he has been put on his wits, on his 
 manhood ; he has gained facts ; learns his igno- 
 rance ; is cured of the insanity of conceit ; has 
 got moderation and real skill. The wise man al- 
 ways throws himself on the side of his assailants. 
 It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his 
 weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off 
 from him, like a dead skin, and when they would 
 triumph, lo I he has passed on invulnerable. 
 Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended 
 in a newspaper. As long as all that is said, is 
 said against me, I feel a certain assurance of suc- 
 cess. But as soon as honied words of praise are 
 spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected 
 before his enemies. In general, every evil to 
 which we do not succumb, is a benefactor. As 
 the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength 
 and valor of the enemy he kills, passes into him- 
 self, so we gain the strength of the temptation we 
 resist. 
 
 The same guards which protect us from dis- 
 aster, defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, 
 from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are 
 not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness 
 in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their 
 life long, under the foolish superstition that they 
 can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man 
 to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a 
 thing to be, and not to be, at the same time.
 
 COMPENSA TION. 1 07 
 
 There is a third silent party to all our bargains. 
 The nature and soul of things takes on itself the 
 guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so 
 that honest service cannot come to loss. If you 
 serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. 
 Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be 
 repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, 
 the better for you ; for compound interest on 
 compound interest is the rate and usage of this 
 exchequer. 
 
 The history of persecution is a history of en- 
 deavors to cheat nature, to make water run up 
 hill, to twist a rope of sand. Jt makes no differ- 
 ence whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant 
 or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily 
 bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its 
 work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to 
 the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity 
 is night. Its actions are insane like its whole 
 constitution. It persecutes a principle ; it would 
 whip a right ; it would tar and feather justice, by 
 inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and 
 persons of those who have these. It resembles 
 the prank of boys who run with fire-engines to 
 put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. 
 The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the 
 wrong doers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. 
 Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every 
 prison a more illustrious abode ; every burned 
 book or house enlightens the world ? every sup- 
 pressed or expunged word reverberates through 
 the earth from side to side. The minds of meo
 
 108 ESSAY III. 
 
 are at last aroused ; reason looks out and justifies 
 her own, and malice finds all her work vain. It 
 is the whipper who is whipped, and the tyrant 
 who is undone. 
 
 Thus do all things preach the indiffereney of 
 circumstances. The man is all. Everything has 
 two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage 
 has its tax. I learn to be content. But the doc- 
 trine of compensation is not the doctrine of in- 
 differeney. The thoughtless say, on hearing these 
 representations, What boots it to do well? there 
 is one event to good and evil ; if I gain any good, 
 I must pay for it; if I lose any good, I gain some 
 other; all actions are indifferent. 
 
 There is a deeper fact in the soul than com- 
 pensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a 
 compensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all 
 this running sea of circumstance, whose waters 
 ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the origi- 
 nal abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not 
 a relation, or a part, but the whole. Being is the 
 vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, 
 and swallowing up all relations, parts and times, 
 within itself. Nature, truth, virtue are the influx 
 from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of 
 the same. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand 
 as the great Night or shade, on which, as a back- 
 ground, the living universe paints itself forth ; but 
 no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot work ; for it 
 is not. It cannot work any good ; it cannot work
 
 COMPENSATION. 109 
 
 any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not 
 to be than to be. 
 
 We feel defrauded of the retribution due to 
 evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice 
 and contumacy, and does not come to a crisis or 
 judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is 
 no stunning confutation of his nonsense before 
 men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the 
 law ? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and 
 the lie with him, he so far deceases from nature. 
 In some manner there will be a demonstration of 
 the wrong to the understanding also ; but should 
 we not see it, this deadly deduction makes square 
 the eternal account. 
 
 Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that 
 the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. 
 There is no penalty to virtue ; no penalty to wis- 
 dom ; they are proper additions of being. In a 
 virtuous action, I properly am ; in a virtuous act, 
 I add to the world ; I plant into deserts conquered 
 from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness re- 
 ceding on the limits of the horizon. There can 
 be no excess to love ; none to knowledge ; none 
 to beauty, when these attributes are considered in 
 the purest sense. The soul refuses all limits. It 
 affirms in man always an Optimism, never a Pes- 
 simism. 
 
 His life is a progress, and not a station. His 
 instinct is trust. Our instinct uses "more " and 
 " less " in application to man, always of the pres- 
 ence of the soul) and not of its absence; the brave 
 man is greater than the coward ; the true, the
 
 110 ESSAY III. 
 
 benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, 
 than the fool and knave. There is, therefore, no 
 tax on the good of virtue ; for, that is the incom- 
 ing of God himself, or absolute existence, without 
 any comparative. All external good has its tax, 
 and if it came without desert or sweat, has no 
 root in me and the next wind will blow it away. 
 But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may 
 be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, 
 by labor which the heart and the head allow. I 
 no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for 
 example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing 
 that it brings with it new responsibility. I do not 
 wish more external goods, neither possessions, 
 nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is 
 apparent ; the tax is certain. But there is no tax 
 on the knowledge that the compensation exists, 
 and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. 
 Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I 
 contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I 
 learn the wisdom of St. Bernard, " Nothing can 
 work me damage except myself; the harm that 
 I sustain, I carry about with me, and never am a 
 real sufferer but by my own fault." 
 
 In the nature of the soul is the compensation 
 for the inequalities of condition. The radical 
 tragecty of nature seems to be the distinction of 
 More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain ; 
 how not feel indignation or malevolence towards 
 More ? Look at those who have less faculty, and 
 one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of 
 it. Almost he shuns their eye ; almost he fears
 
 COM PENS A TION. 1 1 1 
 
 they will upbraid God. What should they do ? It 
 seems a great injustice. But face the facts, and 
 see them nearly, and these mountainous inequali- 
 ties vanish. Love reduces them all, as the sun 
 melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul 
 of all men being one, this bitterness of His and 
 Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and 
 my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and 
 outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love ; I can 
 still receive; and he that loveth, maketh his 
 own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the 
 discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting 
 for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate 
 I so admired and envied, is my own. It is the 
 eternal nature of the soul to appropriate and 
 make all things its own. Jesus and Shakespeare 
 are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer 
 and incorporate them in my own conscious do- 
 main. His virtue, is not that mine ? His wit, 
 if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. 
 
 Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. 
 The changes which break up at short intervals 
 the prosperity of men, are advertisements of a na- 
 ture whose law is growth. Evermore it is the or- 
 der of nature to grow, and every soul is by this in- 
 trinsic necessity quitting its whole system of 
 things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, 
 as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but 
 stony case, because it no longer admits of its 
 growth, and slowly forms a new house. In pro- 
 portion to the vigor of the individual, these revo- 
 lutions are frequent, until in some happier mind
 
 112 ESSAY III. 
 
 they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang 
 very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a 
 transparent fluid membrane through which the 
 form is always seen, and not as in most men an in- 
 durated heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and 
 of no settled character, in which the man is im- 
 prisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and 
 the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of 
 yesterday. And such should be the outward bi- 
 ography of man in time, a putting off of dead cir- 
 cumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment 
 day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, rest- 
 ing not advancing, resisting not co-operating with 
 the divine expansion, this growth comes by 
 shocks. 
 
 We cannot part with our friends. We cannot 
 let our angels go. We do not see that they only 
 go out, that archangels may come in. We are 
 idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the 
 riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omni- 
 presence. We do not believe there is any force in 
 to-day to rival or re-create that beautiful yester- 
 day. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, 
 where once we had bread and shelter and organs, 
 nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and 
 nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, 
 so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in 
 vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, " Up and 
 onward forevermore ! " We cannot stay amid the 
 ruins. Neither will we rely on the New ; and so 
 we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those mon- 
 s.ters who look backwards.
 
 COMPENSA TION. 1 1 3 
 
 And yet the compensations of calamity are 
 made apparent to the understanding also, after 
 long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a 
 cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of 
 friends seems at the moment unpaid loss, and un- 
 payable. But the sure years reveal the deep reme- 
 dial force that underlies all facts. The death of 
 a dear friend, wife, brother^ lover, which seemed 
 nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes 
 the aspect of a guide or genius ; for it commonly 
 operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates 
 an epoch of infancy or of youth which was wait- 
 ing to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, 
 or a household, or style of living, and allows the 
 formation of new ones more friendly to the growth 
 of character. It permits or constrains the forma- 
 tion of new acquaintances, and the reception of 
 new influences that prove of the first importance 
 to the next years ; and the man or woman who 
 would have remained a sunny garden flower, with 
 no room for its roots and too much sunshine for 
 its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect 
 of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, 
 yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of 
 men.
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS
 
 ESSAY IY. 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 
 
 WHEN the act of reflection takes place in the 
 mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of 
 thought, we discover that our life is embosomed 
 in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume 
 pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only 
 things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and 
 terrible are comely, as they take their place in the 
 pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed 
 at the water-side, the old house, the foolish per- 
 son, however neglected in the passing, have a 
 grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain 
 in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to 
 the house. The soul will not know either deform- 
 ity or pain. If in the hours of clear reason we 
 should speak the severest truth, we should say, 
 that we had never made a sacrifice. In these 
 hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can 
 be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all 
 pain is particular: the universe remains to the 
 heart unhurt. Distress never, trifles never abate 
 our trust. No man ever stated his griefs as 
 lightly as he might. Allow for exaggeration in 
 
 (117)
 
 Il8 ESSAY IV, 
 
 the most patient and sorely ridden hack that ever 
 was driven. For it is only the finite that has 
 wrought and suffered ; the infinite lies stretched 
 in smiling repose. 
 
 The intellectual life may be kept clean and 
 healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and 
 not import into his mind difficulties which are 
 none of his. No man need be perplexed in his 
 speculations. Let him do and say what strictly 
 belongs to him, and though very ignorant of 
 books, his nature shall not yield him any intel- 
 lectual obstructions and doubts. Our young peo- 
 ple are diseased with the theological problems of 
 original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the 
 like. These never presented a practical difficulty 
 to any man, never darkened across any man's 
 road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. 
 These are the soul's mumps and measles, and 
 whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught 
 them, cannot describe their -health or prescribe the 
 cure. A simple mind will not know these ene- 
 mies. It is quite another thing that he should be 
 able to give account of his faith, and expound to 
 another the theory of his self-union and freedom. 
 This requires rare gifts. Yet without this self- 
 knowledge, there may be a sylvan strength and 
 integrity in that which he is. " A few strong in- 
 stincts and a few plain rules " suffice us. 
 
 My will never gave the images in my mind the 
 rank they now take. The regular course of stud- 
 ies, the years of academical and professional edu- 
 cation have not yielded me better facts than some
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 119 
 
 idle books under the bench at the Latin school. 
 What we do not call education is more precious 
 than that which we call so. We form no guess at 
 the time of receiving a thought, of its compara- 
 tive value. And education often wastes its effort 
 in attempts to thwart and baulk this natural mag- 
 netism which with sure discrimination selects its 
 own. 
 
 In like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by 
 any interference of our will. People represent 
 virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves great 
 airs upon their attainments, and the question is- 
 everywhere vexed, when a noble nature is com- 
 mended, Whether the man is not better who 
 strives with temptation? But there is no merit 
 in the matter. Either God is there, or he is not 
 there. We love characters in proportion as they 
 are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man 
 thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we 
 like him. Timoleon's victories are the best vic- 
 tories ; which ran and flowed like Homer's verses, 
 Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose acts- 
 are all regal, graceful and pleasant as roses, we 
 must thank God that such things can be and are, 
 and not turn sourly on the angel, and say, " Crump 
 is a better man with his grunting resistance to all 
 his native devils." 
 
 Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of 
 nature over will in all practical life. There is less 
 intention in history than we ascribe to it. We 
 impute deep-laid, far-sighted plans to Csesar and 
 Napoleon ; but the best of their power was in
 
 120 ESSAY IV. 
 
 nature, not in them. Men of an extraordinary 
 success, in their honest moments, have always 
 sung, "Not unto us, not unto us." According to 
 the faith of their times, they have built altars to 
 Fortune or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their 
 success lay in their parallelism to the course of 
 thought, which found in them an unobstructed 
 channel ; and the wonders of which they were 
 the visible conductors, seemed to the eye their 
 deed. Did the wires generate the galvanism ? It 
 is even true that there was less in them on which 
 they could reflect, than in another ; as the virtue 
 of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow. That which 
 externally seemed will and immovableness, was 
 willingness and self-annihilation. Could Shakes- 
 peare give a theory of Shakespeare ? Could ever 
 a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey 
 to others any insight into his methods? If he 
 could communicate that secret, instantly it would 
 lose all its exaggerated value, blending with the 
 day-light and the vital energy, the power to stand 
 and to go. 
 
 The lesson is forcibly taught by these observa- 
 tions that our life might be much easier and sim- 
 pler than we make it, that the world might be a 
 happier place than it is, that there is no need of 
 struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wring- 
 ing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth ; 
 that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere 
 with the optimism of nature, for, whenever we 
 get this vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser 
 mind in the present, we are able to discern that
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 121 
 
 we are begirt with spiritual laws which execute 
 themselves. 
 
 The face of external nature teaches the same 
 lesson with calm superiority. Nature will not 
 have us fret and fume. She does not like our 
 benevolence or our learning, much better than she 
 likes our frauds and wars. When we come out 
 of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition con- 
 vention, or the Temperance meeting, or the Tran- 
 scendental club, into the fields and woods, she 
 says to us, " So hot ? my little sir." 
 
 We are full of mechanical actions. We must 
 needs intermeddle, and have things in our own 
 way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society 
 are odious. Love should make joy; but our 
 benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday schools 
 and churches and pauper-societies are yokes to 
 the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. 
 There are natural ways of arriving at the same 
 ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why 
 should all virtue work in one and the same wa}'? 
 Why should all give dollars ? It is very incon- 
 venient to us country folk, and we do not think 
 any good will come of it. We have not dollars. 
 Merchants have. Let them give them. Farmers 
 will give corn. Poets will sing. Women will 
 sew. Laborers will lend a hand. The children 
 will bring flowers. And why drag this dead 
 weight of a Sunday school over the whole Chris- 
 tendom ? It is natural and beautiful that child- 
 hood should inquire, and maturity should teach ; 
 but it is time enough to answer questions, when
 
 122 ESSAY VI, 
 
 they are asked. Do not shut up the young people 
 against their will in a pew, and force the children 
 to ask them questions for an hour against their 
 will. 
 
 If we look wider, things are all alike ; laws, and 
 letters, and creeds and modes of living, seem a 
 travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered by 
 ponderous machinery which resembles the endless 
 aqueducts which the Romans built over hill and 
 dale, and which are superseded by the discovery 
 of the law that water rises to the level of its 
 source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble 
 Tartar can leap over. It is a standing army, not 
 so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly 
 appointed Empire, quite superfluous when Town- 
 meetings are found to answer just as well. 
 
 Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always 
 works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it 
 falls. When the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. 
 The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The 
 walking of man and all animals is a falling for- 
 ward. All our manual labor and words of strength, 
 as prying, splitting, digging, rowing, and so forth, 
 are done by dint of continual falling, and the 
 globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall forever 
 and ever. 
 
 The simplicity of the universe is very different 
 from the simplicity of a machine. He who sees 
 moral nature out and out, and thoroughly knows 
 how knowledge is acquired and character formed, 
 is a pendant. The simplicity of nature is not that 
 which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible.
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 123 
 
 The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge 
 of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the 
 perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an 
 immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature is 
 felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations 
 with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the 
 world for sects and schools, for erudition and 
 piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One 
 sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every 
 man sees that he is that middle point whereof 
 everything may be affirmed and denied with equal 
 reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, 
 he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels 
 what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin- 
 pedlar. There is no permanent wise man, except 
 in the figment of the stoics. We side with the 
 hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and 
 the robber ; but we have been ourselves that cow- 
 ard and robber, and shall be again, not in the low 
 circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs 
 possible to the soul. 
 
 A little consideration of what takes place around 
 us every day, would show us that a higher law 
 than that of our will, regulates events ; that our 
 painful labors are very unnecessary, and alto- 
 gether fruitless ; that only in our easy, simple, 
 spontaneous action are we strong, and by content- 
 ing ourselves with obedience we become divine. 
 Belief and love, a believing love will relieve us 
 of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God ex- 
 ists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and 
 over the will of every man, so that none of us can
 
 124 ESSAY IV. 
 
 wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong 
 enchantment into nature, that we prosper when 
 we accept its advice, and when we struggle to 
 wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our 
 sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole 
 course of things goes to teach us faith. We need 
 only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and 
 by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. 
 Why need you choose so painfully your place, and 
 occupation, and associates, and modes of action, 
 and of entertainment ? Certainly there is a 
 
 Possible right for you that precludes the need of 
 alance and wilful election. For you there is a 
 reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place 
 yourself in the middle of the stream of power and 
 wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself 
 in the full centre of that flood, then you are without 
 effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect 
 contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the 
 wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of 
 right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not be mar- 
 plots with our miserable interferences, the work, 
 the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men, 
 would go on far better than now, and the Heaven 
 predicted from the beginning of the world, and 
 still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would 
 organize itself, as do now the rose and the air and 
 the sun. 
 
 I say, do not choose ; but that is a figure of 
 speech by which I would distinguish what is com- 
 monly called choice among men, and which is a 
 partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 125 
 
 the appetites, and not a whole act of the man. 
 But that which I call right or goodness, is the 
 choice of my constitution ; and that which I call 
 heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or 
 circumstance desirable to my constitution ; and 
 the action which I in all my years tend to do, is 
 the work for my faculties. We must hold a man 
 amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft 
 or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for 
 his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. 
 What business has he with an evil trade? Has he 
 not a calling in his character ? 
 
 Each man has his own vocation. The talent is 
 the call. There is one direction in which all space 
 is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting 
 him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship 
 in a river ; he runs against obstructions on every 
 side but one ; on that side, all obstruction is taken 
 away, and he sweeps serenely over God's depths 
 into an infinite sea. This talent and this call de- 
 pend on his organization, or the mode in which 
 the general soul incarnates itself in him. He in- 
 clines to do something which is easy to him, and 
 good when it is done, but which no other man can 
 do. He has no rival. For the more truly he con- 
 sults his own powers, the more difference will his 
 work exhibit from the work of any other. When 
 he is true and faithful, his ambition is exactly pro- 
 portioned to his powers. The height of the pin- 
 nacle is determined by the breadth of the base. 
 Every man has this call of the power to do some- 
 what unique, and no man has any other call. The
 
 126 ESSAY IV. 
 
 pretence that he has another call, a summons by 
 name and personal election and outward "signs 
 that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll 
 of common men," is fanaticism, and betrays ob- 
 tuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all 
 the individuals, and no respect of persons therein. 
 By doing his work, he makes the need felt 
 which he can supply. He creates the taste by 
 which he is enjoyed. He provokes the wants to 
 which he can minister. By doing his own work, 
 he unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public 
 speaking, that it has not abandonment. Some- 
 where, not only every orator but every man should 
 let out all the length of all the reins ; should find 
 or make a frank and hearty expression of what 
 force and meaning is in him. The common ex- 
 perience is, that the man fits himself as well as he 
 can to the customary details of that work or trade 
 he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. 
 Then he is a part of the machine he moves ; the 
 man is lost. Until he can manage to communicate 
 himself to others in his full stature and proportion 
 as a wise and good man, he does not yet find his 
 vocation. He must find in that an outlet for his 
 character, so that he may justify himself to their 
 ej^es for doing what he does. If the labor is triv- 
 ial, let him by his thinking and character, make it 
 liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, what- 
 ever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let 
 him communicate, or men will never know and 
 honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take 
 the meanness and formality of that thing you do,
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 127 
 
 instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle 
 of your character and aims. 
 
 We like such actions as have already long had 
 the praise of men, and do not perceive that any' 
 thing man can do, may be divinely done. We 
 think greatness entailed or organized in some 
 places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, 
 and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture 
 from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp-, 
 and a nimbled-fingered lad out of shreds of papei 
 with his scissors ; and Landseer out of swine, and 
 the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company 
 in which he was hidden. What we call obscure 
 condition or vulgar society, is that condition and 
 society whose poetry is not yet written, but which 
 you shall presently make as enviable and re- 
 nowned as any. Accept your genius, and say 
 what you think. In our estimates, let us take a 
 lesson from kings. The parts of hospitalit}', the 
 connection of families, the impressiveness of 
 death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes 
 its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To 
 make habitually a new estimate, that is eleva- 
 tion. 
 
 What a man does, that he has. What has he to 
 do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. 
 Let him regard no good as solid, but that which is 
 in his nature, and which must grow out of him as 
 long as he exists. The goods of fortune may 
 come and go like summer leaves ; let him play 
 with them, and scatter them on every wind as the 
 momentary signs of his infinite productiveness.
 
 128 ESSAY IV. 
 
 He may have his own. A man's genius, the 
 quality that differences him from every other, the 
 susceptibility to one class of influences, the selec- 
 tion of what is fit for him, the rejection of what 
 is unfit, determines for him the character of the 
 universe. As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a 
 man chooseth, so is he and so is nature. A man 
 is a method, a progressive arrangement ; a select- 
 ing principle, gathering his like to him, wherever 
 he goes. He takes only his own, out of the mul- 
 tiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He 
 is like one of those booms which are set out from 
 the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the 
 loadstone amongst splinters of steel. 
 
 Those facts, words, persons which dwell in his 
 memory without his being able to say why, re- 
 main, because they have a relation to him not less 
 real for being as* yet unapprehended. They are 
 symbols of value to him, as they can interpret 
 parts of his consciousness which he would vainly 
 seek words for in the conventional images of 
 books and other minds. What attracts my atten- 
 tion shall have it, as I will go to the man who 
 knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as 
 worthy, go by it, to whom I give no regard. It 
 is enough that these particulars speak to me. A 
 few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, 
 face, a few incidents have an emphasis in your 
 memory out of all proportion to their apparent 
 significance, if you measure them by the ordinary 
 standards. They relate to your gift. Let them 
 have their weight, and do not reject them and
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 12Q 
 
 cast about for illustration and facts more usual in 
 literature. Respect them, for they have their 
 origin in deepest nature. What your heart thinks 
 great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always 
 right. 
 
 Over all things that are agreeable to his nature 
 and genius, the man has the highest right. Every- 
 where he may take what belongs to his spiritual 
 estate, nor can he take anything else, though all 
 doors were open, nor can all the force of men 
 hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to 
 attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right 
 to know it. It will tell itself. That mood into 
 which a friend can bring us, is his dominion over 
 us. To the thoughts of that state of mind, he has 
 a right. All the secrets of that state of mind, he 
 can compel. This is a law which statesmen use 
 in practice. All the terrors of the French Re- 
 public, which held Austria in awe, were unable to 
 command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to 
 Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, 
 with the morals, manners and name of that 
 interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send 
 to the old aristocracy of Europe, men of the same 
 connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of 
 free masonry. M. Narbonne, in less than a fort- 
 night, penetrated all the secrets of the Imperial 
 Cabinet. 
 
 A mutual understanding is ever the firmest 
 chain. Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to 
 be understood. Yet a man may come to find that 
 the strongest of defences and of ties, that he has
 
 1 30 ESSA Y IV. 
 
 been understood ; and he who has received an 
 opinion, may come to find it the most incon- 
 venient of bonds. 
 
 If a teacher have any opinion which lie wishes 
 to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoc- 
 trinated into that as into any which he publishes. 
 If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils 
 and angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it only 
 into this or that ; it will find its own level in all. 
 Men feel and act the consequences of your doc- 
 trine, without being able to show how they 
 follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and a good 
 mathematician will find out the whole figure. 
 We are always reasoning from the seen to the un- 
 seen. Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists 
 between wise men of remote ages. A man cannot 
 bury his meanings so deep in his book, but time 
 and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a 
 secret doctrine, had he ? What secret can he con- 
 ceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of 
 Kant ? Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, 
 " Thej r are published and not published." 
 
 No man can learn what he has not preparation 
 for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. 
 A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a 
 carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser, the 
 secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an 
 estate. God screens us evermore from premature 
 ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see 
 things that stare us in the face, until the hour 
 arrives when the mind is ripened, then we be-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 131 
 
 hold them, and the time when we saw them not, 
 is like a dream. 
 
 Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and 
 worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is 
 indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its 
 pride. " Earth fills her lap with splendors " not 
 her own. The vale of Tempe, Tivoli, and Rome 
 are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as 
 good earth and water in a thousand places, yet 
 how unaffecting ! 
 
 People are not the better for the sun and moon, 
 the horizon and the trees ; as it is not observed 
 that the keepers of Roman galleries, or the valets 
 of painters have any elevation of thought, or that 
 librarians are wiser men than others. There are 
 graces in the demeanor of a polished and noble 
 person, which are lost upon the eye of a churl. 
 These are like the stars whose light has not yet 
 reached us. 
 
 He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are 
 the sequel of our waking knowledge. The vis- 
 ions of the night always bear some proportion to 
 the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are only 
 exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our 
 own evil affections embodied in bad physiogno- 
 mies. On the Alps, the traveller sometimes sees 
 his own shadow magnified to a giant, so that 
 every gesture of his hand is terrific. " My chil- 
 dren," said an old man to his boys scared by a 
 figure in the dark entry, "my children you will 
 never see anything worse than yourselves." As 
 in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of
 
 132 ESSAY IV. 
 
 the world, every man sees himself in colossal, 
 without knowing that it is himself that he sees. 
 The good which he sees, compared to the evil 
 which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. 
 Every quality of his mind is magnified in some 
 one acquaintance, and every emotion of his heart 
 in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, 
 which counts five, east, west, north, or south ; or, 
 an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And 
 why not? He cleaves to one person, and avoids 
 another, according to their likeness or unlikeness 
 to himself, truly seeking himself in his associates, 
 and moreover in his trade, and habits, and ges- 
 tures, and meats, and drinks ; and comes at last 
 to be faithfully represented by every view you 
 take of his circumstances. 
 
 He may read what he writeth. What can we 
 see or acquire, but what we are ? You have seen 
 a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that author 
 is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take 
 the book into your two hands, and read your eyes 
 out ; you will never find what I find. If any 
 ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the 
 wisdom or delight he gets, he is as secure now the 
 book is Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the 
 Pelews tongue. It is with a good book as it is 
 with good company. Introduce a base person 
 among gentlemen ; it is all to no purpose ; he is 
 not their fellow. Every society protects itself. 
 The company is perfectly pafe, and he is not one 
 of them, though his body is in the room. 
 
 What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 133 
 
 mind, which adjust the relation of all persons to 
 each other, by the mathematical measure of their 
 havings and beings? Gertrude is enamored of 
 Guy ; how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his 
 mien and manners ! to live with him were life in- 
 deed ; and no purchase is too great ; and heaven 
 and earth are moved to that end. Well, Gert- 
 rude has Guy: but what now avails how high, 
 how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and man- 
 ners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, in 
 the theatre, and in the billiard-room, and she has 
 no aims, no conversation that can enchant her 
 graceful lord ? 
 
 He shall have his own society. We can love 
 nothing but nature. The most wonderful talents, 
 the most meritorious exertions really avail very 
 little with us ; but nearness or likeness of nature 
 how beautiful is the ease of its victorjr ! Per- 
 sons approach us famous for their beautyT'fbr 
 their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for 
 their charms and gifts : they dedicate their whole 
 skill to the hour and the company ; with very im- 
 perfect result. To be sure, it would be very un- 
 grateful in us riot to praise them very loudly. 
 Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, 
 a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly 
 and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were 
 the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if 
 some one was gone, instead of another having 
 come ; we are utterly relieved and refreshed ; it is 
 a sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think, in 
 our days of sin, that we must court friends by
 
 134 ESSAY IV. 
 
 compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, 
 its breeding and its estimates. But later, if we 
 are so happy, we learn that only that soul can be 
 my friend, which I encounter on the line of my 
 own march, that soul to which I do not decline, 
 and which does not decline to me, but, native of 
 the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all 
 my experience. The scholar and the prophet for- 
 get themselves, and ape the customs and costumes 
 of the man of the world, to deserve the smile of 
 beauty. He is a fool and follows some giddy 
 girl, and not with religious, ennobling passion, a 
 woman with all that is serene, oracular and beau- 
 tiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love shall 
 follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished 
 than the neglect of the affinities by which alone 
 society should be formed, and the insane levity of 
 choosing associates by others' eyes. 
 
 He may set his own rate. It is an universal 
 maxim worthy of all acceptation, that a man may 
 have that allowance he takes. Take the place 
 and attitude to which you see your unquestion- 
 able right, and all men acquiesce. The world 
 must be just. It always leaves every man with 
 profound unconcern to set his own rate. Hero or 
 driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will 
 certainly accept your own measure of your doing 
 and being, whether you sneak about and deny 
 your own name, or, whether you see your work 
 produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, 
 one with the revolution of the stars. 
 
 The same reality pervades all teaching. The
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 135 
 
 man may teach by doing, and not otherwise. If 
 he can communicate himself, he can teach, but not 
 by words. He teaches who gives, and he learns 
 who receives. There is no teaching until the 
 pupil is brought into the same state or principle 
 in which you are ; a transfusion takes place : he is 
 you, and you are he ; then is a teaching, and by 
 no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever 
 quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run 
 out of one ear as they ran in at the other. We 
 see it advertised that Mr. Grand will deliver an 
 oration on the Fourth of July, and Mr. Hand be- 
 fore the Mechanics' Association, and we do not 
 go thither, because we know that these gentlemen 
 will not communicate their own character and 
 being to the audience. If we had reason to expect 
 such a communication, we should go through all 
 inconvenience and opposition. The sick would 
 be carried in litters. But a public oration is an 
 escapade, a non committal, an apology, a gag, and 
 not a communication, not a speech, not a man. 
 
 A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual 
 works. We have yet to learn that the thing 
 uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It 
 must affirm itself, or no forms of grammar and no 
 plausibility can give it evidence, and no array of 
 arguments. The sentence must also contain its 
 own apology for being spoken. 
 
 The effect of any writing on the public mind is 
 mathematically measurable by its depth of thought. 
 How much water does it draw ? If it awaken you 
 to think ; if it lift you from your feet with the
 
 1 36 ESSA Y IV. 
 
 great voice of eloquence ; then the effect is to be 
 wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men ; 
 if the pages instruct you not, they will die like 
 flies in the hour. The way to speak and write 
 what shall not go out of fashion, is to speak and 
 write sincerely. The argument which has not 
 power to reach my own practice, I may well 
 doubt, will fail to reach yours. But take Sid- 
 ney's maxim : " Look in thy heart, and write." 
 He that writes to himself, writes to an eternal 
 public. That statement only is fit to be made 
 public which you have come at in attempting to 
 satisfy your own curiosity. The writer who takes 
 his subject from his ear and not from his heart, 
 should know that he has lost as much as he 
 seems to have gained, and when the empty book 
 has gathered all its praise, and half the people say 
 " what poetry ! what genius ! " it still needs fuel 
 to make fire. That only profits which is profit- 
 able. Life alone can impart life ; and though we 
 should burst, we can only be valued as we make 
 ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary 
 reputation. They who make up the final verdict 
 upon every book, are not the partial and noisy 
 readers of the hour when it appears ; but a court 
 as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be 
 entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon 
 every man's title to fame. Only those books come 
 down which deserve to last. All the gilt edges 
 and vellum and morocco, all the presentation- 
 copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book 
 in circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 137 
 
 go with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Authors to 
 its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may 
 endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand 
 forever. There are not in the world at any one 
 time more than a dozen persons who read and un- 
 derstand Plato : never enough to pay for an edi- 
 tion of his works ; yet to every generation these 
 come duly down, for the sake of those few per- 
 sons, as if God brought them in his hand. " No 
 book," said Bentley, " was ever written down by 
 any but itself." The permanence of all books is 
 fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their 
 own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance 
 of their contents to the constant mind of man. 
 " Do not trouble yourself too much about the 
 light on your statue," said Michael Angelo to the 
 young sculptor ; "the light of the public square 
 will test its value." 
 
 In like manner the effect of every action is 
 measured by the depth of the sentiment from 
 which it proceeds. The great man knew not that 
 he was great. It took a century or two, for that 
 fact to appear. What he did, he did because he 
 must : he used no election : it was the most nat- 
 ural thing in the world, and grew out of the cir- 
 cumstances of the moment. But now, everything 
 he did, even to the lifting of his finger, or the eat- 
 ing of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called 
 an institution. 
 
 These are the demonstrations in a few particu- 
 lars of the genius of nature ; they show the direc- 
 tion of the stream. But the stream is blood;
 
 138 ESSAY IV. 
 
 every drop is alive. Truth has not single victo- 
 ries ; all things are its organs, not only dust and 
 stones, but errors and lies. The laws of disease, 
 physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of 
 health. Our philosophy is affirmative, and readily 
 accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every 
 shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity, 
 every fact in nature is constrained to offer its tes- 
 timony. 
 
 Human character does evermore publish itself. 
 It will not be concealed. It hates darkness, it 
 rushes into light. The most fugitive deed and 
 word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated 
 purpose, expresses character. If you act, you 
 show character , if you sit still, you show it ; if 
 you sleep, you show it. You think because you 
 have spoken nothing when others spoke, and have 
 given no opinion on the times, on the church, on 
 slavery, on the college, on parties and persons, 
 that your verdict is still expected with curiosity as 
 a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise ; your silence 
 answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, 
 and your fellow-men have learned that you cannot 
 help them ; for, oracles speak. Doth not wisdom 
 cry, and understanding put forth her voice ? 
 
 Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers 
 of dissimulation. Truth tyrannizes over the un- 
 willing members of the body. Faces never lie, it 
 is said. No man need be deceived, who will study 
 the changes of expression. When a man speaks 
 the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear 
 as the heavens. When he has base ends, and
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 139 
 
 speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes 
 asquint. 
 
 I have heard an experienced counsellor say, that 
 he feared never the effect upon a jury, of a lawyer 
 who does not believe in his heart that his client 
 ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe 
 it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all 
 his protestations, and will become their unbelief. 
 This is that law whereby a work of art, of what- 
 ever kind, sets us in the same state of mind 
 wherein the artist was, when he made it. That 
 which we do not believe, we cannot adequately 
 say, though we may repeat the words never so 
 often. It was this conviction which Swedenborg 
 expressed, when he described a group of persons 
 in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to ar- 
 ticulate a proposition which they did not believe : 
 but they could not, though they twisted and folded 
 their lips even to indignation. 
 
 A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle 
 is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate 
 of us, and idle is all fear of remaining unknown. 
 If a man know that he can do anything, that he 
 can do it better than any one else, he has a 
 pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by 
 all persons. The world is full of judgment days, 
 and into every assembly that a man enters, in 
 every action he attempts, he is gauged and 
 stamped. In every troop of boys that whoop and 
 run in each yard and square, a new comer is as 
 well and accurately weighed in the balance, in the 
 course of a few days, and stamped with his right
 
 140 ESS A Y IV. 
 
 number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of 
 his strength, speed, and temper. A stranger 
 comes from a distant school, with better dress, 
 with trinkets in his pockets, with airs, and pre- 
 tension ; an old boy sniffs thereat, and says to 
 himself, " It's of no use ; we shall find him out 
 to-morrow." "What hath he done?" is the divine 
 question which searches men, and transpierces 
 every false reputation. A fop may sit in any 
 chair of the world, nor be distinguished for his 
 hour from Homer and Washington ; but there 
 can never be any doubt concerning the respect- 
 ive ability of human beings, when we seek the 
 truth. Pretension may sit still, .but cannot act. 
 Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. 
 Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back 
 Xerxes, nor Christianized the world, nor abolished 
 slavery. 
 
 Always as much virtue as there is, so much ap- 
 pears ; as much goodness as there is, so much 
 reverence it commands. All the devils respect 
 virtue. The high, the generous, the self-devoted 
 sect will always instruct and command mankind. 
 Never a sincere word was utterly lost. Never a 
 magnanimity fell to the ground. Always the 
 heart of man greets and accepts it unexpectedly. 
 A man passes for that he is Avorth. What he is, 
 engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his 
 fortunes, in letters of light which all men may 
 read but himself. Concealment avails him noth- 
 ing; boasting, nothing. There is confession in 
 the glances of our eyes ; in our smiles ; in saluta-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 141 
 
 tions ; and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs 
 him, mars all his good impression. Men know 
 not why they do not trust him ; but they do not 
 trust him. His vice glasses his eye, demeans his 
 cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast 
 on the back of the head, and writes O fool ! fool ! 
 on the forehead of a king. 
 
 If you would not be known to do anything, 
 never do it. A man may play the fool in the 
 drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall 
 seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, but he 
 cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken com- 
 plexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the 
 want of due knowledge, all blab. Can a cook, 
 a Chiffinch, an lachimo be mistaken for Zeno or 
 Paul ? Confucius exclaimed, " How can a man 
 be concealed ! How can a man be concealed ! " 
 
 On the other hand, the hero fears not, that if 
 he withhold the avowal of a just and brave act, 
 it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows 
 it, himself, and is pledged by it to sweetness of 
 peace, and to nobleness of aim, which will prove 
 in the end a better proclamation of it than the 
 relating of the incident. Virtue is the adherence 
 in action to the nature of things, and the na- 
 ture of things makes it prevalent. It consists in 
 a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and 
 with sublime propriety God is descr.bed as saying, 
 I AM. 
 
 The lesson which all these observations convey, 
 is, Be and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us 
 take our bloated nothingness out of the path of
 
 142 ESSAY IV, 
 
 the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom 
 of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's 
 power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and 
 great. 
 
 If you visit your friend, why need you apolo- 
 gize for not having visited him, and waste his time 
 and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let 
 him feel that the highest love has come to see 
 him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you 
 torment yourself and friend by secret self-re- 
 proaches that you have not assisted him or com- 
 plimented him with gifts and salutations hereto- 
 fore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with 
 real light, and not with the borrowed reflection 
 of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; 
 they bow the head, they excuse themselves with 
 prolix reasons, they accumulate appearances, be- 
 cause the substance is not. 
 
 We are full of these superstitions of sense, the 
 worship of magnitude. God loveth not size ; 
 whale and minnow are of like dimension. But 
 we call the poet inactive, because he is not a 
 president, a merchant, or a porter. We adore an 
 institution, and do not see that it is founded on a 
 thought which we have. But real action is in 
 silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in 
 the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our 
 marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the 
 like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we 
 walk; in a thought which revises our entire man- 
 ner of life, and says, " Thus hast thou done, but it 
 were better thus." And all our after years, like
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 143 
 
 menials, do serve and wait on this, and, according 
 to their ability, do execute its will. This revisal 
 or correction is a constant force, which, as a ten- 
 dency, reaches through our lifetime. The object 
 of the man, the aim of these moments is to make 
 daylight shine through him, to suffer the la\v to 
 traverse his whole being without obstruction, so 
 that, on what point soever of his doing your eye 
 falls, it shall report truly of his character, whether 
 it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his 
 society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now 
 he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and 
 the ray does not traverse ; there are no thorough 
 lights ; but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, 
 detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not 
 yet at one. 
 
 Why should we make it a point with our false 
 modesty to disparage that man we are, and that 
 form of being assigned to us? A good man is 
 contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I 
 do not wish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more 
 just to love the world of this hour, than the 
 world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, 
 excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, " lie 
 acted, and thou sittest still." I see action to be 
 good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also 
 good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take 
 him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, 
 if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and 
 affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. 
 Why should we be busy-bodies and superservice- 
 able ? Action and inaction are alike to the true.
 
 144 ESSAY IV. 
 
 One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, 
 and one for the sleeper of a bridge ; the virtue of 
 the wood is apparent in both. 
 
 I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that 
 I am here, certainly shows me that the soul had 
 need of an organ here. Shall I not assume the 
 post? Shall 1 skulk arid dodge and duck with 
 my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty, and 
 imagine my being here impertinent? less perti- 
 nent than Epaminondas or Homer being there? 
 and that the soul did not know its own needs? 
 Besides, without any reasoning on the matter, I 
 have no discontent. The good soul nourishes me 
 alway, unlocks new magazines of power and en- 
 joyment to me every day. I will not meanly de- 
 cline the immensity of good, because I have 
 heard that it has come to others in another shape. 
 
 Besides, why should we be cowed by the name 
 of Action ? 'Tis a trick of the senses, no more. 
 We know that the ancestor of every action is a 
 thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself 
 to be anything, unless it have an outside badge, 
 some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvin- 
 istic prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or 
 a great donation, or a high office, or, anyhow, 
 some wild contrasting action to testify that it is 
 somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and 
 sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act. 
 
 Let us, if we must have great actions, make 
 our own so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, 
 and the least admits of being inflated with the 
 celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon.
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 145 
 
 Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let me do my 
 duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes 
 and philosophy of Greek and Italian history, be- 
 fore I have washed my own face, or justified my- 
 self to my own benefactors? How dare I read 
 Washington's campaigns, when I have not an- 
 swered the letters of my own correspondents,? Is 
 not that a just objection to much of our reading? 
 It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to 
 gaze after our neighbors. It is peeping. Byron 
 says of Jack Bunting, 
 
 " He knew not what to say, and so, he swore." 
 
 I may say it of our preposterous use of books: 
 He knew not what to do, and so, lie read. I can 
 think of nothing to fill my time with, and so, 
 without any constraint, I find the Life of Brant. 
 It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to 
 Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General 
 Washington. My time should be as good as their 
 time ; my world, my facts, all my net of relations 
 as good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather let 
 nie do my work so well that other idlers, if they 
 choose, may compare my texture with the texture 
 of these and find it identical with the best. 
 
 This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul 
 and Pericles, this under-estimate of our own, 
 comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical 
 nature. Bonaparte knew but one Merit, and re- 
 warded in one and the same way the good soldier, 
 the good astronomer, the good poet, the good 
 player. Thus he signified his sense of a great 
 
 10
 
 146 ESSAY IV. 
 
 fact. The poet uses the names of Caesar, of 
 Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius ; the painter 
 uses the conventional story of the Virgin 
 Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not, therefore, 
 defer to the nature of these accidental men, of 
 these stock heroes. If the poet write a true 
 drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player of 
 Caesar ; then the self-same strain of thought, emo- 
 tion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, 
 mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self- 
 sufficing, dauntless, which on the waves of its love 
 and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid and 
 precious in the world, palaces, gardens, money, 
 navies, kingdoms, marking its own incomparable 
 worth by the slight it casts on these gauds of men, 
 these all are his and by the power of these he 
 rouses the nations. But the great names cannot 
 stead him, if he have no life himself. Let a man 
 believe in God, and not in names and places and 
 persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some 
 woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some 
 Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep 
 chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day- 
 beams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and 
 scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful 
 actions, the top and radiance of human life, and 
 all people will get mops and brooms ; until, lo, 
 suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in 
 some other form, and done some other deed, and 
 that is now the flower and head of all living 
 nature. 
 
 We are the photometers, we the irritable gold-
 
 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 147 
 
 leaf and tin-foil that measure the accumulations of 
 the subtle element. We know the authentic 
 effects of the true fire through every one of its 
 million disguises.
 
 LOVE.
 
 ESSAY Y. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 EVERY soul is a celestial Venus to every other 
 soul. The heart has its sabbaths and jubilees, in 
 which the world appears as a hymeneal feast, and 
 all natural sounds and the circle of the seasons 
 are erotic odes and dances. Love is omnipresent 
 in nature as motive and reward. Love is our 
 highest word, and the synonym of God. Every 
 promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments ; 
 each of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, 
 uncontainable, flowing, fore-looking, in the first 
 sentiment of kindness anticipates already a be- 
 nevolence which shall lose all particular regards 
 in its general light. The introduction to this 
 felicity is in a private and tender relation of one 
 to one, which is the enchantment of human life ; 
 which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, 
 seizes on man at one period, and works a revolu- 
 tion in his mind and body ; unites him to his race, 
 pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, 
 carries him with new sympathy into nature, en- 
 hances the power of the senses, opens the imagin- 
 ation, adds to his character heroic and sacred 
 attributes, establishes marriage, and gives per- 
 manence to human society. 
 
 (151)
 
 I 52 ESSAY V. 
 
 The natural association of the sentiment of love 
 with the heyday of the blood, seems to require 
 that in order to portray it in vivid tints which 
 every youth and maid should confess to be true to 
 their throbbing experience, one must not be too 
 old. The delicious fancies of youth reject the 
 least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling 
 with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And, 
 therefore, I know I incur the imputation of un- 
 necessary hardness and stoicism from those who 
 compose the Court and Parliament of Love. But 
 from these formidable censors I shall appeal to my 
 seniors. For, it is to be considered that this pas- 
 sion of which we speak, though it begin with the 
 young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather suffers 
 no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but 
 makes the aged participators of it, not less than 
 the tender maiden, though in a different and 
 nobler sort. For, it is a fire that kindling its first 
 embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, 
 caught from a wandering spark out of another 
 private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms 
 and beams upon multitudes of men and women, 
 upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up 
 the whole world and all nature with its generous 
 flames. It matters not, therefore, whether we at- 
 tempt to describe the passion at twenty, at thirty, 
 or at eighty years. He who paints it at the first 
 period, will lose some of its later, he who paints 
 it at the last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is 
 to be hoped that by patience and the muses' aid, 
 we may attain to that inward view of the law,
 
 LOVE. 153 
 
 which shall describe a truth ever young, ever 
 beautiful, so central that it shall commend itself 
 to the eye at whatever angle beholden. 
 
 And the first condition is, that we must leave a 
 too close and lingering adherence to the actual, to 
 facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in 
 hope and not in history. For, each man sees his 
 own life defaced and disfigured, as the life of man 
 is not, to his imagination. Each man sees over 
 his own experience a certain slime of error, whilst 
 that of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any 
 man go back to those delicious relations which 
 make the beauty of his life, which have given 
 him sincerest instruction and nourishment he 
 will shrink and shrink. Alas ! I know not 
 why, but infinite compunctions embitter in 
 mature life all the remembrances of budding 
 sentiment, and cover every beloved name. Every 
 thing is beautiful seen from the point of the in- 
 tellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen as ex- 
 perience. Details are always melancholy; the 
 plan is seemly and noble. It is strange how pain- 
 ful is the actual world, the painful kingdom of 
 time and place. There dwells care and canker 
 and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is im- 
 mortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the 
 muses sing. But with names and persons and the 
 partial interests of to-day and yesterday, is grief. 
 
 The strong bent of nature is seen in the pro- 
 portion which this topic of personal relations 
 usurps in the conversation of society. What do 
 we wish to know of any worthy person so much
 
 154 ESSAY V. 
 
 as how he has sped in the history of this senti- 
 ment ? What books in the circulating library circu- 
 late? How we glow over these novels of pas- 
 sion, when the story is told with any spark of 
 truth and nature ! And what fastens attention, 
 in the intercourse of life, like any passage betray- 
 ing affection between two parties ? Perhaps we 
 never saw them before, and never shall meet them 
 again. But we see them exchange a glance, or 
 betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer 
 strangers. We understand them, and take the 
 warmest interest in the development of the ro- 
 mance. All mankind love a lover. The earliest 
 demonstrations of complacency and kindness are 
 nature's most winning pictures. It is the dawn 
 of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. 
 The rude village boy teazes the girls about the 
 school-house door ; but to-day he comes running 
 into the entry, and meets one fair child arranging 
 her satchel : he holds her books to help her, and 
 instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself 
 from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. 
 Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, 
 but one alone distances him : and these two little 
 neighbors that were so close just now, have learned 
 to respect each other's personality. Or who can 
 avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half- 
 artless ways of school-girls who go into the 
 country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of 
 paper, and talk half an hour about nothing, with 
 the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the 
 village, they are on a perfect equality, which love
 
 LOVE. 155 
 
 delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, 
 affectionate nature of woman flows out in this 
 pretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, 
 yet plainly do they establish between them and 
 the good boy the most agreeable, confiding rela- 
 tions, what with their fun and their earnest, 
 about Edgar, and Jonas, and Almira, and who 
 was invited to the party, and who danced at the 
 dancing school, and when the singing school 
 would begin, and other nothings concerning which 
 the parties cooed. By-and-by that boy wants a 
 wife, and very truly and heartily will he know 
 where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without 
 any risk such as Milton deplores as incident to 
 scholars and great men. 
 
 I have been told that my philosophy is un- 
 social, and, that in public discourses, my reverence 
 for the intellect makes me unjustly cold to the 
 personal relations. But now I almost shrink at 
 the remembrance of such disparaging words. For 
 persons are love's world, and the coldest philoso- 
 pher cannot recount the debt of the young soul 
 wandering here in nature to the power of love, 
 without being tempted to unsay as treasonable to 
 nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. 
 For, though the celestial rapture falling out of 
 heaven seizes only upon those of tender age, and 
 although a beauty overpowering all analysis or 
 comparison, and putting us quite beside ourselves, 
 we can seldom see after thirty years, yet the 
 remembrance of these visions outlasts all other 
 remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the old-
 
 156 ESSAY V. 
 
 est brows. But here is a strange fact ; it may 
 seem to many men in revising their experience, 
 that they have no fairer page in their life's book 
 than the delicious memory of some passages 
 wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft 
 surpassing the deep attraction of its own truth to a 
 parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. In 
 looking backward, they may find that several things 
 which were not the charm, have more reality to 
 this groping memory than the charm itself which 
 embalmed them. But be our experience in 
 particulars what it may, no man ever forgot 
 the visitations of that power to his heart and 
 brain, which created all things new; which 
 was the dawn in him of music, poetry and art ; 
 which made the face of nature radiant with pur- 
 ple light, the morning and the night varied en- 
 chantments; when a single tone of one voice 
 could make the heart beat, and the most trivial 
 circumstance associated with one form, is put in 
 the amber of memory : when we became all eye 
 when one was present, and all memory when one 
 was gone ; when the youth becomes a watcher of 
 windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, 
 or the wheels of a carriage ; when no place is too 
 solitary, and none too silent for him who has richer 
 company and sweeter conversation in his new 
 thoughts, than any old friends, though best and 
 purest, can give him ; for, the figures, the motions, 
 the words of the beloved object are not like other 
 images written in water, but, as Plutarch said,
 
 LOVE. 157 
 
 " enamelled in fire," and make the study of mid- 
 night. 
 
 " Thou art not gone being gone, wheree'er thou art, 
 Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy lov- 
 ing heart." 
 
 In the noon and the afternoon of life, we still 
 throb at the recollection of days when happiness 
 was not happy enough, but must be drugged with 
 the relish of pain and fear ; for he touched the 
 secret of the matter, who said of love, 
 
 " All other pleasures are not worth its pains : " 
 
 and when the day was not long enough, but the 
 night too must be consumed in keen recollec- 
 tions ; when the head boiled all night on the pil- 
 low with the generous deed it resolved on ; when 
 the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars 
 were letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the air 
 was coined into song ; when all business seemed 
 an impertinence, and all the men and women run- 
 ning to and fro in the streets, mere pictures. 
 
 The passion re-makes the world for the youth. 
 It makes all things alive and significant. Nature 
 grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of 
 the tree sings now to his heart and soul. Al- 
 most the notes are articulate. The clouds have 
 faces, as he looks on them. The trees of the 
 forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers 
 have grown intelligent ; and almost he fears to 
 trust them with the secret which they seem to
 
 158 ESSAY V. 
 
 invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In 
 the green solitude he finds a dearer home than 
 with men. 
 
 " Fountain heads and pathless groves, 
 Places which pale passion loves, 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 Are safely housed, save bats and owls, 
 A midnight bell, a passing groan, 
 These are the sounds we feed upon." 
 
 Behold there in the wood the fine madman ! 
 He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights ; he 
 dilates ; he is twice a man ; he walks with arms 
 akimbo ; he soliloquizes ; he accosts the grass and 
 the trees ; he feels the blood of the violet, the 
 clover and the lily in his veins ; and he talks with 
 the brook that wets his foot. 
 
 The causes that have sharpened his percep- 
 tions of natural beauty, have made him love music 
 and verse. It is a fact often observed, that 
 men have written good verses under the inspira- 
 tion of passion, who cannot write well under any 
 other circumstances. 
 
 The like force has the passion over all his nature. 
 It expands the sentiment ; it makes the clown gen- 
 tle, and gives the coward heart. Into the most 
 pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage 
 to defy the world, so only it have the counten- 
 ance of the beloved object. In giving him to an- 
 other, it still more gives him to himself. He is a new 
 man, with new perceptions, new and keener pur- 
 poses, and a religious solemnity of character and
 
 LOVE. 159 
 
 aims. He does not longer appertain to his family 
 and society. He is somewhat. He is a person. 
 He is a soul. 
 
 And here let us examine a little nearer the na- 
 ture of that influence which is thus potent over 
 the human youth. Let us approach and admire 
 Beauty, whose revelation to man we now cele- 
 brate, beauty, welcome as the sun wherever it 
 pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with it 
 and with themselves. Wonderful is its charm. It 
 seems sufficient to itself. The lover cannot paint 
 his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like a 
 tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing 
 loveliness is society for itself, and she teaches his 
 eye why Beauty was ever painted with Loves and 
 Graces attending her steps. Her existence makes 
 the world rich. Though she extrudes all other 
 persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, 
 yet she indemnifies him by carrying out her own 
 being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, 
 so that the maiden stands to him for a representa- 
 tive of all select things and virtues. For that 
 reason the lover sees never personal resemblances 
 in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His 
 friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her 
 sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover 
 sees no resemblance except to summer evenings 
 and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song 
 of birds. 
 
 Beauty is ever that divine thing the ancients 
 esteemed it. It is, they said, the flowering of vir- 
 tue. Who can analyze the nameless charm which
 
 160 ESSAY V. 
 
 glances from one and another face and form ? We 
 are touched with emotions of tenderness and 
 complacency, but we cannot find whereat this 
 dainty emotion, this wandering gleam point. It 
 is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt 
 to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to 
 any relations of friendship or love that society 
 knows and has, but, as it seems to me, to a quite 
 other and unattainable sphere, to relations of 
 transcendent delicacy and sweetness, a true faerie 
 laud; to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. 
 We cannot get at beauty. Its nature is like opal- 
 ine doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. 
 Herein it resembles the most excellent things, 
 which all have this rainbow character, defying all 
 attempts at appropriation and use. What else did 
 Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, 
 "Away! away! thou speakest to me of things 
 which in all my endless life I have found not, and 
 shall not find." The same fact may be observed 
 in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is 
 then beautiful, when it begins to be incompre- 
 hensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and 
 can no longer be defined by compass and 
 measuring wand, but demands an active imagina- 
 tion to go with it, and to say what it is in the act 
 of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is al- 
 ways represented in a transition from that which 
 is representable to the senses, to that which is not. 
 Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same re- 
 mark holds of painting. And of poetry, the suc- 
 cess is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but
 
 LOVE. l6l 
 
 when it astonishes and fires us with new endeav- 
 ors after the unattainable. Concerning it, Landor 
 inquires " whether it is not to be referred to some 
 purer state of sensation and existence." 
 
 So must it be with personal beaut)'', which love 
 worships. Then first is it charming and itself, 
 when it dissatisfies us with any end ; when it be- 
 comes a story without an end ; when it suggests 
 gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions ; 
 when it seems 
 
 " too bright and good, 
 For human nature's daily food ; 
 
 when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness ; 
 when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were 
 Csesar ; he cannot feel more right to it, than to 
 the firmament and the splendors of a sunset. 
 
 Hence arose the saying, "If I love you, what 
 is that to you ? " We say so, because we feel that 
 what we love, is not in your will, but above it. 
 It is the radiance of you and not you. It is that 
 which you know not in yourself, and can never 
 know. 
 
 This agrees well with that high philosophy of 
 Beauty which the ancient writers delighted in ; 
 for they said, that the soul of man, embodied here 
 on earth, went roaming up and down in quest 
 of that other world of its own, out of which 
 it came into this, but was soon stupefied by 
 the light of the natural sun, and unable to see any 
 other objects than those of this world, which are 
 'but shadows of real things. Therefore, the Deity 
 11
 
 1 62 ESSAY V. 
 
 sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it 
 may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its 
 recollection of the celestial good and fair ; and the 
 man beholding such a person in the female sex, 
 runs to her, and finds the highest joy in contem- 
 plating the form, movement, and intelligence of 
 this person, because it suggests to him the pres- 
 sence of that which indeed is within the beauty, 
 and the cause of the beauty. 
 
 If, however, from too much conversing with 
 material objects, the soul was gross, and mis- 
 placed its satisfaction in the body, it reaped noth- 
 ing but sorrow ; body being unable to fulfil the 
 promise which beauty holds out ; but if, accepting 
 the hint of these visions and suggestions which 
 beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through 
 the body, and falls to admire strokes of character, 
 and the lovers contemplate one another in their 
 discourses and their actions, then, they pass to the 
 true palace of Beauty, more and more inflame their 
 love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base 
 affection, as the sun puts out the fire by shining 
 on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. 
 By conversation with that which is in itself excel- 
 lent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes 
 to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker 
 apprehension of them. Then, he passes from loving 
 them in one, to loving them in all, and so is the 
 one beautiful soul only the door through which he 
 enters to the society of all true and pure souls. 
 In the particular society of his mate, he attains a 
 clearer sight of any spot, any taint, which her
 
 LOVE. 163 
 
 beauty has contracted from this world, and is able 
 to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they 
 are now able without offence to indicate blemishes 
 and hindrances in each other, and give to each all 
 help and comfort in curing the same. And, be- 
 holding in many souls the traits of the divine 
 beauty, and separating in each soul that which is 
 divine from the taint which they have contracted in 
 the world, the lover ascends ever to the highest 
 beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, 
 by steps on this ladder of created souls. 
 
 Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of 
 love in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it 
 new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, 
 so have Petrarch, Angelo, and Milton. It awaits 
 a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that 
 subterranean prudence which presides at mar- 
 riages with words that take hold of the upper 
 world, whilst one eye is eternally boring down into 
 the cellar, so that its gravest discourse has ever a 
 slight savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, 
 when the snout of this sensualism intrudes into 
 the education of young women, and withers the 
 hope and affection of human nature, by teaching 
 that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's 
 thrift, arid that woman's life has no other aim. 
 
 But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only 
 one scene in our play. In the procession of the 
 soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles 
 ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the 
 light proceeding from an orb. The rays of the 
 soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil
 
 164 ESSAY V. 
 
 and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house 
 and yard and passengers, on the circle of house- 
 hold acquaintance, on politics, and geography, and 
 history. But by the necessity of our constitution, 
 things are ever grouping themselves according to 
 higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, size, 
 numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their 
 power over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, 
 the longing for harmony between the soul and 
 the circumstance, the high progressive idealizing 
 instinct, these predominate later, and ever the 
 step backward from the higher to the lower rela- 
 tions is impossible. Thus even love, which is the 
 deification of persons, must become more imper- 
 sonal every day. Of this at first it gives no hint. 
 Little think the youth and maiden who are glanc- 
 ing at each other across crowded rooms, with eyes 
 so full of mutual intelligence, of the precious 
 fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite 
 external stimulus. The work of vegetation be- 
 gins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf- 
 buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to 
 acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery pas- 
 sion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion be- 
 holds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is 
 wholly embodied, and the body is wholly en- 
 souled. 
 
 " Her pure and eloquent, blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
 That one might almost say her body thought." 
 
 Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars
 
 LOVE. 165 
 
 to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has 
 no other aim, asks no more than Juliet, than 
 Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, 
 religion, are all contained in this form full of soul, 
 in this soul which is all form. The lovers delight 
 in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons 
 of their regards. When alone, they solace them- 
 selves with the remembered image of the other. 
 Does that other see the same star ; the same melt- 
 ing cloud, read the same book, feel the same emo- 
 tion that now delight me ? They try and weigh 
 their affection, and adding up all costly advan- 
 tages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in 
 discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would 
 give all as a ransom for the beautiful, the be- 
 loved head, not one hair of which shall be 
 harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these 
 children. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to 
 them, as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants 
 with Eternal Power, in behalf of this dear mate. 
 The union which is thus effected, and which adds 
 a new value to every atom in nature, for it trans- 
 mutes every thread throughout the whole web of 
 relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in 
 a new and sweeter element, is yet a temporary 
 state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, pro- 
 testations, nor even home in another heart, con- 
 tent the awful soul that dwells in clay. It 
 arouses itself at last from these endearments, as 
 toys, and puts on the harness, and aspires to vast 
 and universal aims. The soul which is in the soul of 
 each, craving for a perfect beatitude, detects incon-
 
 1 66 ESSAY V. 
 
 gruities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior 
 of the other. Hence arises surprise, expostula- 
 tion, and pain. Yet that which drew them to 
 each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue ; 
 and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They 
 appear and reappear, and continue to attract ; but 
 the regard changes, quits the sign, and attaches to 
 the substance. This repairs the wounded affec- 
 tion. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a 
 game of permutation and combination of all pos- 
 sible positions of the parties, to extort all the re- 
 sources of each, and acquaint each with the whole 
 strength and weakness of the other. For it is the 
 nature and end of this relation, that they should 
 represent the human race to each other. A 11 that 
 is in the world which is or ought to be known, is 
 cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of 
 
 " The persou love does to us fit, 
 Like marma, has the taste of all in it." 
 
 The world rolls ; the circumstances vary every 
 hour. All the angels that inhabit this temple of 
 the body appear at the windows, and all the 
 gnomes and vices also. By all the virtues, they 
 are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are 
 known as such ; they confess and flee. Tlieir 
 once flaming regard is sobered by time in either 
 breast, and losing in violence what it gains in ex- 
 tent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. 
 They resign each other, without complaint, to the
 
 LOVE. 167 
 
 good offices which man and woman are severally 
 appointed to discharge in time, and exchange the 
 passion which once could not lose sight of its ob- 
 ject, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, 
 whether present or absent, of each other's designs. 
 At last they discover that all which at first drew 
 them together, those once sacred features, that 
 magical play of charms, was deciduous, had a 
 prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the 
 house was built ; and the purification of the intel- 
 lect and the heart, from 3"ear to year, is the real 
 marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and 
 wholly above their consciousness. Looking at 
 these aims with which two persons, a man and a 
 woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are 
 shut up in one house to spend in the nuptial 
 society forty or fifty years, I do not wonder at the 
 emphasis with which the heart prophesies this 
 crisis from early .infancy, at the profuse beauty 
 with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower T 
 and nature and intellect and art emulate each 
 other in the gifts and the melody they bring to 
 the epithalamium. 
 
 Thus are we put in training for a love which 
 knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but 
 which seeketh virtue and wisdom everywhere, to 
 the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are 
 by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is 
 our permanent state. But we are often made to 
 feel that our affections are but tents of a night. 
 Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the 
 affections change, as the objects of thought do.
 
 1 68 ESSAY V. 
 
 There are moments when the affections rule and 
 absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent 
 on a person or persons. But in health the mind 
 is presently seen again, its overarching vault, 
 bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the 
 warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, 
 must lose their finite character, and blend with 
 God, to attain their own perfection. But we need 
 not fear that we can lose anything by the progress 
 of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. 
 That which is so beautiful and attractive as these 
 relations, must be succeeded and supplanted only 
 by what is more beautiful, and so on forever.
 
 FRIENDSHIP.
 
 ESSAY YI. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 WE have a great deal more kindness than is 
 ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills 
 like east winds the world, the whole human family- 
 is bathed with an element of love like a fine 
 ether. How many persons we meet in houses, 
 whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, 
 and who honor us ! How many we see in the 
 street, or sit with in church, whom, though 
 silently, we warmly rejoice to be with ! Read the 
 language of these wandering eyebeams. The 
 heart knoweth. 
 
 The effect of the indulgence of this human af- 
 fection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In 
 poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of 
 benevolence and complacency which are felt to- 
 wards others, are likened to the material effects of 
 fire ; so swift, or much more swift, more active, 
 more cheering are these fine inward irradiations. 
 From the highest degree of passionate love, to the 
 lowest degree of good will, they make the sweet- 
 ness of life. 
 
 Our intellectual and active powers increase with 
 
 (171)
 
 172 ESSAY VI. 
 
 our affection. The scholar sits down to write, 
 and all his years of meditation do not furnish him 
 with one good thought or happy expression ; but 
 it is necessary to write a letter to a friend, and, 
 forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest them- 
 selves, on every hand, with chosen words. See in 
 any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the 
 palpitation which the approach of a stranger 
 causes. A commended stranger is expected and 
 announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and 
 pain invades all the hearts of a household. His 
 arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that 
 would welcome him. The house is dusted, all 
 things fly into their places, the old coat is ex- 
 changed for the new, and they must get up a din- 
 ner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only 
 the good report is told by others, only the good 
 and new is heard by us. He stands to us for 
 humanity. He is what we wish. Having imag- 
 ined and invested him, we ask how we should 
 stand related in conversation and action with such 
 a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea 
 exalts conversation with him. We talk better 
 than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, 
 a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken 
 leave for the time. For long hours we can con- 
 tinue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communi- 
 cations, drawn from the oldest, secretest experi- 
 ence, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk 
 and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at 
 our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger 
 begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions,
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 173 
 
 his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He 
 has heard the first, the last and best, he will ever 
 hear from us. He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, 
 ignorance, misapprehension, are old acquaint- 
 ances. Now, when he comes, he may get the 
 order, the dress, and the dinner, but the throb- 
 bing of the heart, and the communications of the 
 soul, no more. 
 
 Pleasant are these jets of affection which re- 
 lume a young world for me again. Delicious is a 
 just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a 
 feeling. How beautiful, on their approach to this 
 beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted 
 and the true ! The moment we indulge our af- 
 fections, the earth is metamorphosed : there is no 
 winter, and no night ; all tragedies, all ennuis 
 vanish ; all duties even ; nothing fills the pro- 
 ceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of be- 
 loved persons. Let the soul be assured that some- 
 where in the universe it should rejoin its friend,, 
 and it would be content and cheerful alone for a 
 thousand years. 
 
 I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving; 
 for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not 
 call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth him- 
 self so to me in his gifts ? I chide society, I em- 
 brace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as. 
 not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble- 
 minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. 
 Who hears me, who understands me, becomes 
 mine, a possession for all time. Nor is nature so 
 poor, but she gives me this joy several times, and
 
 174 ESS Ay vi. 
 
 thus we weave social threads of our own, a new 
 web of relations ; and, as many thoughts in suc- 
 cession substantiate themselves, we shall by-and-by 
 stand in a new world -of our own creation, and no 
 longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary 
 globe. My friends have come to me unsought. 
 The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, 
 by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find 
 them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in 
 them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of 
 individual character, relation, age, sex and circum- 
 stance, at which he usually connives, and now 
 makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excel- 
 lent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new 
 and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all 
 my thoughts. These are not stark and stiffened 
 persons, but the new-born poetry of God, poetry 
 without stop, hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still 
 flowing, and not yet caked in dead books with an- 
 notation and grammar, but Apollo and the Muses 
 chanting still. Will these too separate themselves 
 from me again, or some of them ? I know not, 
 but I fear it not ; for my relation to them is so 
 pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the 
 Genius of my life being thus social, the same 
 affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as 
 noble as these men and women, wherever I may be. 
 1 confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on 
 this point. It is almost dangerous to me to 
 *' crush the sweet poison of misused wine " of the 
 affections. A new person is to me always a great 
 event, and hinders me from sleep. I have had
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 175 
 
 such fine fancies lately about two or three per- 
 sons, as have given me delicious hours ; but the 
 joy ends in the day : it yields no fruit. Thought 
 is not born of it ; my action is very little modified. 
 I must feel pride in my friend's accomplish- 
 ments as if they were mine, wild, delicate, throb- 
 bing property in his virtues. I feel as warmly 
 when he is praised, as the lover when he hears ap- 
 plause of his engaged maiden. We overestimate 
 the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems 
 better than our goodness, his nature finer, his 
 temptations less. Everything that is his, his 
 name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, 
 fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new 
 and larger from his mouth. 
 
 Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not 
 without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. 
 Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too 
 good to be believed. The lover, beholding his 
 maiden, half knows that she is not verily that 
 which he worships ; and in the golden hour of 
 friendship, we are surprised with shades of suspi- 
 cion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on 
 our hero the virtues in which he shines, and after- 
 wards worship the form to which we have ascribed 
 this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul 
 does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict 
 science, all persons underlie the same condition of 
 an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our 
 love by facing the fact, by mining for the met- 
 aphysical foundation of this Elysian temple ? 
 Shall I not be as real as the things I see ? If I
 
 176 ESSAY vi. 
 
 am, I shall not fear to know them for what they 
 are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their 
 appearance, though it needs finer organs for its 
 apprehension. The root of the plant is not un- 
 sightly to science, though for chaplets and 
 festoons we cut the stem short. And I must 
 hazard the production of the bald fact amidst 
 these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an 
 Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who 
 stands united with his thought, conceives magnifi- 
 cently of himself. He is conscious of a universal 
 success, even though bought by uniform particu- 
 lar failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold 
 or force can be any match for him. I cannot 
 choose but rely on my own poverty, more than on 
 your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness 
 tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles ; the 
 planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what 
 you say of the admirable parts and tried temper 
 of the party you praise, but I see well that for all 
 his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is 
 at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O 
 friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal 
 includes thee, also, in its pied and painted immen- 
 sity, thee, also, compared with whom all else is 
 shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as 
 Justice is, thou art not my soul, but a picture 
 and eflfigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, 
 and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. 
 Is it not that the soul puts forth friends, as the 
 tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germ- 
 ination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf? The
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 177 
 
 law of nature is alternation forevermore. Each 
 electrical state superinduces the " opposite. The 
 soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter 
 into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude ; arid 
 it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its 
 conversation or society. This method betrays 
 itself along the whole history of our personal re- 
 lations. Ever the instinct of affection revives the 
 hope of union with our mates, and ever the re- 
 turning sense of insulation recalls us from the 
 chase. Thus every man passes his life in the 
 search after friendship, and if he should record his 
 true sentiment, he might write a letter like this, to 
 each new candidate for his love. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 If I was sure of thee, sure of 
 
 thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I 
 should never think again of trifles, in relation to thy 
 comings and goings. I am not very wise : my moods 
 are quite attainable : and I respect thy genius : it is to 
 me as yet unfathotned ; yet dare I not presume in thee 
 a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a 
 delicious torment. Thine ever, or never. 
 
 Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are 
 for curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be 
 indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not 
 cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor 
 conclusions, because we have made them a texture 
 of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of 
 the human heart. The laws of friendship are 
 great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the 
 laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed 
 at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden 
 12
 
 178 ESSAY VT. 
 
 sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the 
 whole garden of God, which many summers and 
 many winters must ripen. We seek our friend 
 not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which 
 would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. 
 We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, 
 which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and 
 translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all 
 people descend to meet. All association must be 
 a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower 
 and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful 
 natures disappears as they approach each other. 
 What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, 
 even of the virtuous and gifted ! After inter- 
 views have been compassed with long foresight, 
 we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, 
 by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of 
 wit and of animal spirits, in the hey-day of friend- 
 ship and thought. Our faculties do not play us 
 true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. 
 
 I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes 
 no difference how many friends I have, and what 
 content I can find in conversing with each, if 
 there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have 
 shrunk unequal from one contest, instantly the 
 joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cow- 
 ardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my 
 other friends my asylum. 
 
 " The valiant warrior famoused for fight, 
 After a hundred victories, once foiled, 
 Is from the book of honor razed quite, 
 And all the rest forgot for which he toiled."
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 179 
 
 Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bash- 
 fulness and apathy are a tough husk in which a 
 delicate organization is protected from premature 
 ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before 
 any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know 
 and own it. Respect the naturlangsamkeit which 
 hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in 
 duration, in which Alps and Andes come and go 
 as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no 
 heaven which is the price of rashness. Love, 
 which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but 
 for the total worth of man. Let us not have this 
 childish luxury in our regards ; but the austerest 
 worth ; let us approach our friend with an auda- 
 cious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth 
 impossible to be overturned, of his foundations. 
 
 The attractions of this subject are not to be re- 
 sisted, and I leave, for the time, all account of 
 subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select 
 and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, 
 and which even leaves the language of love sus- 
 picious and common, so much is this purer, and 
 nothing is so much divine. 
 
 I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but 
 with roughest courage. When they are real, they 
 are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solid- 
 est thing we know. For now, after so many ages 
 of experience, what do we know of nature, or of 
 ourselves ? Not one step has man taken toward 
 the solution of the problem of his destiny. In 
 one condemnation of folly stand the whole uni- 
 verse of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and
 
 180 ESSAY VI. 
 
 peace, which I draw from this alliance with my 
 brother's soul, is the nut itself whereof all nature 
 and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy 
 is the house that shelters a friend ! It might well 
 be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain 
 him a single day. Happier, if he know the solem- 
 nity of that relation, and honor its law ! It is no 
 idle band, no holiday engagement. He who offers 
 himself as a candidate for that covenant, comes up, 
 like an Olympian, to the great games, where the 
 first-born of the world are the competitors. He 
 proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, 
 Danger are in the lists, and he alone is victor who 
 has truth enough in his constitution to preserve 
 the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear 
 of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present 
 or absent, but all the hap in that contest depends 
 on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. 
 There are two elements that go to the composi- 
 tion of friendship, each so sovereign, that 1 can 
 detect no superiority in either, no reason why 
 either should be first named. One is Truth. A 
 friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. 
 Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at 
 last in the presence of a man so real and equal, 
 that I may drop even those undermost garments 
 of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, 
 which men never put off, and may deal with him 
 with the simplicity and wholeness with which one 
 chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the 
 luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only 
 to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak
 
 FRIENDSHIP. l8l 
 
 truth, as having none above it to court or conform 
 unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the en- 
 trance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We 
 parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by 
 compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. 
 We cover up our thought from him under a hun- 
 dred folds. I knew a man who, under a certain 
 religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and omit- 
 ting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to 
 the conscience of every person he encountered, 
 and that with great insight and beauty. At first 
 he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. 
 But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, 
 for some time in this course, he attained to the 
 advantage of bringing every man of his acquain- 
 tance into true relations with him. No man 
 would think of speaking falsely with him, or of 
 putting him off with any chat of markets or read- 
 ing-rooms. But every man was constrained by so 
 much sincerity to face him, and what love of na- 
 ture, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, 
 he did certainly show him. But to most of us so- 
 ciety shows not its face and eye, but its side and 
 its back. To stand in true relations with men in 
 a false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is it not ? 
 We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we 
 meet requires some civility, requires to be hu- 
 mored ; he has some fame, some talent, some 
 whim of religion or philanthrophy in his head that 
 is not to be questioned, and so spoils all conversa- 
 tion with him. But a friend is a sane man who 
 exercises not my ingenuity but me. My friend
 
 1 82 ESSAY VL 
 
 gives me entertainment without requiring me to 
 stoop, or to lisp, or to mask myself. A friend, 
 therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. 1 who 
 alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose ex- 
 istence I can affirm with equal evidence to my 
 own, behold now the semblance of my being in all 
 its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a 
 foreign form ; so that a friend may well be reck- 
 oned the masterpiece of nature. 
 
 The other element of friendship is Tenderness. 
 We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by 
 blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, 
 by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance 
 and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe 
 that so much character can subsist in another as 
 to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed, 
 and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness? 
 When a man becomes dear to me, I have touched 
 the goal of fortune. I find very little written 
 directly to the heart of this matter in books. 
 And yet I have one text which I cannot choose 
 but remember. My author says, "I offer myself 
 faintly and bluntly to those whose I effectually 
 am, and tender myself least to him to whom I 
 am the most devoted." I wish that friendship 
 should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. 
 It must plant itself on the ground, before it walks 
 over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citi- 
 zen, before it is quite a cherub. We chide the 
 citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is 
 an exchange of gifts, of useful loans ; it is good 
 neighborhood ; it watches with the sick ; it holds
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 183 
 
 the pall at the funeral ; and quite loses sight of 
 the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But 
 though we cannot find the god under this disguise 
 of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot for- 
 give the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and 
 does not substantiate his romance by the munic- 
 ipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and 
 Eity. I hate the prostitution of the name of 
 riendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. 
 I much prefer the company of plough-boys and 
 tin -peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity 
 which only celebrates its days of encounter by a 
 frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and din- 
 ners at the best taverns. The end of friendship 
 is a commerce the most strict and homely that 
 can be joined ; more strict than any of which we 
 have experience. It is for aid and comfort 
 through all the relations and passages of life and 
 death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, 
 and country rambles, but also for rough roads and 
 hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. 
 It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and 
 the trances of religion. We are to dignify to 
 each other the daily needs and offices of man's 
 life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and 
 unity. It should never fall into something usual 
 and settled, but should be alert and inventive, 
 and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. 
 For perfect friendship it may be said to require 
 natures so rare and costly, so well tempered each, 
 and so happily adapted, and withal so circum- 
 stanced, (for even in that particular, a poet says,
 
 1 84 ESSAY VI. 
 
 love demands that the parties be altogether 
 paired) that very seldom can its satisfaction be 
 realized. It cannot subsist in its perfection, say 
 some of those who are learned in this warm lore 
 of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not 
 quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I 
 have never known so high a fellowship as others. 
 I please my imagination more with a circle of 
 godlike men and women variously related to each 
 other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelli- 
 gence. But I find this law of one to one, peremp- 
 tory for conversation, which is the practice and 
 consummation of friendship. Do not mix waters 
 too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. 
 You shall have very useful and cheering discourse 
 at several times with two several men, but let all 
 three of you come together, and you shall not 
 have one new and hearty word. Two may talk 
 and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a 
 conversation of the most sincere and searching 
 sort. In good company there is never such dis- 
 course between two, across the table, as takes 
 place when you leave them alone. In good com- 
 pany, the individuals at once merge their egotism 
 into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the 
 several consciousnesses there present. No partial- 
 ities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother 
 to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, 
 but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak 
 who can sail on the common thought of the party, 
 and not poorly limited to his own. Now this 
 convention, which good sense demands, destroys
 
 FRIENDSHIP, 185 
 
 the high freedom of great conversation, which re- 
 quires an absolute running of two souls into one. 
 
 .No two men but being left alone with each 
 other, enter into simpler relations. Yet it is 
 affinity that determines which two shall converse. 
 Unrelated men give little joy to each other ; will 
 never suspect the latent powers of each. We 
 talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, 
 as if it were a permanent property in some indi- 
 viduals. Conversation is an evanescent relation, 
 no more. A man is reputed to have thought 
 and eloquence ; he cannot, for all that, say a word 
 to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his 
 silence with as much reason as they would blame 
 the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the 
 sun it will mark the hour. Among those who en- 
 joy his thought, he will regain his tongue. 
 
 Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt 
 likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the 
 presence of power and of consent in the other 
 party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, 
 rather than that my friend should overstep by a 
 word or a look his real sympathy. I am equally 
 baulked by antagonism and by compliance. Let 
 him not cease an instant to be himself. The only 
 joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine 
 is mine. It turns the stomach, it blots the day- 
 light ; where I looked for a manly furtherance, or 
 at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of con- 
 cession. Better be a nettle in the side of your 
 friend than his echo. The condition which 
 high friendship demands is ability to do without
 
 186 ESSAY VI. 
 
 it. To be capable of that high office, requires 
 great and sublime parts. There must be very 
 two, before there can be very one. Let it be an 
 alliance of two large formidable natures, mutually 
 beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recog- 
 nize the deep identity which beneath these dis- 
 parities unites them. 
 
 He only is fit for this society who is magnan- 
 imous. He must be so, to know its law. He 
 must be one who is sure that greatness and good- 
 ness are always economy. He must be one who 
 is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let 
 him not dare to intermeddle with this. Leave to 
 the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accel- 
 erate the births of the eternal. Friendship de- 
 mands a religious treatment. We must not be 
 wilful, we must not provide. We talk of choosing 
 our friends, but friends are self elected. Reverence 
 is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. 
 Of course, if he be a man, he has merits that are 
 not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must 
 needs hold him close to your person. Stand 
 aside. Give those merits room. Let them mount 
 and expand. Be not so much his friend that you 
 can never know his peculiar energies, like fond 
 mammas who shut up their boy in the house un- 
 til he is almost grown a girl. Are you the friend 
 of your friend's buttons, or of his thought? To 
 a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thou- 
 sand particulars, that he may come near in the 
 holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to re- 
 gard a friend as property, and to suck a short and
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 187 
 
 all-confounding pleasure instead of the pure nec- 
 tar of God. 
 
 Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long 
 probation. Why should we desecrate noble and 
 beautiful souls by intruding on them ? Why in- 
 sist on rash personal relations with your friend ? 
 Why go to his house, or know his mother and 
 brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at 
 your own ? Are these things material to our 
 covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. 
 Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, 
 a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not 
 news, nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, 
 and neighborly conveniences, from cheaper com- 
 panions. Should not the society of my friend be 
 to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature 
 itself ? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in 
 comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps 
 on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that 
 divides the brook? Let us not vilify but raise it 
 to that standard. That great defying eye, that 
 scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not 
 pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and 
 enhance. Worship his superiorities. Wish him 
 not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. 
 Guard him as thy great counterpart ; have a 
 princedom to thy friend. Let him be to thee for- 
 ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, de- 
 voutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to 
 be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of 
 the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be 
 seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend I write
 
 1 88 ESSAY VI. 
 
 a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That 
 seems to you a little. Me it suffices. It is a spir- 
 itual gift worthy of him to give and of me to re- 
 ceive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines 
 the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the 
 tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier 
 existence than all the annals of heroism have yet 
 made good. 
 
 Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship 
 as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your im- 
 patience for its opening. We must be our own, 
 before we can be another's. There is at least this 
 satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin prov- 
 erb ; you can speak to your accomplice on even 
 terms. Crimen quos inquinat, cequat. To those 
 whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. 
 Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in 
 my judgment, the entire relation. There can 
 never be deep peace between two spirits .aever 
 mutual respect until, in their dialogue, each stands 
 for the whole world. 
 
 What is so great as friendship let us carry 
 with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be 
 silent, so we may hear the whisper of the gods. 
 Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about 
 what you should say to the select souls, or to say 
 anything to such? No matter how ingenious, no 
 matter how graceful and bland. There are in- 
 numerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for 
 you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and 
 thy soul shall speak. Wait until the necessary 
 and everlasting overpowers you, until day and
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 189 
 
 night avail themselves of your lips. The only 
 money of God is God. He pays never with any- 
 thing less or anything else. The only reward of 
 virtue, is virtue ; the only way to have a friend, is 
 to be one. Vain to hope to come nearer a man by 
 getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only 
 flees the faster from you, and you shall catch never 
 a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar 
 off, and they repel us ; why should we intrude ? 
 Late very late we perceive that no arrange- 
 ments, no introductions, no consuetudes, or habits 
 of society, would be of any avail to establish us in 
 such relations with them as we desire, but solely 
 the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it 
 is in them ; then shall we meet as water with 
 water ; and if we should not meet them then, we 
 shall not want them, for we are already they. In 
 the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a 
 man's own worthiness from other men. Men have 
 sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as 
 if they would signify that in their friend each 
 loved his own soul. 
 
 The higher the style we demand of friendship, 
 of course the less easy to establish it with flesh 
 and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, 
 such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a 
 sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that 
 elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, 
 souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which 
 can love us, and which we can love. We may 
 congratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, 
 of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is passed in
 
 190 ESSAY VI. 
 
 solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall 
 grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be ad- 
 monished by what you already see, not to strike 
 leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where 
 no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us 
 into rash and foolish alliances which no God at- 
 tends. By persisting in your path, though you 
 forfeit the little, you gain the great. You become 
 pronounced. You demonstrate yourself, so as to 
 put yourself out of the reach of false relations, 
 and you draw to you the first-born of the world, 
 those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two 
 wander in nature at once, and before whom the 
 vulgar great, show as spectres and shadows merely. 
 It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too 
 spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. 
 Whatever correction of our popular views we 
 make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us 
 out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, 
 will repay us with a greater. Let us feel, if we 
 will, the absolute insulation of man. We are sure 
 that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we 
 pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinct- 
 ive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to 
 ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as 
 we ; the Europe, an old faded garment of dead 
 persons ; the books, their ghosts. Let us drop 
 this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. 
 Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and 
 defy them, saying, " Who are you ? Unhand me ; 
 I will be dependent no more." Ah ! seest thou 
 not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 191 
 
 again on a higher platform, and only be more each 
 other's, because we are more our own ? A friend 
 is Janus-faced : he looks to the past and the 
 future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, 
 the prophet of those to come. He is the harbinger 
 of a greater friend. It is the property of the di- 
 vine to be reproductive. 
 
 I do then with my friends as I do with my 
 books. I would have them where I can find 
 them, but I seldom use them. We must have 
 society on our own terms, and admit or exclude 
 it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to 
 speak much with my friend. If he is great, he 
 makes me so great that I cannot descend to con- 
 verse. In the great days, presentiments hover 
 before me, far before me in the firmament. I 
 ought then to dedicate myself to them. I go in 
 that I may seize them, I go out that I may 
 seize them. I fear only that I may lose them 
 receding into the sky in which now they are only 
 a patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize 
 my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and 
 study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would 
 indeed give me a certain household joy to quit 
 this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or 
 search of stars, and come down to warm sympa- 
 thies with you ; but then I know well I shall 
 mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. 
 It is true, next week I shall have languid times, 
 when I can well afford to occupy myself with 
 foreign objects ; then I shall regret the lost liter- 
 ature of your mind, and wish you were by my
 
 1 92 ESSAY VI. 
 
 side again. But if you come, perhaps you will 
 fill my mind only with new visions, not with 
 yourself but with your lustres, and I shall not be 
 able any more than now to converse with you. 
 So I will owe to my friends this evanescent inter- 
 course. I will receive from them not what they 
 have, but what they are. They shall give me that 
 which properly they cannot give me, but which 
 radiates from them. But they shall not hold me 
 by any relations less subtle and pure. We will 
 meet as though we met not, and part as though 
 we parted not. 
 
 It has seemed to me lately more possible than 
 I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, 
 without due correspondence on the other. Why 
 should I cumber myself with tbe poor fact that 
 the receiver is not capacious ? It never troubles 
 the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain 
 into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the 
 reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the 
 crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he 
 will presently pass away, but thou art enlarged 
 by thy own shining ; and, no longer a mate for 
 frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the 
 gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace 
 to love unrequited. But the great will see that 
 true love cannot be unrequited. True love tran- 
 scends instantly the unworthy object, and dwells 
 and broods on the eternal, and when the poor, 
 interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels 
 rid of so much earth, and feels its independency 
 the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 193 
 
 without a sort of treachery to the relation. The 
 essence of friendship is entireness, a total mag- 
 nanimity and trust. It must not surmise or pro- 
 vide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, 
 that it may deify both. 
 
 13
 
 PRUDENCE.
 
 ESSAY YII. 
 
 PRUDENCE. 
 
 WHAT right have I to write on Prudence, 
 whereof I have little, and that of the negative 
 sort ? My prudence consists in avoiding and 
 going without, not in the inventing of means 
 and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gen- 
 tle repairing. I have no skill to make money 
 spend well, no genius in my economy, and who- 
 ever sees my garden, discovers that I must have 
 some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate 
 lubricity, and people without perception. Then 
 I have the same title to write on prudence, that I 
 have to write on poetry or. holiness. We write 
 from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from 
 experience. We paint those qualities which we 
 do not possess. The poet admires the man of 
 energy and tactics ; the merchant breeds his son 
 for the church or the bar: and where a man is 
 not vain and egotistic, you shall find what he has 
 not, by his praise. Moreover, it would be hardly 
 honest in me not to balance these fine lyric words 
 of Love and Friendship with words of coarser 
 sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real and 
 constant, not to own it in passing. 
 
 (197)
 
 [98 ESS Ay VII. 
 
 Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the 
 science of appearances. It is the outmost action 
 of the inward life. It is God taking thought for 
 oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. 
 It is content to seek health of body by complying 
 with physical conditions, and health of mind by 
 the laws of the intellect. 
 
 The world of the senses is a world of shows ; 
 it does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic 
 character ; and a true prudence or law of shows, 
 recognises the co-presence of other laws ; and 
 knows that its own office is subaltern ; knows 
 that it is surface and not centre where it works. 
 Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate 
 when it is the Natural History of the soul incar- 
 nate ; when it unfolds the beauty of laws within 
 the narrow scope of the senses. 
 
 There are all degrees of proficiency in knowl- 
 edge of the world. It is sufficient, to our present 
 purpose, to indicate three. One class lives to the 
 utility of the symbol ; esteeming health and 
 wealth a final good. Another class live above 
 this mark to the beauty of the symbol ; as the 
 poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of 
 science. A third class live above the beauty of 
 the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified ; 
 these are wise men. The first class have common 
 sense ; the second, taste ; and the third, spiritual 
 perception. Once in a long time, a man traverses 
 the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol 
 solidly ; then also has a clear eye for its beauty, 
 and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred
 
 PRUDENCE. 199 
 
 volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build 
 houses and barns thereon, reverencing the 
 splendor of the God which he sees bursting 
 through each chink and cranny. 
 
 The world is filled with the proverbs and acts 
 and winkings of a base prudence, which is a de- 
 votion to matter as if we possessed no other fac- 
 ulties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye 
 and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of 
 Three, which never subscribes, which gives never, 
 which lends seldom, and asks but one question of 
 any project Will it bake bread ? This is a dis- 
 ease like a thickening of the skin until the vital 
 organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing the 
 high origin of the apparent world, and aiming at 
 the perfection of the man as the end, degrades 
 everything else, as health and bodily life, into 
 means. It sees prudence not to be a several fac- 
 ulty, but a name for wisdom and virtue convers- 
 ing with the body and its wants. Cultivated men 
 always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, 
 the achievement of a civil or social measure, great 
 personal influence, a graceful and commanding 
 address had their value as proofs of the energy of 
 the spirit. If a man lose his balance, and im- 
 merse himself in any trades or pleasures for their 
 own .sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he 
 is not a cultivated man. 
 
 The spurious prudence, making the senses final, 
 is the god of sots and cowards, arid is the subject 
 of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore 
 literature's. The true prudence limits this sensu-
 
 200 ESSAY VII. 
 
 alism by admitting the knowledge of an internal- 
 and real world. This recognition once made, 
 the order of the world and the distribution of af- 
 fairs and times being studied with the co-percep- 
 tion of their subordinate place, will reward any 
 degree of attention. For, our existence thus ap- 
 parently attached in nature to the sun and the re- 
 turning moon and the periods which they mark ; 
 so susceptible to climate and to country/ so alive 
 to social good and evil, so fond of splendor, and 
 so tender to hunger and cold and debt, reads all 
 its primary lessons out of these books. 
 
 Prudence does not go behind nature, and ask, 
 whence it is? It takes the laws of the world 
 whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, 
 and keeps these laws, that it may enjoy their 
 proper good. It respects space and time, climate, 
 want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. 
 There revolve to give bound and period to his 
 being, on all sides, the sun and moon, the great 
 formalists in the sky; here lies stubborn matter, 
 and will not swerve from its chemical routine. 
 Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with 
 natural laws, and fenced and distributed externally 
 with civil partitions and properties which impose 
 new restraints on the young inhabitant. 
 
 We eat of the bread which grows in the field. 
 We live by the air which blows around us, and we 
 are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, 
 too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so va- 
 cant, indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit 
 and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to
 
 PRUDENCE. 201 
 
 be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, 
 or oil, or meal, or salt ; the house smokes, or I 
 have a headache ; then the tax ; and an affair to 
 be transacted with a man without heart or brains ; 
 and the stinging recollection of an injurious or 
 very awkward word, these eat up the hours. Do 
 what we can, summer will have its flies. If we 
 walk in the woods, we must feed musquitoes. If 
 we go a fishing, we must expect a wet coat. Then 
 climate is a great impediment to idle persons. We 
 often resolve to give up the care of the weather, 
 but still we regard the clouds and the rain. 
 
 We are instructed by these petty experiences 
 which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil 
 and four months of snow make the inhabitant of 
 the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than 
 his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the trop- 
 ics. The islander may ramble all day at will. 
 At night, he may sleep on a mat under the moon, 
 and wherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, 
 without a prayer even, spread a table for his 
 morning meal. The northerner is perforce a 
 householder. He must brew, bake, salt and pre- 
 serve his food. He must pile wood and coal. But 
 as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to, 
 without some new acquaintance with nature ; and 
 as nature is inexhaustibly significant, the inhabit- 
 ants of these climates have always excelled the 
 southerner in force. Such is the value of these 
 matters, that a man who knows other things, can 
 never know too much of these. Let him have 
 accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have hands,
 
 202 ESSAY VII. 
 
 handle; if eyes, measure and discriminate; let 
 him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, 
 natural history, and economics ; the more he has, 
 the less is he willing to spare any one. Time is 
 always bringing the occasions that disclose their 
 value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural 
 and innocent action. The domestic man, who 
 loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and 
 the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn 
 on the hearth, has solaces which others never 
 dream of. The application of means to ends, en- 
 sures victory and the songs of victory not less in 
 a farm or a shop, than in the tactics of party, or 
 of war. The good husband finds method as ef- 
 ficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed, or in 
 the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Penin- 
 sular campaigns or the files of the Department of 
 State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, 
 or gets his tool-box set in the comer of the barn- 
 chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, 
 screwdriver, and chisel. Herein he tastes an old 
 joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of 
 garrets, presses, and corn-chambers, and of the 
 conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden 
 or his poultry-yard, very paltry places, it may 
 be, tell him many pleasant anecdotes. One 
 might find argument for optimism, in the abund- 
 ant flow of this saccharine element of pleasure, 
 in every suburb and extremity of the good world. 
 Let a man keep the law, any law, and his way 
 will be strewn with satisfactions. There is more
 
 PRUDENCE. 203 
 
 difference in the quality of our pleasures than in 
 the amount. 
 
 On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect 
 of prudence. If you think the senses final, obey 
 their law. If you believe in the soul, do not 
 clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on 
 the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar 
 to the eyes, to deal with men of loose and imper- 
 fect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have 
 said, "If the child says he looked out of this 
 window when he looked out of that, whip him." 
 Our American character is marked by a more 
 than average delight in accurate perception, which 
 is shown by the currency of the by-word, " No 
 mistake." But the discomfort of unpunctuality, 
 of confusion of thought about facts, of inatten- 
 tion to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. 
 The beautiful laws of time and space once dislo- 
 cated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If 
 the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, 
 instead of honey, it will yield us bees. Our 
 words and actions to be fair, must be timely. A 
 gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the 
 scythe in the mornings of June ; yet what is more 
 lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone 
 or mower's rifle, when it is too late in the season 
 to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon 
 men " spoil much more than their own affair, in 
 spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. 
 I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of 
 which I am reminded, when I see the shiftless and 
 unhappy men who are not true to their senses.
 
 204 ESS Ay VIL 
 
 The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of su- 
 perior understanding, said : " I have sometimes 
 remarked in the presence of great works of art, 
 and just now especially, in Dresden, how much a 
 certain property contributes to the effect which 
 gives life to the figures, and to the life an irresist- 
 ible truth. This property is the hitting, in all the 
 figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. I 
 mean, the placing the figures firm upon their feet, 
 making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes 
 on the spot where they should look. Even life- 
 less figures, as vessels and stools, let them be 
 drawn ever so correctly, lose all effect so soon 
 as they lack the resting upon their centre of grav- 
 ity, arid have a certain swimming and oscillating 
 appearance. The Raphael, in the Dresden gallery, 
 (the only greatly affecting picture which I have 
 seen,) is the quietest and most passionless piece 
 you can imagine ; a couple of saints who worship 
 the Virgin and child. Nevertheless, it awakens a 
 deeper impression than the contortions of ten 
 crucified martyrs. For, beside all the resistless 
 beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree 
 the property of the perpendicularity of all the 
 figures." This perpendicularity we demand of 
 all the figures in this picture of life. Let them 
 stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let 
 us know where to find them. Let them discrim- 
 inate between what they remember, and what 
 they dreamed. Let them call a spade a spade. 
 Let them give us facts, and honor their own 
 senses with trust.
 
 PRUDENCE. 205 
 
 But what man shall dare tax another with im- 
 prudence ? Who is prudent ? The men we call 
 greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a cer- 
 tain fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, dis- 
 torting all our modes of living, and making every 
 law our enemy, which seems at last to have 
 aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to pon- 
 der the question of Reform. We must call the 
 highest prudence to counsel, and ask why health 
 and beauty and genius should now be the excep- 
 tion, rather than the rule of human nature ? We 
 do not know the properties of plants and animals 
 and the laws of nature through our sympathy with 
 the same, but this remains the dream of poets. 
 Poetry and prudence should be coincident. Poets 
 should be lawgivers ; that is, the boldest lyric in- 
 spiration should not chide and insult, but should 
 announce and lead the civil code, and the day's 
 work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably 
 parted. We have violated law upon law, until 
 we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we 
 espy a coincidence between reason and the phe- 
 nomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the 
 dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as 
 sensation ; but it is rare. Health or sound organ- 
 ization should be universal. Genius should be the 
 child of genius, and every child should be in- 
 spired ; but now it is not to be predicted of any 
 child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial 
 half-lights, by courtesy, genius ; talent which con- 
 verts itself to money, talent which glitters to-day, 
 that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow ; and
 
 206 ESSAY VII. 
 
 society is officered by men of parts, as they are 
 properly called, and not by divine men. These 
 use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. 
 Genius is always ascetic ; and piety and love. 
 Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and 
 they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. 
 We have found out fine names to cover our sen- 
 suality withal, but no gifts can raise intemper- 
 ance. The man of talent affects to call his trans- 
 gressions of the laws of the senses trivial, and to 
 count them nothing considered with his devotion 
 to his art. His art rebukes him. That never 
 taught him lewdriess, nor the love of wine, nor 
 the wish to reap where he had not sowed. His 
 art is less for every deduction from his holiness, 
 and less for every defect of common sense. On 
 him who scorned the world, as he said, the scorned 
 world wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth small 
 things, will perish by little and little. Goethe's 
 Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair historical 
 portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not 
 seem to me so genuine grief when some tyrannous 
 Richard III. oppresses and slays a score of inno- 
 cent persons, as when Antonio and Tasso, both 
 apparently right, wrong each other. One living 
 after the maxims of this world, and consistent and 
 true to them, the other fired with all divine sen- 
 timents, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, 
 without submitting to their law. That is a grief 
 we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no 
 infrequent case in modern biography. A man of 
 genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of
 
 PRUDENCE. 207 
 
 physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently 
 unfortunate, querulous, a " discomfortable cousin," 
 a thorn to himself arid to others. 
 
 The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst 
 something higher than prudence is active, he is 
 admirable ; when common sense is wanted, he is 
 an incumbrance. Yesterday, Csesar was not so 
 great ; to-day, Job not so miserable. Yesterday, 
 radiant with the light of an ideal world, in which 
 he lives, the first of men, and now oppressed by 
 wants, and by sickness, for which he must thank 
 himself, none is so poor to do him reverence. He 
 resembles the opium eaters, whom travelers de- 
 scribe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantino- 
 ple, who skulk about all day, the most pitiful 
 drivellers, yellow, emaciated, ragged, and sneak- 
 ing ; then, at evening, when the bazaars are open, 
 they slink to the opium shop, swallow their mor- 
 sel, and become tranquil, glorious, and great. 
 And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent 
 genius, struggling for years with paltry pecuniary 
 difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and 
 fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins ? 
 
 Is it not better that a man should accept the 
 first pains and mortifications of this sort, which 
 nature is not slack in sending him, as hints that 
 he must expect no other good than the just fruit 
 of his own labor and self-denial ? Health, bread, 
 climate, social position, have their importance, 
 and he will give them their due. Let him esteem 
 Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections 
 the exact measure of our deviations. Let him
 
 208 ESS4Y VII. 
 
 make the night, night, and the day, day. Let him 
 control the habit of expense. Let him see that as 
 much wisdom may be expended on a private econ- 
 omy, as on an empire, and as much wisdom may 
 be drawn from it. The laws of the world are 
 written out for him on every piece of money in 
 his hand. There is nothing he will not be the bet- 
 ter for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor 
 Richard ; or the State-street prudence of buying 
 by the. acre, to sell by the foot ; or the thrift of the 
 agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, be- 
 cause it will grow whilst he sleeps ; or the pru- 
 dence which consists in husbanding little strokes 
 of the tool, little portions of time, particles of 
 stock, and small gains. The eye of prudence may 
 never shut. Iron, if kept at the ironmonger's, will 
 rust. Beer, if not brewed in the right state of 
 the atmosphere, will sour. Timber of ships will 
 rot at sea, or, if laid up high and dry, will strain, 
 warp, and dry-rot. Money, if kept by us, yields 
 no rent, and is liable to loss ; if invested, is liable 
 to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. 
 Strike, says the smith, the iron is white. Keep 
 the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as 
 you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yan- 
 kee trade is reputed to be very much on the ex- 
 treme of this prudence. It saves itself by its ac- 
 tivity. It takes bank-notes good, bad, clean, 
 ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which 
 it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer 
 sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fash- 
 ion, nor money-stocks depreciate, in the few swift
 
 PRUDENCE. 209 
 
 moments which the Yankee suffers any one of them 
 to remain in his possession. In skating over thin 
 ice, our safety is in our speed. 
 
 Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. 
 Let him learn that everything in nature, even 
 motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, 
 and that what he sows, he reaps. By diligence 
 and self-command, let him put the bread he eats at 
 his own disposal, and not at that of others, that 
 he may not stand in bitter and false relations to 
 other men ; for the best good of wealth is free- 
 dom. Let him practice the minor virtues. How 
 much of human life is lost in waiting ! Let him 
 not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many 
 words and promises are promises of conversation ! 
 Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded 
 and sealed scrap of paper float round the globe in 
 a pine ship, and come safe to the eye for which it 
 was written, amidst a swarming population ; let 
 him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his 
 being across all these distracting forces, and keep 
 a slender human word among the storms, dis- 
 tances, and accidents, that drive us hither and 
 thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force 
 of one man reappear to redeem its pledge, after 
 months and years, in the most distant climates. 
 
 We must not try to write the laws of any one 
 virtue, looking at that only. Human nature loves 
 no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The pru- 
 dence which secures an outward well-being, is not 
 to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism 
 and holiness are studied by another, but they are 
 14
 
 210 ESSAY VH. 
 
 reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, 
 persons, property, and existing forms. But as 
 every fact hath its roots in the soul, and if the 
 soul were changed, would cease to be, or would 
 become some other thing, therefore, the proper ad- 
 ministration of outward things will always rest on 
 a just apprehension of their cause and origin, that 
 is, the good man will be the wise man, and the 
 single-hearted, the politic man. Every violation 
 of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, 
 but is a stab at the health of human society. On 
 the most profitable lie, the course of events pres- 
 ently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness 
 proves to be the best tactics, for it invites frank- 
 ness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and 
 makes their business a friendship. Trust men, 
 and they will be true to you ; treat them greatly, 
 and they will show themselves great, though they 
 make an exception in your favor to all their rules 
 of trade. 
 
 So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable 
 things, prudence does not consist in evasion, or in 
 flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in 
 the most peaceful parts of life with any sincerity, 
 must screw himself up to resolution. Let him 
 front the object of his worst apprehension, and 
 his stoutness will commonly make his fear ground- 
 less. The Latin proverb says, that " in battles, 
 the eye is first overcome." The eye is daunted, 
 and greatly exaggerates the perils of the hour. 
 Entire self-possession may make a battle very little 
 more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at
 
 PRUDENCE. 2 1 1 
 
 foot-ball. Examples are cited by soldiers, of men 
 who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire 
 given to it, and who have stepped aside from the 
 path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are 
 chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The 
 drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health 
 renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the 
 sleet, as under the sun of June. 
 
 In the occurrence of unpleasant things among 
 neighbors, fear comes readily to heart, and magni- 
 fies the consequence of the other party ; but it is 
 a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak, 
 and apparently strong. To himself, he seems 
 weak ; to others, formidable. You are afraid of 
 Grim ; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are 
 solicitous of the good will of the meanest person, 
 uneasy at his ill will. But the sturdiest offender 
 of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip 
 up his claims, is as thin and timid as any ; and the 
 peace of society is often kept, because, as children 
 say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. Far 
 off, men swell, bully, and threaten ; bring them 
 hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. 
 
 It is a proverb, that " courtesy costs nothing ; " 
 but calculation might come to value love for its 
 profit. Love is fabled to be blind ; but kindness 
 is necessary to perception ; love is not a hood, but 
 an eye-water. If you meet a sectary, or a hostile 
 partisan, never recognize the dividing lines ; but 
 meet on what common ground remains, if only 
 that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both, 
 the area will widen very fast, and ere you know
 
 212 ESSAY VII. 
 
 it, the boundary mountains, on which the eye had 
 fastened, have melted into air. If he set out to 
 contend, almost St. Paul will lie, almost St. John 
 will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical peo- 
 ple, an argument on religion will make of the pure 
 and chosen souls. Shuffle they will, and crov, 
 crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only that 
 they may brag and conquer there, and not a 
 thought has enriched either party, and not an 
 emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither 
 should you put yourself in a false position to your 
 contemporaries, by indulging a vein of hostility 
 and bitterness. Though your views are in straight 
 antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of senti- 
 ment, assume that you are saying precisely that 
 which all think, and in the flow of wit and love, 
 roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with riot 
 the infirmity of a doubt. So at least shall you get 
 an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of 
 the soul are so much better than the voluntary 
 ones, that you will never do yourself justice in 
 dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of 
 by the right handle, does not show itself propor- 
 tionate, and in its true bearings, but bears ex- 
 torted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a 
 consent, and it shall presently be granted, since, 
 really, and underneath all their external diversi- 
 ties, all men are of one heart and mind. 
 
 Wisdom will never let us stand with any man 
 or men, on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sym- 
 pathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited 
 for some better sympathy and intimacy to come.
 
 PRUDENCE. 213 
 
 But whence and when ? To-morrow will be like 
 to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing 
 to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off 
 from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, 
 new women, approaching us. We are too old to 
 regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any 
 greater, or more powerful. Let us suck the sweet- 
 ness of those affections and consuetudes that grow 
 near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. 
 Undoubtedly, we can easily pick faults in our com- 
 pany, can easily whisper names prouder, and that 
 tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination 
 hath its friends ; and pleasant would life be with 
 such companions. But, if you cannot have them 
 on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If 
 not the Deity, but our ambition hews a;.a shapes 
 the new relations, their virtue escapes, as straw- 
 berries lose their flavor in garden-beds. 
 
 Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, 
 and all the virtues range themselves on the side of 
 prudence, or the art of securing a present well-be- 
 ing. I do not know if all matter will be found to 
 be made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, 
 at last, but the world of manners and actions is 
 wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will, we 
 are pretty sure in a short space, to be mumbling 
 our ten commandments.
 
 HEROISM. 
 
 " Paradise is under the shadow of swords." 
 
 Mahomet.
 
 ESSAY Yffl, 
 HEROISM. 
 
 IN the elder English dramatists, and mainly in 
 the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a 
 constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble be- 
 havior were as easily marked in the society of 
 their age, as color is in our American population. 
 When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valeric enters, 
 though he be a stranger, the duke or governor ex- 
 claims, This is a gentleman, and proffers civil- 
 ities without end ; but all the rest are slag and re- 
 fuse. In harmony with this delight in personal 
 advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic 
 cast of character and dialogue, as in Bonduca, 
 Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double Marriage, 
 wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, 
 and on such deep grounds of character, that the 
 dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the 
 plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many 
 texts, take the following. The Roman Martius 
 has conquered Athens, all but the invincible 
 spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and 
 Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter in- 
 flames Martius, and he seeks to save her husband ; 
 
 (217)
 
 218 ESS Ay VI I L 
 
 but Sophocles will not ask his life, although 
 assured that a word will save him, and the execu- 
 tion of both proceeds. 
 
 Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 
 
 Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
 Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, 
 My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 
 
 Dor. Stay, Sophocles, with this, tie up my sight; 
 Let not soft nature so transformed be, 
 And lose her gentler sexed humanity, 
 To make me see my lord bleed. So, 't is well; 
 Never oue object underneath the sun 
 Will I behold before my Sophocles : 
 Farewell ; now teach the Romans how to die. 
 
 Mar. Dost know what 't is to die ? 
 
 Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, 
 And therefore, not what 't is to live ; to die 
 Is to begin to live. It is to end 
 An old, stale, weary work, and to commence 
 A newer, and a better. 'T is to leave 
 Deceitful knaves for the society 
 Of gods and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part 
 At last, from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, 
 And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do^ 
 
 Vat. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life 
 thus? 
 
 Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
 To them I ever loved best ? Now I'll kneel, 
 But with my back toward thee ; 'tis the last duty 
 This trunk can do the gods. 
 
 Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
 Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth : 
 This is a man, a woman ! Kiss thy lord, 
 And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
 O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
 With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 
 My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, 
 Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 
 
 Val. What ails my brother ?
 
 HEROISM. 219 
 
 Soph. Martius, oh Martius, 
 Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 
 
 Dor. O star of Rome ! what gratitude can speak 
 Fit words to follow such a deed as this ? 
 
 Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
 With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
 Captived himself, has captivated me, 
 And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, 
 His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. 
 By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; 
 He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved ; 
 Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, 
 And Martius walks now in captivity. 
 
 I do not readily remember any poem, play, 
 sermon, novel, or oration, that our press vents in 
 the last few years, which goes to the same tune. 
 We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but 
 not often the sound of any fife. Yet, Words- 
 worth's Laodamia, and the ode of " Dion," and 
 some sonnets, have a certain noble music ; and 
 Scott will sometimes draw a stroke like the por- 
 trait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of Bur- 
 ley. Thomas Carl vie, with his natural taste for 
 what is manly and daring in character, has suffered 
 no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his 
 biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, 
 Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In the 
 Harleian Miscellanies, there is an account of the 
 battle of Lutzen, which deserves to be read. 
 And Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens, re- 
 counts the prodigies of individual valor with ad- 
 miration, all the more evident on the part of the 
 narrator, that he seems to think that his place in 
 Christian Oxford requires of him some proper
 
 220 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore 
 the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to 
 Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To 
 him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epamin- 
 ondas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are 
 more deeply indebted to him than to all the 
 ancient writers. Each of his " Lives " is a refuta- 
 tion to the despondency and cowardice of our 
 religious and political theorists. A wild courage, 
 a stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, 
 shines in every anecdote, and has given that book 
 its immense fame. 
 
 We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, 
 more than books of political science, or of private 
 economy. Life is a festival only to the wise. 
 Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, 
 it wears a ragged and dangerous front. The vio- 
 lations of the laws of nature by our predecessors 
 and our contemporaries, are punished in us also. 
 The disease and deformity around us, certify the 
 infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, 
 and often violation on violation to breed such 
 compound misery. A lock-jaw, that bends a 
 man's head back to his heels, hydrophobia, that 
 makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity, 
 that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, 
 famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, 
 as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its 
 outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, almost no 
 man exists, who has not in his own person, be- 
 come to some amount, a stockholder in the sin,
 
 HEROISM. 221 
 
 and so made himself liable to a share in the expia- 
 tion. 
 
 Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arm- 
 ing of the man. Let him hear in season, that he 
 is born into the state of war, and that the com- 
 monwealth and his own well-being, require that 
 he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, 
 but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor 
 dreading the thunder, let him take both reputa- 
 tion and life in his hand, and with perfect 
 urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the 
 absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of 
 his behavior. 
 
 Towards all this external evil, the man within 
 the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms 
 his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite 
 army of enemies. To this military attitude of 
 the soul, we give the name of Heroism. Its 
 rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, 
 which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a 
 self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence 
 in the plentitude of its energy and power to re- 
 pair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind 
 of such balance that no disturbances can shake 
 his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, 
 he advances to his own music, alike in frightful 
 alarms, and in the tipsy mirth of universal dis- 
 soluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical 
 in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it: it 
 seems not to know that other soul's are of one 
 texture with it ; it hath pride ; it is the extreme 
 of individual nature. Nevertheless, we must pro-
 
 222 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 foundly revere it. There is somewhat in great 
 actions, which does not allow us to go behind 
 them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and 
 therefore is always right, and, although a different 
 breeding, different religion, and greater intellect- 
 ual activity, would have modified, or even 
 reversed the particular action, yet for the hero, 
 that thing he does, is the highest deed, and is not 
 open to the censure of philosophers or divines. 
 It is the avowal of the unschooled man, that he 
 finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, 
 of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, 
 and that he knows that his will is higher and 
 more excellent than all actual and all possible 
 antagonists. 
 
 Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of 
 mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to 
 the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an 
 obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's 
 character. Now to no other man can its wisdom 
 appear as it does to him, for every man must be 
 supposed to see a little farther on his own proper 
 path, than any one else. Therefore, just and wise 
 men take umbrage at his act, until after some little 
 time be past ; then, they see it to be in unison 
 with their acts. All prudent men see that the 
 action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity ; 
 for every heroic act measures itself by its con- 
 tempt of some external good. But it finds its 
 own success at last, and then the prudent also 
 extol. 
 
 Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the
 
 HEROISM. 223 
 
 state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects 
 are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and 
 the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil 
 agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just. It is 
 generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty 
 calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It 
 persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of 
 a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the lit- 
 tleness of common life. That false prudence 
 which dotes on health and wealth, is the foil, the 
 butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like 
 Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall 
 it say, then, to the sugar-plums, and cats'-cradles, 
 to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and 
 custard, which rack the wit of all human society. 
 What joys has kind nature provided for us dear 
 creatures ! There seems to be no interval be- 
 tween greatness and meanness. When the spirit 
 is not master of the world, then is it its dupe. 
 Yet the little man takes the great hoax so inno- 
 cently, works in it so headlong and believing, is 
 born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, at- 
 tending on his own health, laying traps for sweet 
 food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse 
 or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip, or a little 
 praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh 
 at such earnest nonsense. u Indeed, these humble 
 considerations make me out of love with great- 
 ness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note 
 how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, 
 these and those that were the peach-colored ones,
 
 224 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for 
 superfluity, and one other for use." 
 
 Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, 
 consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers 
 at their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time 
 and the unusual display ; the soul of a better 
 quality thrusts back the unseasonable economy 
 into the vaults of life, and says, I will obey the 
 God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will provide. 
 Ibn Hankal, the Arabian geographer, describes a 
 heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Buk- 
 haria. " When I was in Sogd, I saw a great build- 
 ing, like a palace, the gates of which were open 
 and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I 
 asked the reason, and was told that the house had 
 not been shut night or day, for a hundred years. 
 Strangers may present themselves at any hour, 
 and in whatever number ; the master has amply 
 provided for the reception of the men and their 
 animals, and is never happier than when they tarry 
 for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen 
 in any other country." The magnanimous know 
 very well that the} T who give time, or money, or 
 shelter, to the stranger so it be done for love, 
 and not for ostentation do, as it were, put God 
 under obligation to them, so perfect are the com- 
 pensations of the universe. In some way, the 
 time they seem to lose, is redeemed, and the pains 
 they seem to take, remunerate themselves. These 
 men fan the flame of human love and raise the 
 standard of civil virtue among mankind. But 
 hospitality must be for service, and not for show,
 
 HEROISM. 22$ 
 
 or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates 
 itself too high to value itself by the splendor of 
 its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, 
 and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a 
 better grace to bannocks and fair water, than 
 belong to city feasts. 
 
 The temperance of the hero proceeds from the 
 same wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he 
 has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its 
 austerity. It seems not worth his while to be 
 solemn, and denounce with bitterness flesh-eating, 
 or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, or 
 tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows 
 how he dines, how he dresses, but without railing 
 or precision, his living is natural and poetic. John 
 Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, and said 
 of wine, " It is a noble, generous liquor, and we 
 should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remem- 
 ber, water was made before it." Better still, is the 
 temperance of king David, who poured out on the 
 ground unto the Lord, the water which three of 
 his warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril 
 of their lives. 
 
 It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his 
 sword, after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a 
 line of Euripides, " O virtue, I have followed thee 
 through life, and I find thee at last but a shade." 
 I doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. 
 The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its 
 nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely, and to 
 sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the per- 
 ception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its orna- 
 16
 
 226 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 ment. Plenty, it does not need, and can very well 
 abide its loss. 
 
 But that which takes my fancy most, in the 
 heroic class, is the good humor and hilarity they 
 exhibit. It is a height to which common duty 
 can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with 
 solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, suc- 
 cess, and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will 
 not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show 
 of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. 
 Scipio, charged with peculation, refuses to do him- 
 self so great a disgrace, as to wait for justification, 
 though he had the scroll of his accounts in his 
 hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. 
 Socrates' condemnation of himself to be main- 
 tained in all honor in the Pr}'taneum, during his 
 life, and Sir Thomas More's playfulness at the 
 scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's tk Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout 
 captain and his company, 
 
 Jnl. Why, slaves, 't is in our power to hang ye. 
 Master. Very likely, 
 
 'T is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. 
 
 These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the 
 bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great 
 will not condescend to take any thing seriously ; 
 all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though 
 it were the building of cities or the eradication of 
 old and foolish churches and nations, which have 
 cumbered the earth long thousands of years. 
 Simple hearts put all the history and customs of
 
 HEROISM. 227 
 
 this world behind them, and play their own play 
 in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the 
 world ; and such would appear, could we see the 
 human race assembled in vision, like little chil- 
 dren frolicking together, though, to the eyes of 
 mankind at large, they wear a stately and solemn 
 garb of works and influences. 
 
 The interest these fine stories have for us, the 
 
 Eower of a romance over the boy who grasps the 
 jrbidden book under his bench at school, our 
 delight in the hero, is the main fact to our pur- 
 pose. All these great and transcendent properties 
 are ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek 
 energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already 
 domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find 
 room for this great guest in our small houses. 
 The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us 
 of our superstitious associations with places and 
 times, with 7iumber and size. Why should these 
 words, Athenian, Roman, Asia, and England, so 
 tingle in the ear ? Let us feel that where the 
 heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, 
 and not in any geography of fame. Massachu- 
 setts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you 
 think paltry places, and the ear loves names of for- 
 eign and classic topography. But here we are ; 
 that is a great fact, and, if we will tarry a little, 
 we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, 
 only that thyself is here ; and art and nature, 
 hope and dread, friends, angels, and the Supreme 
 Being, shall not be absent from the chamber 
 where thou sittest. Epaminondas, brave and
 
 228 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus 
 to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies 
 very well where he is. The Jerseys were hand- 
 some ground enough for Washington to tread, and 
 London streets for the feet of Milton. A great 
 man illustrates his place, makes his climate genial 
 in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved 
 element of all delicate spirits. That country is 
 the fairest, which is inhabited by the noblest 
 minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in 
 reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Colum- 
 bus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, teach us how 
 needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth 
 of our living, should deck it with more than regal 
 or national splendor, and act on principles that 
 should interest man arid nature in the length of 
 our days. 
 
 We have seen or heard of many extraordinary 
 young men, who never ripened, or whose perform- 
 ance in actual life, was not extraordinary. When 
 we see their air "and mien, when we hear them 
 speak of society, of books, of religion, we admire 
 their superiority; they seem to throw contempt on 
 the whole state of the world ; theirs is the tone 
 of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolu- 
 tions. But they enter an active profession, and 
 the forming Colossus shrinks to the common size 
 of man. The magic they used, was the ideal 
 tendencies, which always make the Actual ridicu- 
 lous; but the tough world had its revenge the 
 moment they put their horses of the sun to plough 
 in its furrow. They found no example and no
 
 HEROISM. 229 
 
 companion, and their heart fainted. What then? 
 The lesson they gave in their first aspirations, is 
 yet true, and a better valor, and a purer truth, 
 shall one day execute their will, and put the 
 world to shame. Or why should a woman liken 
 herself to any historical woman, and think, be- 
 cause Sappho, or Sevigne', or De Stael, or the 
 cloistered souls who have had genius and cultiva- 
 tion, do not satisfy the imagination, and the serene 
 Themis, none can, certainly not she. Why not? 
 She has a new and unattempted problem to solve, 
 perchance that of the happiest nature that ever- 
 bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk 
 serenely on her way, accept the hint of each new 
 experience, try, in turn, all the gifts God offers 
 her, that she may learn the power and the charm, 
 that like a new dawn radiating out of the deep of 
 space, her new-born being is. The fair girl, who 
 repels interference by a decided and proud choice 
 of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful 
 and lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat 
 of her own nobleness. The silent heart encour- 
 ages her ; O friend, never strike sail to a fear. 
 Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. 
 Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is 
 cheered and refined by the vision. 
 
 The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its 
 
 Eersistency. All men have wandering impulses, 
 ts and starts of generosity. But when you 
 have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do 
 not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the 
 world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor
 
 230 ESSAY VlfL 
 
 the common the heroic. Yet we have the weak- 
 ness to expect the sympathy of people in those 
 actions whose excellence is that they outrun sym- 
 pathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you 
 would serve your brother, because it is fit for you 
 to serve him, do not take back your words when 
 you find that prudent people do not commend 
 you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate 
 yourself if you have done something strange and 
 extravagant, and broken the monotony of a de- 
 corous age. It was a high counsel that I once 
 heard given to a young person, "Always do what 
 you are afraid to do." A simple manly character 
 need never make an apology, but should regard 
 its past action with the calmness of Phocion, 
 when he admitted that the event of the battle 
 was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from 
 the battle. 
 
 There is no weakness or exposure for which we 
 cannot find consolation in the thought, this is a 
 part of my constitution, part of my relation and 
 office to my fellow-creature. Has nature coven- 
 anted with me that I should never appear to dis- 
 advantage, never make a ridiculous figure ? Let 
 us be generous of our dignity, as well as of our 
 money. Greatness once and forever has done 
 with opinion. We tell our charities, not because 
 we wish to be praised for them, not because we 
 think they have great merit, but for our justifica- 
 tion. It is a capital blunder; as you discover, 
 when another man recites his charities. 
 
 To speak the truth, even with some austerity,
 
 HEROISM. 23 1 
 
 to live with some rigor of temperance, or some 
 extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism 
 which common gopd nature would appoint to 
 those who are at ease and in plenty, in sign that 
 they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude 
 of suffering men. And not only need we breathe 
 and exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of 
 abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity, 
 but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold 
 eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes in- 
 vade men, and to familiarize himself with disgust- 
 ing forms of disease, with sounds of execration, 
 and the vision of violent death. 
 
 Times of heroism are generally times of terror, 
 but the day never shines, in which this element 
 may not work. The circumstances of man, we 
 say, are historically somewhat better in this coun- 
 try, and at this hour, than perhaps ever before. 
 More freedom exists for culture. It will not now 
 run against an axe, at the first step out of the 
 beaten track of opinion. But whoso is heroic, 
 will always find crises to try his edge. Human 
 virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and 
 the trial of persecution always proceeds. It is 
 but the other day, that the brave Lovejoy gave 
 his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights 
 of free speech and opinion, and died when it was 
 better not to live. 
 
 I see not any road of perfect peace, which a 
 man can walk but to take counsel of his own 
 bosom. Let him quit too much association, let 
 him go home much, and establish himself in those
 
 232 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 courses he approves. The unremitting retention 
 of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties, 
 is hardening the character to that temper which 
 will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult, 
 or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages have hap- 
 pened to men, may befall a man again : and very 
 easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a 
 decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and 
 feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may freely 
 bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness 
 of temper he can, and inquire how fast he can fix 
 his sense of duty, braving such penalties, when- 
 ever it may please the next newspaper, and a suffi- 
 cient number of his neighbors to pronounce his 
 opinions incendiary. 
 
 It may calm the apprehension of calamity in 
 the most susceptible heart, to see how quick a 
 bound nature has set to the utmost infliction of 
 malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which 
 no enemy can follow us. 
 
 " Let them rave : 
 Thou art quiet in thy grave." 
 
 In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, 
 in the hour when we are deaf to the higher voices, 
 who does not envy them who have seen safely to 
 an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees 
 the meanness of our politics, but inly congratu- 
 lates Washington, that he is long already wrapped 
 in his shroud, and forever safe ; that he was laid 
 sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet 
 subjugated in him? Who does not sometimes
 
 HEROISM. 233 
 
 envy the good and brave, who are no more to suf- 
 fer from the tumults of the natural world, and 
 await with curious complacency the speedy term 
 of his own conversation with finite nature ? And 
 yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than 
 treacherous, has already made death impossible, 
 and affirms itself tio mortal, but a native of the 
 deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being.
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 
 
 ' But souls that of his own good life partake, 
 He loves as his own self; dear as his eye 
 They are to Him : He'll never them forsake : 
 When they shall die, then God himself shall die : 
 They live, they live in blest eternity." 
 
 Henry More.
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 
 
 THERE is a difference between one and another 
 hour of life, in their authority and subsequent 
 effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is 
 habitual. Yet is there a depth in those brief mo- 
 ments, which constrains us to ascribe more reality 
 to them than to all other experiences. For this 
 reason, the argument, which is always forthcom- 
 ing to silence those who conceive extraordinary 
 hopes of man, namely, the appeal to experience, 
 is forever invalid and vain. A mightier hope 
 abolishes despair. We give up the past to the 
 objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this 
 hope. We grant that human life is mean; but 
 how did we find out that it was mean ? What is 
 the ground of this uneasiness of ours ; of this old 
 discontent? What is the universal sense of want 
 and ignorance, but the fine inuendo by which the 
 great soul makes its enormous claim? Why do 
 men feel that the natural history of man has never 
 been written, but always he is leaving behind 
 what you have said of him, and it becomes^old, 
 and books of metaphysics worthless? The "phi- 
 losophy of six thousand years has not searched the 
 chambers and magazines of the soul. In its ex- 
 
 (237)
 
 238 ESSAY IX. 
 
 periments there has always remained, in the last 
 analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is 
 a stream whose source is hidden. Always our 
 being is descending into us from we know not 
 whence. The most exact calculator has no pre- 
 science that somewhat incalculable may not baulk 
 the very next moment. I am constrained every 
 moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events 
 than the will I call mine. 
 
 As with events, so is it with thoughts. When 
 I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions 
 I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, 
 I see that I am a pensioner, not a cause, but a 
 surprised spectator of this ethereal water ; that I 
 desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude 
 of reception, but from some alien energy the 
 visions come. 
 
 The Supreme Critic on all the errors of the past 
 and the present, and the only prophet of that 
 which must be, is that great nature in which we 
 rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the at- 
 mosphere ; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within 
 which every man's particular being is contained 
 and made one with all other ; that common heart, 
 of which all sincere conversation is the worship, 
 to which all right action is submission ; that over- 
 powering reality which confutes our tricks and 
 talents, and constrains every one to pass for what 
 he is, and to speak from his character and not 
 from his tongue ; and which evermore tends and 
 aims to pass into our thought and hand, and be- 
 come wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty.
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 239 
 
 We live in succession, in division, in parts, in par- 
 ticles. Meantime within man is the soul of the 
 whole ; the wise silence ; the universal beauty, to 
 which every part and particle is equally related : 
 the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which 
 we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to 
 us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every 
 hour, but the act of seeing, and the thing seen, the 
 seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, 
 are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the 
 sun, the moon, the animal, the tree ; but the 
 whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the 
 soul. It is only by the vision of that Wisdom, 
 that the horoscope of the ages can be read, and it 
 is only by falling back on our better thoughts, by 
 yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate 
 in every man, that we can know what it saith. 
 Every man's words, who speaks from that life, 
 must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the 
 same thought on their own part. I dare not speak 
 for it. My words do not carry its august sense ; 
 they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire 
 whom it will, and behold ! their speech shall be 
 lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of 
 the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, 
 if sacred I may not use, to indicate the heaven of 
 this deity, and to report what hints I have col- 
 lected of the transcendent simplicity and energy 
 of the Highest Law. 
 
 If we consider what happens in conversation, 
 in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in sur- 
 prises, in the instructions of dreams wherein often
 
 240 ESS A Y IX. 
 
 we see ourselves in masquerade, the droll dis- 
 guises only magnifying and enhancing a real ele- 
 ment, and forcing it on our distinct notice, we 
 shall catch many hints that will broaden and 
 lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All 
 goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, 
 but animates and exercises all the organs ; is not a 
 function, like the power of memory, of calculation, 
 of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet ; 
 is not a faculty, but a light ; is not the intellect or 
 the will, but the master of the intellect and the 
 will ; is the vast back-ground of our being, in 
 which they lie, an immensity not possessed and 
 that cannot be possessed. From within or from 
 behind, a light shines through us upon things, 
 and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the 
 light is all. A man is the facade of a temple 
 wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What 
 we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, 
 planting, counting man, does not, as we know 
 him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. 
 Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ 
 he is, would he let it appear through his action, 
 would make our knees bend. When it breathes 
 through his intellect, it is genius ; when it 
 breathes through his will, it is virtue ; when it 
 flows through his affection, it is love. And 
 the blindness of the intellect begins, when it 
 would be something of itself. The weakness of 
 the will begins when the individual would be 
 something of himself. All reform aims, in some 
 one particular, to let the great soul have its way
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 241 
 
 through us; in other words, to engage us to 
 obey. 
 
 Of this pure nature every man is at some time 
 sensible. Language cannot paint it with his col- 
 ors. It is too subtle. It is undefinable, immeas- 
 urable, but we know that it pervades and con- 
 tains us. We know that all spiritual being is in 
 man. A wise old proverb says, " God comes to 
 see us without bell : " that is, as there is no screen 
 or ceiling between our heads and the infinite 
 heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul 
 where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, 
 begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open 
 on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to all 
 the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, 
 Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man 
 ever got above, but always they tower over us, 
 and most in the moment when our interests tempt 
 us to wound them. 
 
 The sovereignty of this nature whereof we 
 speak, is made known by its independency of 
 those limitations which circumscribe us on every 
 hand. The soul circumscribeth all things. As 
 I have said, it contradicts all experience. In like 
 manner it abolishes time and space. The influ- 
 ence of the senses has, in most men, overpowered 
 the mind to that degree, that the walls of time 
 and space have come to look solid, real and in- 
 surmountable ; and to speak with levity of these 
 limits, is, in the world, the sign of insanit} 7 . Yet 
 time and space are but inverse measures of the 
 16
 
 242 ESSA Y IX. 
 
 force of the soul. A man is capable of abolishing 
 them both. The spirit sports with time 
 
 " Can crowd eternity into an hour, 
 Or stretch an hour to eternity." 
 
 We are often made to feel that there is another 
 youth and age than that which is measured from 
 the year of our natural birth. Some thoughts 
 always find us young and keep us so. Such a 
 thought is the love of the universal and eternal 
 beauty. Every man parts from that contempla- 
 tion with the feeling that it rather belongs to 
 ages than to mortal life. The least activity of the 
 intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from 
 the influences of time. In sickness, in languor, 
 give us a strain of poetry or a profound sentence, 
 and we are refreshed; or produce a volume of 
 Plato, or Shakespeare, or remind us of their names, 
 and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. 
 See how the deep, divine thought demolishes cen- 
 turies and millenniums, and makes itself present 
 through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less 
 effective now than it was when first his mouth 
 was opened ? The emphasis of facts and persons 
 to my soul has nothing to do with time. And so, 
 always, the soul's scale is one ; the scale of the 
 senses and the understanding is another. Before 
 the great revelations of the soul, Time, Space 
 and Nature shrink away. In common speech, we 
 refer all things to time, as we habitually refer the 
 immensely sundered stars to one concave sphere. 
 And so we say that the Judgment is distant or
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 243 
 
 near, that the Millennium approaches, that a day 
 of certain political, moral, social reforms is at 
 hand, and the like, when we mean, that in the 
 nature of things, one of the facts we contemplate 
 is external and fugitive, and the other is perma- 
 nent and connate with the soul. The things we 
 now esteem fixed, shall, one by one, detach them- 
 selves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and 
 fall. The wind shall blow them none knows 
 whither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, 
 London, are facts as fugitive as any institution 
 past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is so- 
 ciety, and so is the world. The soul looketh stead- 
 ily forwards, creating a world alway before her, 
 and leaving worlds alway behind her. She has 
 no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, 
 nor men. The soul knows only the soul. All 
 else is idle weeds for her wearing. 
 
 After its own law and not by arithmetic is the 
 rate of its progress to be computed. The soul's 
 advances are not made by gradation, such as can 
 be represented by motion in a straight line ; but 
 rather by ascension of state, such as can be repre- 
 sented by metamorphosis, from the egg to the 
 worm, from the worm to the fly. The growths of 
 genius are of a certain total character, that does 
 not advance the elect individual first over John, 
 then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the 
 pain of discovered inferiority, but by every throe 
 of growth, the man expands there where he 
 works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, popula-, 
 tions of men. With each divine impulse the mind
 
 244 ESS A Y IX. 
 
 rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and 
 comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires 
 its air. It converses with truths that have always 
 been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious 
 of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Anian, than 
 with persons in the house. 
 
 This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The 
 simple rise as by specific levity, not into a particu- 
 lar virtue, but into the region of all the virtues. 
 They are in the spirit which contains them all. 
 The soul is superior to all the particulars of 
 merit. The soul requires purity, but purity is 
 not it; requires justice, but justice is not that ; 
 requires beneficence, but is somewhat better : so 
 that there is a kind of descent and accommoda- 
 tion felt when we leave speaking of moral nature, 
 to urge a virtue which it enjoins. For, to the 
 soul in her pure action, all the virtues are nat- 
 ural, and not painfully acquired. Speak to his 
 heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. 
 
 Within the same sentiment is the germ of in- 
 tellectual growth, which obeys the same law. 
 Those who are capable of humility, of justice, 
 of love, of aspiration, are already on a platform 
 that commands the sciences and arts, speech and 
 poetry, action and grace. .For whoso dwells in 
 this mortal beatitude, does already anticipate 
 those special powers which men prize so highly ; just 
 as love does justice to all the gifts of the object 
 beloved. The lover has no talent, no skill, which 
 passes for quite nothing with his enamored maiden, 
 however little she may possess of related faculty.
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 245 
 
 And the heart, which abandons itself to the Su- 
 preme Mind, finds itself related to all its works 
 and will travel a royal road to particular knowl- 
 edges and powers. For, in ascending to this pri- 
 mary and aboriginal sentiment, we have come 
 from our remote station on the circumference in- 
 stantaneously to the centre of the world, where, 
 as in the closet of God, we see causes, and antici- 
 pate the universe, which is but a slow effect. 
 
 One mode of the divine teaching is the incarna- 
 tion of the spirit in a form, in forms, like my 
 own. I live in society ; with persons who answer 
 to thoughts in my own mind, or outwardly 
 express to me a certain obedience to the great 
 instincts to which I live. I see its presence to 
 them. I am certified of a common nature; 
 and so these other souls, these separated selves, 
 draw me as nothing else can. They stir in 
 me the new emotions we call passion ; of love, 
 hatred, fear, admiration, pity ; thence comes 
 conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and 
 war. Persons are supplementary to the primary 
 teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for 
 persons. Childhood and youth see all the world 
 in them. But the larger experience of man dis- 
 covers the identical nature appearing through 
 them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with 
 the impersonal. In all conversation between two 
 persons, tacit reference is made as to a third party, 
 to a common nature. That third party or com- 
 mon nature is not social ; it is impersonal ; is God. 
 And so in groups where debate is earnest, and es-
 
 246 ESSA Y IX. 
 
 pecially on great questions of thought, the com- 
 pany become aware of their unity ; aware that the 
 thought rises to an equal height in all bosoms, 
 that all have a spiritual property in what was said, 
 as well as the saver. They all wax wiser than 
 they were. It arches over them like a temple, 
 this unity of thought, in which every heart beats 
 with nobler sense of power and duty, and thinks 
 and acts with unusual solemnity. All are con- 
 scious of attaining to a higher self-possession. It 
 shines for all. There is a certain wisdom of 
 humanity which is common to the greatest men 
 with the lowest, and which our ordinary education 
 often labors to silence and obstruct. The mind is 
 one, and the best minds who love truth for its 
 own sake, think much less of property in truth. 
 Thankfully they accept it everywhere, and do not 
 label or stamp it with any man's name, for it is 
 theirs long beforehand. It is theirs from eternity. 
 The learned and the studious of thought have no 
 monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction 
 in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. 
 We owe many valuable observations to people 
 who are not very acute or profound, and who say 
 the thing without effort, which we want and have 
 long been hunting in vain. The action of the 
 soul is oftener in that which is felt and left un- 
 said, than in that which is said in any conversa- 
 tion. It broods over every society, and they un- 
 consciously seek for it in each other. We know 
 better than we do. We do not yet possess our- 
 gelves, and we know at the same time that we are
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 247 
 
 much more. I feel the same truth how often in 
 my trivial conversation with my neighbors, that 
 somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by- 
 play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of 
 us. 
 
 Men descend to meet. In their habitual and 
 mean service to the world, for which ihey forsake 
 their native nobleness, they resemble those Ara- 
 bian Sheikhs, who dwell in mean houses and affect 
 an external poverty, to escape the rapacity of the 
 Pacha, and reserve all their display of wealth for 
 their interior and guarded retirements. 
 
 As it is present in all persons, so it is in every 
 period of life. It is adult already in the infant 
 man. In my dealing with my child, my Latin and 
 Greek, my accomplishments and my money, stead 
 me nothing. They are all lost on him : but as 
 much soul as I have, avails. If I am merely wil- 
 ful, he gives me a Rowland for an Oliver, sets his 
 will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I 
 please, the degradation of beating him by my 
 superiority of strength. But if I renounce my 
 will, and act for the soul, setting that up as um- 
 pire between us two, out of his young eyes looks 
 the same soul ; he reveres and loves with me. 
 
 The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. 
 We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and 
 scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask 
 you, when you have spoken what they do not 
 wish to hear, " How do you know it is truth, arid 
 not an error of your own?" We know truth 
 when we see it, from opinion, as we know when
 
 248 ESSA Y IX. 
 
 we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand 
 sentence of Emanuel Sweclenborg, which would 
 alone indicate the greatness of that man's percep- 
 tion, u It is no proof of a man's understanding to 
 be able to affirm whatever he pleases, but to be 
 able to discern that what is true is true, and 
 that what is false is false, this is the mark 
 and character of intelligence." In the book 
 I read, the good thought returns to me, as 
 every truth will, the image of the whole soul. To 
 the bad thought which I find in it, the same soul 
 becomes a discerning, separating sword and lops it 
 away. We are wiser than we know. If we will 
 riot interfere with our thought, but will act en- 
 tirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we 
 know the particular thing, and every thing, and 
 every man. For, the Maker of all things and all 
 persons, stands behind us,' and casts his dread 
 omniscience through us over things. 
 
 But beyond this recognition of its own in partic- 
 ular passages of the individual's experience, it 
 also reveals truth. And here we should seek to 
 reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to 
 speak with a worthier, loftier strain of that ad- 
 vent. For the soul's communication of truth is 
 the highest event in nature, for it then does not 
 give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or 
 passes into and becomes that man whom it en- 
 lightens ; or in proportion to that truth he re- 
 ceives,, it takes him to itself. 
 
 We distinguish the announcements of the soul, 
 its manifestations of its own nature, by the term
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 249 
 
 Revelation. These are always attended by the 
 emotion of the sublime. For this communication 
 is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It 
 is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flow- 
 ing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct ap- 
 prehension of this central commandment agitates 
 men with awe and delight. A thrill passes 
 through all men at the reception of new truth, or 
 at the performance of a great action, which comes 
 out of the heart of nature. In these communica- 
 tions, the power to see is not separated from the 
 will to do, but the insight proceeds from 
 obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joy- 
 ful perception. Every moment when the individ- 
 ual feels himself invaded by it, is memorable. 
 Always, I believe, by the necessity of our consti- 
 tution, a certain enthusiasm attends the individ- 
 ual's consciousness of that divine presence. The 
 character and duration of this enthusiasm varies 
 with the state of the individual, from an extasy 
 and trance and prophetic inspiration which is its 
 rarer appearance, to the faintest glow of virtuous 
 emotion, in which form it warms, like our house- 
 hold fires, all the families and associations of men, 
 and makes society possible. A certain tendency 
 to insanity has always attended the opening of the 
 religious sense in men, as if " blasted with excess 
 of light." The trances of Socrates ; the " union " 
 of Plotinus ; the vision of Porphyry ; the conver- 
 sion of Paul ; the aurora of Behmen ; the convul- 
 sions of George Fox and his Quakers ; the illumin- 
 ation of Swedenborg ; are of this kind. What was
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 in the case of these remarkable persons a ravish- 
 ment, has, in innumerable instances in common 
 life, been exhibited in less striking manner. Every- 
 where the history of religion betrays a tendency 
 to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and 
 Quietist ; the opening of the internal sense of the 
 Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem 
 Church ; the revival of the Calvinistic Churches ; 
 the experiences of the Methodists, are varying 
 forms of that shudder of awe and delight with 
 which the individual soul always mingles with the 
 universal soul. 
 
 The nature of these revelations is always the 
 same : they are perceptions of the absolute law. 
 They are solutions of the soul's own questions. 
 They do not answer the questions which the un- 
 derstanding asks. The soul answers never by 
 words, but by the thing itself that is inquired 
 after. v 
 
 Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The 
 popular notion of a revelation, is that it is a telling 
 of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul, the un- 
 derstanding seeks to find answers to sensual ques- 
 tions, and undertakes to tell from God how long 
 men shall exist, what their hands shall do, and 
 who shall be their company, adding even names, 
 and dates and places. But we must pick no locks. 
 We must check this low curiosity. An answer in 
 words is delusive ; it is really no answer to the 
 questions you ask. Do not ask a description of 
 the countries toward which you sail. The descrip- 
 tion does not describe them to you, and to-morrow
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 251 
 
 you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting 
 them. Men ask of the immortality of the soul, and 
 the employments of heaven, and the state of the 
 sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus 
 has left replies to precisely these interrogatories. 
 Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak in 
 their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes 
 of the soul, the idea of immutableuess is essentially 
 associated. Jesus, living in these moral senti- 
 ments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only 
 the manifestations of these, never made the separa- 
 tion of the idea of duration from the essence of 
 these attributes; never uttered a syllable concern- 
 ing the duration of the soul. It was left to his 
 disciples to sever duration from the moral elements 
 and to teach the immortality of the soul as a doc- 
 trine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment 
 the doctrine of the immortality is separately 
 taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing of 
 love, in the adoration of humility, there is no 
 question of continuance. No inspired man ever 
 asks this question, or condescends to these evi- 
 dences. For the soul is true to itself, and the 
 man in whom it is shed abroad, cannot wander 
 from the present, which is infinite, to a future, 
 which would be finite. 
 
 These questions which we lust to ask about 
 the future, are a confession of sin. God has no 
 answer for them. No answer in words can reply 
 to a question of things. It is not in an arbitrary 
 " decree of God," but in the nature of man that a 
 veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow : for the
 
 252 ESSAY IX, 
 
 soul will not have us read any other cipher but 
 that of cause and effect. By this veil, which cur- 
 tains events, it instructs the children of men to 
 live in to-day. The only mode of obtaining an 
 answer to these questions of the senses, is, to fore- 
 go all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being 
 which floats us into the secret of nature, work and 
 live, work and live, and all unawares, the advancing 
 soul has built and forged for itself a new condi- 
 tion, and the question and the answer are one. 
 
 Thus is the soul the perceiver and revealer of 
 truth. By the same fire, serene, impersonal, per- 
 fect, which burns until it shall dissolve all things 
 into the waves and surges of an ocean of light, 
 we see and know each other, and what spirit each 
 is of. Who can tell the grounds of his knowledge 
 of the character of th,e several individuals in his 
 circle of friends? No man. Yet their acts and 
 words do not disappoint him. In that man, 
 though he knew no ill of him, he put no trust. In 
 that other, though they had seldom met, authentic 
 signs had yet passed, to signify that he might be 
 trusted as one who had an interest in his own 
 character. We know each other very well, 
 which of us has been just to himself, and whether 
 that which we teach or behold, is only an aspira- 
 tion, or is our honest effort also. 
 
 We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis 
 lies aloft in our life or unconscious power, not in the 
 understanding. The whole intercourse of society, 
 its trade, its religion, its friendships, its quarrels, 
 is one wide, judicial investigation of character.
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 253 
 
 lu full court, or in small committee, or confronted 
 face to face, accuser and accused, men offer them- 
 selves to be judged. Against their will they ex- 
 hibit those decisive trifles by which character is 
 read. But who judges? and what? Not our un- 
 derstanding. We do not read them by learning 
 or craft. No ; the wisdom of the wise man con- 
 sists herein, that he does not judge them ; he lets 
 them judge themselves, and merely reads and re- 
 cords their own verdict. 
 
 By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will 
 is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts, or our 
 imperfections, your genius will speak from you, 
 and mine from me. That which we are, we shall 
 teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts 
 come into our minds by avenues which we never 
 left open, and thoughts go out of our minds 
 through avenues which we never voluntarily 
 opened. Character teaches over our head. The 
 infallible index of true progress is found in the 
 tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his 
 breeding, nor company, nor books, nor actions, 
 nor talents, nor all together, can hinder him from 
 being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. 
 If he have not found his home in God, his man- 
 ners, his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, 
 the build, shall I say, of all his opinions will in- 
 voluntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he 
 will. If he have found his centre, the Deity will 
 shine through him, through all the disguises of 
 ignorance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavor-
 
 254 ESSAY IX. 
 
 able circumstance. The tone of seeking, is one, 
 and the tone of having is another. 
 
 The great distinction between teachers, sacred 
 or literary ; between poets like Herbert, and poets 
 like Pope ; between philosophers like Spinoza, 
 Kant, and Coleridge, and philosophers like 
 Locke, Paley, Mackintosh, and Stewart ; between 
 men of the world who are reckoned accomplished 
 talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, 
 prophesying half-insane under the infinitude of his 
 thought, is, that one class speak from within, or 
 from experience, as parties and possessors of the 
 fact ; and the other class, from without, as specta- 
 tors merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the 
 fact, on the evidence of third persons. It is of no 
 use to preach to me from without. I can do that 
 too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from with- 
 in, and in a degree that transcends all others. In 
 that, is the miracle. That includes the miracle. 
 My soul believes beforehand that it ought so to be. 
 All men stand continually in the expectation of 
 the appearance of such a teacher. But if a man 
 do not speak from within the veil, where the word 
 is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. 
 
 The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, 
 and makes what we call genius. Much of the 
 wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most 
 illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to 
 literary fame, and are not writers. Among the 
 multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hal- 
 lowing presence ; we are sensible of a knack and 
 skill rather than of inspiration ; they have a
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 255 
 
 light, and know not whence it comes, and call it 
 their own ; their talent is some exaggerated fac- 
 ulty, some overgrown member, so that their 
 strength is a disease. In these instances, the in- 
 tellectual gifts do not make the impression of 
 virtue, but almost of vice ; and we feel that a 
 man's talents stand in the way of his advance- 
 ment in truth. But genius is religious. It is a 
 larger imbibing of the common heart. It is not 
 anomalous, but more like, and not less like other 
 men. There is in all great poets, a wisdom of 
 humanity, which is superior to any talents they 
 exercise. The author, the wit, the partisan, the 
 fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. 
 Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spen- 
 ser, in Shakespeare, in Milton. They are content 
 with truth. They use the positive degree. They 
 seem frigid arid phlegmatic to those who have 
 been spiced with the frantic passion and violent 
 coloring of inferior, but popular writers. For, 
 they are poets by the free course which they al- 
 low to the informing soul, which, though their 
 eyes beholdeth again, and blesseth the things 
 which it hath made. The soul is superior to its 
 knowledge ; wiser than any of its works. The 
 great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then 
 we think less of his compositions. His greatest 
 communication to our mind, is, to teach us to de- 
 spise all he has done. Shakespeare carries us to 
 such a lofty strain of intelligent activity as to 
 suggest a wealth which beggars his own : and we 
 then feel that the splendid works which he has
 
 ESS A Y IX. 
 
 created, and which in other hours, we extol as a 
 sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold 
 of real nature than the shadow of a passing 
 traveller on the rock. The inspiration which 
 uttered itself in Hamlet arid Lear, could utter 
 things as good from day to day, forever. Why 
 then should I make account of Hamlet and Lear, 
 as if we had not the soul from which they fell as 
 syllables from the tongue ? 
 
 This energy does not descend into individual 
 life, on any other condition than entire possession. 
 It comes to the lowly and simple ; it comes to 
 whomsoever will put off what is foreign and 
 proud ; it comes as insight ; it comes as serenity 
 and grandeur. When we see those whom it in- 
 habits, we are apprised of new degrees of great- 
 ness. From that inspiration the man comes back 
 with a changed tone. He does not talk with men, 
 with an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It 
 requires of us to be plain and true. The vain 
 traveller attempts to embellish his life by quoting 
 my Lord, and the Prince, and the Countess, who 
 thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar, 
 show you their spoons, and brooches, and rings, 
 and preserve their cards and compliments. The 
 more cultivated, in their account of their own ex- 
 perience, cull out the pleasing poetic circum- 
 stance ; the visit to Rome ; the man of genius 
 they saw; the brilliant friend they know; still 
 further on, perhaps, the gorgeous landscape, the 
 mountain lights, the mountain thoughts, they 
 enjoyed yesterday, and so seek to throw a
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 2$? 
 
 romantic color over their life. But the soul that 
 ascendeth to worship the great God, is plain and 
 true ; has no rose color ; no fine friends ; no chiv- 
 alry ; no adventures ; does not want admiration ; 
 dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest ex- 
 perience of the common day, by reason of the 
 present moment, and the mere trifle having be- 
 come porous to thought, and bibulous of the sea 
 of light. 
 
 Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, 
 and literature looks like word-catching. The 
 simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, 
 yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that 
 in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gather- 
 ing a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a 
 little air in a phial, when the whole earth, and the 
 whole atmosphere are ours. The mere author, in 
 such society, is like a pick-pocket among gentle- 
 men, who has come in to steal a gold button or a 
 pin. Nothing can pass there, or make you one of 
 the circle, but the casting aside your trappings, and 
 dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confes- 
 sion and omniscient affirmation. 
 
 Souls, such as these, treat you as gods would ; 
 walk as gods in the earth, accepting without 
 any admiration, your wit, your bounty, your 
 virtue, even, say rather your act of duty, for your 
 virtue they own as their proper blood, royal as 
 themselves, and over-royal, and the father of the 
 gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal 
 bearing casts on the mutual flattery with which 
 authors solace each other, and wound themselves ! 
 17 -*
 
 258 ESSAY IX. 
 
 These flatter not. I do not wonder that these 
 men go to see Cromwell, and Christina, and 
 Charles II., and James I., and the Grand Turk. 
 For they are in their own elevation, the fellows 
 of kings, and must feel the servile tone of con- 
 versation in the world. They must always be a 
 godsend to princes, for they confront them, a king 
 to a king, without ducking or concession, and give 
 a high nature the refreshment and satisfaction of 
 resistance, of plain humanity, of even companion- 
 ship, and of new ideas. They leave them wiser 
 and superior men. Souls like these make us feel 
 that sincerity is more excellent than flattery. 
 Deal so plainly with man and woman, as to con- 
 strain the utmost sincerity, and destroy all hope 
 of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment 
 you can pay. Their "highest praising," said 
 Milton, " is not flattery, and their plainest advice is 
 a kind of praising." 
 
 Ineffable is the union of man and God in every 
 act of the soul. The simplest person, who in his 
 integrity worships God, becomes God ; yet for- 
 ever and ever the influx of this better and uni- 
 versal self is new and unsearchable. Ever it in- 
 spires awe and astonishment. How dear, how 
 soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling 
 the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes 
 and disappointments ! When we have broken our 
 god of tradition, and ceased from our god of 
 rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his 
 presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, 
 nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 259 
 
 power of growth to a new infinity on every side. 
 It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not 
 the conviction, but the sight that the best is the 
 true, and may in that thought easily dismiss alj 
 particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn 
 to the sure revelation of time, the solution of 
 his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare 
 is dear to the heart of being. In the presence of 
 law to his mind, he is overflowed with a reliance 
 so universal, that it sweeps away all cherished 
 hopes and the most stable projects of mortal con- 
 dition in its flood. He believes that he cannot 
 escape from his good. The things that are really 
 for thee, gravitate to thee. You are running to 
 seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your 
 mind need not. If you do not find him, will you 
 not acquiesce that it is best you should not find 
 him ? for there is a power, which, as it is in you is in 
 him also, and could therefore very well bring 
 you together, if it were for the best. You are 
 preparing with eagerness to go and render a ser- 
 vice to which your talent and your taste invite 
 you, the love of men, and the hope of fame. Has 
 it not occured to you, that you have no right to 
 go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented 
 from going? O believe, as thou livest, that every 
 sound that is spoken over the round world, 
 which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine 
 ear. Every proverb, every book, every by-word 
 that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely 
 come home through open or winding passages. 
 Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but
 
 260 ESS A Y IX. 
 
 the great and tender heart in thee craveth, 
 shall lock thee in his embrace. And this, because 
 the heart in thee is the heart of all ; not a valve, 
 not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere 
 in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly, an 
 endless circulation through all men, as the water 
 of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its 
 tide is one. 
 
 Let man then learn the revelation of all nature, 
 and all thought to his heart ; this, namely ; that 
 the Highest dwells with him ; that the sources of 
 nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of 
 duty is there. But if he would know what the 
 great God speaketh, he must "go into his closet 
 and shut the door," as Jesus said. God will not 
 make himself manifest to cowards. He must 
 greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself 
 from all the accents of other men's devotion. 
 Their prayers even are hurtful to him, until he 
 has made his own. The soul makes no appeal 
 from itself. Our religion vulgarly stands on 
 numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is 
 made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers, 
 proclamation is then and there made, that religion 
 is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping 
 thought to him, never counts his company. When 
 I sit in that presence, who shall dare to come in ? 
 When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn with 
 pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say ? 
 
 It makes no difference whether the appeal is to 
 numbers or to one. The faith that stands on 
 authority is not faith. The reliance on authority,
 
 THE OVER-SOUL. 261 
 
 measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal 
 of the soul. The position men have given to 
 Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a po- 
 sition of authority. It characterizes themselves. 
 It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the 
 soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no fol- 
 lower ; it never appeals from itself. It always 
 believes in itself. Before the immense possibili- 
 ties of man, all mere experience, all past biogra- 
 phy, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. 
 Before that holy heaven which our presentiments 
 foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any form of 
 life we have seen or read of. We not only affirm 
 that we have few great men, but absolutely speak- 
 ing, that we have none ; that we have no history, 
 no record of any character or mode of living, that 
 entirely contents us. The saints and demigods 
 whom history worships, we are constrained to ac- 
 cept with a grain of allowance. Though in our 
 lonely hours, we draw a new strength out of their 
 memory, yet pressed on our attention, as they are 
 by the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue 
 and invade. The soul gives itself alone, original, 
 and pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure, who, 
 on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and 
 speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and 
 nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all 
 things. It is not called religious, but it is inno- 
 cent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the 
 grass grows, and the stone falls by a law inferior 
 to, and dependent on its nature. Behold, it saith, 
 I am born into the great, the universal mind. I
 
 262 ESSA Y IX. 
 
 the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am some- 
 how receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do 
 overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to 
 be but the fair accidents and effects which change 
 and pass. More and more the surges of everlast- 
 ing nature enter into me, and I become public and 
 human in my regards and actions. So come I to 
 live in thoughts, and act with energies which are 
 immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, 
 as the ancient said, that " its beauty is immense," 
 man will come to see that the world is the peren- 
 nial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less 
 astonished at particular wonders ; he will learn 
 that there is no profane history ; that all history 
 is sacred ; that the universe is represented in an 
 atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no 
 longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he 
 will live with a divine unity. He will cease from 
 what is base and frivolous in his own life, and be 
 content with all places and any service he can 
 render. He will calmly front the morrow in the 
 negligency of that trust which carries God with 
 it, and so hath already the whole future in the 
 bottom of the heart.
 
 CIRCLES.
 
 ESSAY X, 
 CIRCLES. 
 
 THE eye is the first circle ; the horizon which 
 it forms is the second ; and throughout nature this 
 primary figure is repeated without end. It is the 
 highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. 
 Augustine described the nature of God as a circle 
 whose centre was everywhere, and its circumfer- 
 ence nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading 
 the copious sense of this first of forms. One 
 moral we have already deduced in considering the 
 circular or compensatory character of every human 
 action. Another analogy we shall now trace ; that 
 every action admits of being outdone. Our life 
 is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around 
 every circle another can be drawn ; that there is 
 no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; 
 that there is always another dawn risen on mid- 
 noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. 
 
 This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact 
 of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around 
 which the hands of man can never meet, at once 
 the inspirer and the condemner of every success, 
 may conveniently serve us to connect many illus- 
 trations of human power in every department. 
 
 There are no fixtures in nature. The universe 
 
 (265)
 
 266 ESSAY X. 
 
 is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word 
 of degrees. Our globe seen by God, is a trans- 
 parent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves 
 the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the 
 predominance of an idea which draws after it all 
 this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise 
 into another idea : they will disappear. The Greek 
 sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been 
 statues of ice ; here and there a solitary figure or 
 fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps 
 of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts, in 
 June and July. For, the genius that created it, 
 creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters 
 last a little longer, but are already passing under 
 the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevi- 
 table pit which the creation of new thought opens 
 for all that is old. The new continents are built 
 out of the ruins of an old planet: the new races 
 fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. 
 New arts destroy the old. See the investment of 
 capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics ; 
 fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by 
 railways ; sails, by steam ; steam by electricity. 
 
 You admire this tower of granite, weathering 
 the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving 
 hand built this huge wall, and that which builds, 
 is better than that which is built. The hand that 
 built, can topple it down much faster. Better 
 than the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible 
 thought which wrought through it, and thus ever 
 behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, 
 being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer
 
 CIRCLES. 267 
 
 cause. Everything looks permanent until its 
 secret is known. A rich estate appears to women 
 and children, a firm and lasting fact ; to a mer- 
 chant, one easily created out of any materials, and 
 easily lost. An orchard, good tillage, good 
 grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a 
 river, to a citizen, but to a large farmer, not much 
 more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature 
 looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has 
 a cause like all the rest ; and when once I com- 
 prehend that, will these fields stretch so immova- 
 bly wide, these leaves hang so individually con- 
 siderable ? Permanence is a word of degrees. 
 Everything is medial. Moons are no more bounds 
 to spiritual power than bat-balls. 
 
 The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy 
 and defying though he look, he has a helm which 
 he obeys, which is, the idea after which all his 
 facts are classified. He can only be reformed by 
 showing him a new idea which commands his own. 
 The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, 
 from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all 
 sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that 
 without end, The extent to which this genera- 
 tion of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, de- 
 pends on the force or truth of the individual soul. 
 For, it is the inert effort of each thought having 
 formed itself into a circular wave of circum- 
 stance, as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, 
 a local usage, a religious rite, to heap itself on 
 that ridge, and to solidify, and hem in the life. 
 But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over
 
 268 ESSAY X. 
 
 that boundary on all sides, and expands another 
 orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a 
 high wave, with attempt again to stop and to 
 bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned ; in 
 its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends 
 outward with a vast force, and to immense and in- 
 numerable expansions. 
 
 Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new 
 series. Every general law only a particular fact 
 of some more general law presently to disclose 
 itself. There is no outside, no enclosing wall, no 
 circumference to us. The man finishes his story, 
 how good ! how final ! how it puts a new face 
 on all things ! He fills the sky. Lo, on the other 
 side, rises also a man, and draws a circle around 
 the circle we had just pronounced the outline of 
 the sphere. Then already is our first speaker, 
 not man, but only a first speaker. His only 
 redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of 
 his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. 
 The result of to-day which haunts the mind and 
 cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged 
 into a word, and the principle that seemed to 
 explain nature, will itself be included as one 
 example of a bolder generalization. In the 
 thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave 
 all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of 
 the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which 
 no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is 
 not so much a workman in the world, as he is a 
 suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as 
 prophecies of the next age.
 
 CIRCLES. 269 
 
 Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder ; 
 the steps are actions ; the new prospect is power. 
 Every several result is threatened and judged by 
 that which follows. Every one seems to be con- 
 tradicted by the new ; it is only limited by the 
 new. The new statement is always hated by the 
 old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like 
 an abyss of skepticism. But the eye soon gets 
 wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of one 
 cause ; then its innocency and benefit appear, and, 
 presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwin- 
 dles before the revelation of the new hour. 
 
 Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact 
 look crass and material, threatening to degrade 
 thy theory of spirit ? Resist it not ; it goes to 
 refine and raise thy theory of matter just as 
 much. 
 
 There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to 
 consciousness. Every man supposes himself not 
 to be fully understood ; and if there is any truth 
 i'n him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I 
 see not how it can be otherwise. The last cham- 
 ber, the last closet, he must feel, was never 
 opened ; there is always a residuum unknown, 
 unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that 
 he has a greater possibility. 
 
 Our moods do not believe in each other. To- 
 day, I am full of thoughts, and can write what I 
 please. I see no reason why I should not have 
 the same thought, the same power of expression 
 to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, 
 seems the most natural thing in the world : but,
 
 2/0 ESSAY X. 
 
 yesterday, I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction 
 in which now I see so much ; and a month hence, 
 I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that 
 wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this 
 infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb 
 of a vast flow ! I am God in nature ; I am a 
 weed by the wall. 
 
 The continual effort to raise himself above him- 
 self, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays 
 itself in a man's relations. We thirst for appro- 
 Ration, yet cannot forgive the approver. The 
 sweet of nature is love ; yet if I have a friend, I 
 am tormented by my imperfections. The love of 
 me accuses the other party. If he were high 
 enough to slight me, then could I love him, and 
 rise by my affection to new heights. A man's 
 growth is seen in the successive choirs of his 
 friends. For every friend whom he loses for 
 truth, he gains a better. I thought, as I walked 
 in the woods and mused on my friends, why 
 should I play with them this game of idolatry ? 
 I know and see too well, when not voluntarily 
 blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and 
 worthy. Rich, noble, and great they are by the 
 liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. O 
 blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are 
 not thee ! Every personal consideration that we 
 allow, costs us heavenly state. We sell the 
 thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 How often must we learn this lesson ? Men 
 cease to interest us when we find their limitations.
 
 CIRCLES. 271 
 
 The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once 
 come up with a man's limitations, it is all over 
 with him. Has he talents ? has he enterprises ? 
 has he knowledge ? it boots not. Infinitely allur- 
 ing and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great 
 hope, a sea to swim in ; now, you have found his 
 shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you 
 never see it again. 
 
 Each new step we take in thought reconciles 
 twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions 
 of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the 
 respective heads of two schools. A wise man will 
 see that Aristotle Platonizes. By going one step 
 farther back in thought, discordant opinions are 
 reconciled, by being seen to be two extremes of 
 one principle, and we can never go so far back as 
 to preclude a still higher vision. 
 
 Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker 
 on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is 
 as when a conflagration has broken out in a great 
 city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it 
 will end. There is not a piece of science, but its 
 flank may be turned to-morrow ; there is not any 
 literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names 
 of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. 
 The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, 
 the religion of nations, the manners and morals of 
 mankind, are all at the mercy of a new general- 
 ization. Generalization is always a new influx of 
 the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that 
 attends it. 
 
 Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so
 
 2/2 . ESSAY X. 
 
 that a man cannot have his flank turned, cani\ot 
 be outgeneraled, but put him where you will, he 
 stands. This can only be by his preferring truth 
 to his past apprehension of truth ; and his alert 
 acceptance of it from whatever quarter ; the intrepid 
 conviction that his laws his relations to society, 
 his Christianity, his world, may at any time be su- 
 perseded and decease. 
 
 There are degrees in idealism. We learn first 
 to play with it academically, as the magnet was 
 once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth 
 and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in 
 gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance 
 waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be 
 true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. 
 We learn that God is ; that he is in me ; and that 
 all things are shadows of him. The idealism of 
 Berkeley is only a crude statement of the ideal- 
 ism of Jesus, and that, again, is a crude statement 
 of the fact that all nature is the rapid efflux of 
 goodness executing and organizing itself. Much 
 more obviously is history and the state of the 
 world at any one time, directly dependent on the 
 intellectual classification then existing in the 
 minds of men. The things which are dear to men 
 at this hour, are so on account of the ideas which 
 have emerged on their mental horizon, and which 
 cause the present order of things as a tree bears 
 its apples. A new degree of culture would in- 
 stantly revolutionize the entire system of human 
 pursuits. 
 
 Conversation is a game of circles. In conversa-
 
 CIRCLES. 273 
 
 tion we pluck up the termini which bound the 
 common of silence on every side. The parties are 
 not to be judged by the spirit they partake and 
 even express under this Pentecost. To-morrow 
 they will have receded from this high-water mark. 
 To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the 
 old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven 
 flame whilst it glows on our walls. When each new 
 speaker strikes anew light, emancipates us from the 
 oppression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the 
 greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, 
 then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to re- 
 cover our rights, to become men. O what truths 
 profound and executable only in ages and orbs, 
 are supposed in the announcement of every truth ! 
 In common hours, society sits cold and statuesque. 
 We all stand waiting, empty, knowing, possibly, 
 that we can be full, surrounded by mighty sym- 
 bols which are not symbols to us, but prose and 
 trivial toys. Then cometh the god, and converts 
 the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his 
 eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, 
 and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and 
 saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. 
 The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of 
 yesterday, property, climate, breeding, personal 
 beauty, and the like, have strangely changed their 
 proportions. All that we reckoned settled, shakes 
 now and rattles ; and literatures, cities, climates, 
 religions, leave their foundations, and dance be- 
 fore our eyes. And yet here again see the swift 
 circumscription. Good as is discourse, silence is 
 
 18
 
 274 ESSAY X. 
 
 better, and shames it. The length of the dis- 
 course indicates the distance of thought betwixt 
 the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a 
 perfect understanding in any part, no words 
 would be necessary thereon. If at one in all 
 parts, no words would be suffered. 
 
 Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal 
 circle, through which a new one may be described. 
 The use of literature is to afford us a platform 
 whence we may command a view of our present 
 life, a purchase by which we may move it. We 
 fill ourselves with ancient learning ; install our- 
 selves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in Ro- 
 man houses, only that we may wiselier see French, 
 English, and American houses and modes of liv- 
 ing. In like manner, we see literature best from 
 the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, 
 or from a high religion. The field cannot be well 
 seen from within the field. The astronomer must 
 have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to 
 find the parallax of any star. 
 
 Therefore, we value the poet. All the argu- 
 ment, and all the wisdom, is not in the encyclo- 
 pedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body 
 of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my 
 daily work I incline to repeat my old steps, and 
 do not believe in remedial force, in the power of 
 change and reform. Rut some Petrarch or Ari- 
 osto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, 
 writes me an ode, or a brisk romance, full of dar- 
 ing thought and action. He smites and arouses 
 me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain
 
 CIRCLES. 275 
 
 of habits, and I open my eye on my own possibili- 
 ties. He claps wings to the sides of all the solid 
 old lumber of the world, and I am capable once 
 more of choosing a straight path in theory and 
 practice. 
 
 We have the same need to command a view of 
 the religion of the world. We can never see 
 Christianity from the catechism, from the pas- 
 tures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the 
 songs of wood-birds, we possibly may. Cleansed 
 by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the 
 sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we 
 may chance to cast a right glance back upon biog- 
 raphy. Christianity is rightly dear to the best of 
 mankind ; yet was there never a young philoso- 
 pher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian 
 church, by whom that brave text of Paul's, was 
 not specially prized, " Then shall also the Son be 
 subject unto Him who put all things under him, 
 that God may be all in all." Let the claims and 
 virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, 
 the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the 
 impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself 
 against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous 
 word, out of the book itself. 
 
 The natural world may be conceived of as a 
 system of concentric circles, and we now and then 
 detect in nature slight dislocations, which apprize 
 us that this surface on which we now stand, is not 
 fixed, but sliding. These manifold tenacious 
 qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these 
 metals and animals, which seem to stand there for
 
 2?6 ESSAY X. 
 
 their own sake, are means and methods only, are 
 words of God, and as fugitive as other words. 
 Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, 
 who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elect- 
 ive affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper 
 law whereof this is only a partial or approximate 
 statement, namely, that like draws to like ; and 
 that the goods which belong to } r ou, gravitate to 
 you, and need not be pursued with pains and cost ? 
 Yet is that statement approximate also, and not 
 final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through 
 subtle, subterranean channels, need friend and 
 fact be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly 
 considered, these things proceed from the eternal 
 generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two 
 sides of one fact. 
 
 The same law of eternal procession ranges all 
 that we call the virtues,, and extinguishes each in 
 the light of a better. The great man will not be 
 prudent in the popular sense ; all his prudence 
 will be so much deduction from his grandeur. 
 But it behooves each to see when he sacrifices pru- 
 dence, to what god he devotes it ; if to ease and 
 pleasure, he had better be prudent still ; if 
 to a great trust, he can well spare his mule and 
 panniers, who has a winged chariot instead. 
 Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the 
 woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite of 
 snakes ; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In 
 many years, neither is harmed by such an ac- 
 cident. Yet it seems to me that with every pre- 
 caution you take against such an evil, you put
 
 CIRCLES. 277 
 
 yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose 
 that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence. 
 Is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to 
 the verge of our orbit ? Think how many times 
 we shall fall back into pitiful calculations, before 
 we take up our rest in the great sentiment, or 
 make the verge of to-day the new centre. Be- 
 sides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to the 
 humblest men. The poor and the low have their 
 way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as 
 well as you. " Blessed be nothing," and " the 
 worse things are, the better they are," are prov- 
 erbs which express the transcendentalism of com- 
 mon life. 
 
 One man's justice is another's injustice ; one 
 man's beauty, another's ugliness ; one man's 
 wisdom, another's folly, as one beholds the 
 same objects from a higher point of view. One 
 man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and 
 has no measure in his abhorrence of another who 
 is very remiss in this duty, and makes the creditor 
 wait tediously. But that second man has his own 
 way of looking at things; asks himself, which 
 debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the 
 debt to the poor ? the debt of money, or the debt 
 of thought to mankind, of genius to nature ? For 
 you, O broker, there is no other principle but 
 arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial im- 
 port; love, faith, truth of character, the aspira- 
 tion of man, these are sacred : nor can I detach 
 one duty, like you, from all other duties, and 
 concentrate my forces mechanically on the pay-
 
 278 ESSAY X. 
 
 merit of moneys. Let me live onward : you shall 
 find that, though slower, the progress of my char- 
 acter will liquidate all these debts without injus- 
 tice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate 
 himself to the payment of notes, would not thi? 
 be injustice? Owes he no debt but money ? And 
 are all claims on him to be postponed to a land- 
 lord's or a banker's ? 
 
 There is no virtue which is final ; all are initial. 
 The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The 
 terror of reform is the discovery that we must 
 cast away our virtues, or what we have always 
 esteemed such, into the same pit that has con- 
 sumed our grosser vices. 
 
 " Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, 
 Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.' 
 
 It is the highest power of divine moments that 
 they abolish our contritions also. I accuse my- 
 self of sloth and unprofitableness, day by day; 
 but when these waves of God flow into me, I no 
 longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly 
 compute my possible achievement by what 
 remains to me of the month or the year; 
 for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence 
 and omnipotence, which asks nothing of duration, 
 but sees that the energy of the mind is commen- 
 surate with the work to be done, without time. 
 
 And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some 
 reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyr- 
 rhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all 
 actions, and would fain teach us, that, if we are
 
 CIRCLES. 279 
 
 true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out 
 of which we shall construct the temple of the true 
 God. 
 
 I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am 
 gladdened by seeing the predominance of the 
 saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, 
 and not less by beholding in morals that unre- 
 strained inundation of the principle of good into 
 every chink and hole that selfishness has left 
 open, yea, into selfishness and sin itself; so that 
 no evil is pure ; nor hell itself without its extreme 
 satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when 
 I have my own head, and obey my whims, let me 
 remind the reader that lam only an experimenter. 
 Do not set the least value on what I do, or the 
 least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended 
 to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all 
 things. No facts are to me sacred ; none are pro- 
 fane ; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, 
 with no Past at my back. 
 
 Yet this incessant movement and progresion, 
 which all things partake, could never become 
 sensible to us, but by contrast to some principle 
 of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the 
 eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal 
 generator abides. That central life is somewhat 
 superior to creation, superior to knowledge and 
 thought, and contains all its circles. Forever it 
 labors to create a life and thought as large and 
 excellent as itself ; but in vain ; for that which is 
 made, instructs how to make a better. 
 
 Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preserva-
 
 280 ESSAY X. 
 
 tion, but all things renew, germinate, and spring. 
 Why should we import rags and relics into the 
 new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age 
 seems the only disease ; all others run into this 
 one. We call it by many names, fever, intemper- 
 ance, insanity, stupidity, and crime ; they are all 
 forms of old age ; they are rest, conservatism, ap- 
 propriation, inertia, not newness, not the way on- 
 ward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of 
 it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, 
 we do not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, 
 youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious eye look- 
 ing upward, counts itself nothing, and abandons 
 itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. 
 But the man and woman of seventy, assume to 
 know all ; throw up their hope; renounce aspira- 
 tion ; accept the actual for the necessary; and 
 talk down to the young. Let them then become 
 organs of the Holy Ghost ; let them be lovers ; 
 let them behold truth ; and their eyes are uplifted, 
 their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again 
 with hope and power. This old age ought not to 
 creep on a human mind. In nature, every mo- 
 ment is new ; the past is always swallowed and 
 forgotten ; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is 
 secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. 
 No love can be bound by oath or convenant to 
 secure it against a higher love. No truth so 
 sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the 
 light of new thoughts. People wish to be set- 
 tled ; only as far as they are unsettled, is there 
 any hope for them.
 
 CIRCLES. 281 
 
 Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess 
 to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to- 
 morrow, when we are building up our being. Of 
 lower states, of acts of routine and sen^e, we 
 can tell somewhat, but the master-pieces of God, 
 the total growths, and universal movements of the 
 soul, he hideth ; they are incalculable. I can 
 know that truth is divine and helpful, but how it 
 shall help me, I can have no guess, for, so to be is 
 the sole inlet of so to know. The new position of 
 the advancing man has all the powers of the old, 
 yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom all 
 the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhala- 
 tion of the morning. I cast away in this new mo- 
 ment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant 
 and vain. Now, for the first time, seem I to know 
 anything rightly. The simplest words, we do 
 not know what they mean, except when we love 
 and aspire. 
 
 The difference between talents and character is 
 adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and 
 power and courage to make a new road to new 
 and better goals. Character makes an overpow- 
 ering present, a cheerful, determined hour, which 
 fortifies all the company, by making them see that 
 much is possible and excellent, that was not 
 thought of. Character dulls the impression of 
 particular events. When we see the conqueror, 
 we do not think much of any one battle or suc- 
 cess. We see that we had exaggerated the diffi- 
 culty. It was easy to him. The great man is not 
 convulsible or tormentable. He is so much, that
 
 282 ESSAY X. 
 
 events pass over him without much impression. 
 People say sometimes, " See what I have over- 
 come ; see how cheerful I am ; see how completely 
 I have triumphed over these black events." Not 
 if they still remind me of the black event, they 
 have not yet conquered. Is it conquest to be a 
 gay and decorated sepulchre, or a half-crazed 
 widow hysterically laughing? True conquest is 
 the causing the black event to fade and disappear 
 as an early cloud of insignificant result in a his- 
 tory so large and advancing. 
 
 The one thing which we seek with insatiable 
 desire, is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out 
 of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, 
 and do something without knowing how or why ; 
 in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great was 
 ever achieved without enthusiasm, The way of 
 life is wonderful. It is by abandonment. The 
 great moments of history are the facilities of per- 
 formance through the strength of ideas, as the 
 works of genius and religion. " A man," said 
 Oliver Cromwell, " never rises so high as when he 
 knows not whither he is going." Dreams and 
 drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are 
 the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular 
 genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for 
 men. For the like reason, they ask the aid of 
 wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in 
 some manner these flames and generosities of the 
 heart.
 
 INTELLECT.
 
 ESSAY XL 
 
 INTELLECT. 
 
 EVERY substance is negatively electric to that 
 which stands above it in the chemical tables, posi- 
 tively to that which stands below it. Water dis- 
 solves wood and stone, and salt; air dissolves 
 water; electric fire dissolves air, but the intellect 
 dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the sub- 
 tlest unnamed relations of nature in its resistless 
 menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which 
 is intellect constructive. Intellect is the simple 
 power anterior to all action or construction. 
 Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural 
 history of the intellect, but what man has yet been 
 able to mark the steps and boundaries of that 
 transparent essence? The first questions are al- 
 ways to be asked, and the wisest doctor is grav- 
 elled by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can 
 we speak of the action of the mind under any di- 
 visions, as, of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its 
 works, and so forth, since it melts will into per- 
 ception, knowledge into act ? Each becomes 
 the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like 
 the vision of the eye, but is union with the things 
 known. 
 
 (285)
 
 286 ESSA Y XL 
 
 Intellect and intellection signify, to the com- 
 mon ear, consideration of abstract truth. The 
 consideration of time and place, of you and me, 
 of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's 
 minds. Intellect separates the fact considered 
 from you, from all local and personal reference, 
 and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. 
 Heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense and 
 colored mists. In the fog of good and evil affec- 
 tions, it is hard for man to walk forward in a 
 straight line. Intellect is void of affection, and 
 sees an object as it stands in the light of science, 
 cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of 
 the individual, floats over its own personality, and 
 regards it as a fact, and not as / and mine. He 
 who is immersed in what concerns person or place, 
 cannot see the problem of existence. This the 
 intellect always ponders. Nature shows all things 
 formed and bound. The intellect pierces the 
 form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness 
 between remote things, and reduces all things into 
 a few principles. 
 
 The making a fact the subject of thought, 
 raises it. All that mass of mental and moral phe- 
 nomena which we do not make objects of voluntary 
 thought, come within the power of fortune; they 
 constitute the circumstance of daily life ; they are 
 subject to change, to fear, and hope. Every man 
 beholds his human condition with a degree of 
 melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by 
 the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies 
 open to the mercy of coming events. But a
 
 INTELLECT. 287 
 
 truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a 
 subject of destiny. We behold it as a god up- 
 raised above care and fear. And so any fact in 
 our life, or any record of our fancies or reflec- 
 tions, disentangled from the web of our uncon- 
 sciousness, becomes an object impersonal and im- 
 mortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. 
 A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear 
 and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. 
 It is offered for science. What is addressed to us 
 for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes 
 us intellectual beings. 
 
 The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in 
 every step. The mind that grows could not pre- 
 dict the times, the means, the mode of that spon- 
 taneity. God enters by a private door into every 
 individual. Long prior to the age of reflection, is 
 the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness, it came 
 insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. 
 Over it always reigned a firm law. In the period 
 of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impres- 
 sions from the surrounding creation after its own 
 way. Whatever any mind doth or saith, is after 
 a law. It has no random act or word. And this 
 native law remains over it after it has come to re- 
 flection or conscious thought. In the most worn, 
 pedantic, introverted, self-tormentor's life, the 
 greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, un- 
 imaginable, and must be, until he can take him- 
 self up by his own ears. What am I ? What has 
 my will done to make me that I am ? Nothing. 
 I have been floated into this thought, this hour,
 
 288 ESSA Y XI. 
 
 this connection of events, by might and mind 
 sublime, and my ingenuity and wilt'ulness have not 
 thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. 
 
 Our spontaneous action is always the best. You 
 cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, 
 come so close to any question as your spontaneous 
 glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your 
 bed, or walk abroad in the morning after medita- 
 ting the matter before sleep, on the previous 
 night. Always our thinking is a pious reception. 
 Out truth of thought is therefore vitiated as much 
 by too violent direction given by our will, as by 
 too great negligence. We do not determine what 
 we will think. We only open our senses, clear 
 away, as we can, all obstruction from the fact, and 
 suffer the intellect to see. We have little control 
 over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. 
 They catch us up for moments into their heaven, 
 and so fully engage us, that we take no thought 
 for the morrow, gaze like children, without an 
 effort to make them our own. By-and by we fall 
 out of that rapture, bethink us where we have 
 been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as 
 we can, what we have beheld. As far as we can 
 recall these ecstasies, we carry away in the inef- 
 faceable memory, the result, and all men and all 
 the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But the 
 moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct 
 and contrive, it is not truth. 
 
 If we consider what persons have stimulated 
 and profited us, we shall perceive the superiority 
 of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the
 
 INTELLECT. 289 
 
 arithmetical or logical. The first always contains 
 the second, but virtual and latent. We want, in 
 every man, a long logic ; we cannot pardon the 
 absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic 
 is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the 
 intuition; but its virtue is as silent method ; the 
 moment it would appear as propositions, and have 
 a separate value, it is worthless. 
 
 In every man's mind, some images, words, and 
 facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint 
 them, which others forget, and afterwards these 
 illustrate to him important laws. All our prog- 
 ress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You 
 have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a 
 knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. 
 Trust the instinct to the end, though you can ren- 
 der no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trust- 
 ing it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you 
 shall know why you believe. 
 
 Each mind has its own method. A true man 
 never acquires after college rules. What you have 
 aggregated in a natural manner, surprises and de- 
 lights when it is produced. For we cannot over- 
 see each other's secret. And hence the differences 
 between men in natural endowment are insignifi- 
 cant in comparison with their common wealth. 
 Do you think the porter and the cook have no an- 
 ecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you ? 
 Everybody knows as much as the savant. The 
 walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with 
 facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a 
 lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in 
 19
 
 2QO ESSA Y XL 
 
 the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds 
 his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of 
 living and thinking of other men, and especially 
 of those classes whose minds have not been sub- 
 dued by the drill of school education. 
 
 This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy 
 mind, but becomes richer and more frequent in its 
 informations through all states of culture. At 
 last comes the era of reflection, when we not only 
 observe, but take pains to observe ; when we of 
 set purpose, sit down to consider an abstract 
 truth ; when we keep the mind's eye open, whilst 
 we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent 
 to learn the secret law of some class of facts. 
 
 What is the hardest task in the world ? To 
 think. I would put myself in the attitude to 
 look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. 
 I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. 
 I seem to know what he meant, who said, No man 
 can see God face to face and live. For example, 
 a man explores the basis of civil government. Let 
 him intend his mind without respite, without rest, 
 in one direction. His best heed long time avails 
 him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. 
 We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the 
 truth. We say, I will walk abroad, and the truth 
 will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, 
 but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only 
 the stillness and composed attitude of the library, 
 to seize the thought. But we come in, and are 
 as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, 
 and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain,
 
 INTELLECT. 291 
 
 wandering light appears, and is the distinction, 
 the principle we wanted. But the oracle comes, 
 because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. 
 It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled 
 that law of nature by which we now inspire, now 
 expire the breath ; by which the heart now draws 
 in, then hurls out the blood, the law of undula- 
 tion. So now you must labor with your brains, 
 and now you must forbear your activity, and see 
 what the great Soul showeth. 
 
 Our intellections are mainly prospective. The 
 immortality of man is as legitimately preached 
 from the intellections as from the moral volitions. 
 Every intellection is mainly prospective. Its 
 present value is its least. It is a little seed. In- 
 spect what delights you in Plutarch, in Shakes- 
 peare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer ac- 
 quires, is a lantern which he instantly turns full 
 on what facts and thoughts lay already in his 
 mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which 
 had littered his garret, become precious. Every 
 trivial fact in his private biography becomes an il 
 lustration of this new principle, revisits the clay, 
 and delights all men by its piquancy and new 
 charm. Men say, where did he get this? and think 
 there was something divine in his life. But no ; 
 they have myriads of facts just as good, would 
 they only get a lamp to ransack their attic withal. 
 
 We are all wise. The difference between per- 
 sons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an 
 academical club, a person who always deferred to 
 me, who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that
 
 292 ESS A Y XT. 
 
 my experiences had somewhat superior ; whilst I 
 saw that his experiences were as good as mine. 
 Give them to me, and I would make the same use 
 of them. He held the old ; he holds the new ; I 
 had the habit of tacking together the old and the 
 new, which he did not use to exercise. This ma> 
 hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should 
 meet Shakespeare, we should not be conscious of 
 any steep inferiority ; no, but of a great equality, 
 only that he possessed a strange skill of using, 
 of classifying his facts, which we lack. For, not- 
 withstanding our utter incapacity to produce any- 
 thing like Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect 
 reception this wit, and immense knowledge of life 
 and liquid eloquence find in us all. 
 
 If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make 
 hay, or hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and 
 shut your eyes, and press them with your hand, you 
 shall still see apples hanging in the bright light, 
 with boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled 
 grass, or the corn-flags, and this for five or six hours 
 afterwards. There lie the impressions on the reten- 
 tive organ, though you knew it not. So lies the 
 whole series of natural images with which your life 
 has made you acquainted, in your memory, though 
 you know it not, and a thrill of passion flashes light 
 on their dark chamber^ and the active power seizes 
 instantly the fit image,'as the word of its moment- 
 ary thought. 
 
 It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our 
 history, we are sure, is quite tame. We have 
 nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser
 
 INTELLECT*. 293 
 
 years still run back to the despised recollections of 
 childhood, and always we are fishing up some won- 
 derful article out of that pond ; until, by-and-by, 
 we begin to suspect that the biography of the one 
 foolish person we know, is, in reality, nothing less 
 than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred vol- 
 umes of the Universal History. 
 
 In the intellect constructive, which we popu- 
 larly designate by the word Genius, we observe 
 the same balance of two elements, as in intellect 
 receptive. The constructive intellect produces 
 thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, sys- 
 tems. It is the generation of the mind, the mar- 
 riage of thought with nature. To genius must 
 always go two gifts, the thought and the publica- 
 tion. The first is revelation, always a miracle, 
 which no frequency of occurrence, or incessant 
 study can ever familiarize, but which must always 
 leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. It is the 
 advent of truth into the world, a form of thought 
 now, for the first time, bursting into the universe, 
 a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine 
 and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the 
 time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to 
 dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought 
 of man, and goes to fashion every institution. 
 But to make it available, it needs a vehicle or art by 
 which it is conveyed to men. To be communica- 
 ble, it must become picture or sensible object. 
 We must learn the language of facts. The most 
 wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he 
 has no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray
 
 294 ESSA Y XL 
 
 of light passes invisible through space, and only 
 when it tails on an object is it seen. When the 
 spiritual energy is directed on something outward, 
 then is it a thought. The relation between it 
 and you, first makes you, the value of you, ap- 
 parent to me. The rich, inventive genius of the 
 painter must be smothered and lost tor want of 
 the power of drawing, and in our happy hours, we 
 should be inexhaustible poets, if once we could 
 break through the silence into adequate rhyme. 
 As all men have some access to primary truth, 
 so all have some art or power of communication 
 iu their head, but only in the artist does it descend 
 into the hand. There is an inequality whose laws 
 we do not yet know, between two men and be- 
 tween two moments of the same man, in respect 
 to this faculty. In common hours, we have the 
 same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but 
 they do not sit for their portraits, they are not de- 
 tached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius 
 is spontaneous ; but the power of picture or ex- 
 pression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, 
 implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the 
 spontaneous states, without which no production is 
 possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the 
 rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, 
 with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the 
 imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous 
 also. It does not flow from experience only or 
 mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any 
 conscious imitation of particular forms are the 
 grand strokes of the painter executed, but by re-
 
 INTELLECT. 295 
 
 pairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his 
 mind. Who is the first drawing-master ? With- 
 out instruction we know very well the ideal of 
 the human form. A child knows if an arm or a 
 leg be distorted in a picture, if the attitude be 
 natural, or grand, or mean, though he has never 
 received any instruction in drawing, or heard any 
 conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw 
 with correctness a single feature. A good form 
 strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have 
 any science on the subject, and a beautiful face 
 sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all con- 
 sideration of the mechanical proportions of the 
 features and head. We may owe to dreams some 
 light on the fountain of this skill ; for, as soon as 
 we let our will go, and let the unconscious states 
 ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are \ 
 We entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of 
 men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of woods, 
 and of monsters, and the mystic pencil where- 
 with we then draw, has no awkwardness, or inex- 
 perience, no meagreness or poverty ; it can design 
 well, and group well ; its composition is full of 
 art, its colors are well laid on, and the whole canvas 
 which it paints, is life-like, and apt to touch us 
 with terror, with tenderness, with desire, and with 
 grief. Neither are the artist's copies from experi- 
 ence, ever mere copies, but always touched and 
 softened by tints from this ideal domain. 
 
 The conditions essential to a constructive mind, 
 do not appear to be so often combined but that a 
 good sentence or verse remains fresh and memor-
 
 296 ESS A Y XI. 
 
 able for a long time. Yet when we write with 
 ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we 
 seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to 
 continue this communication at pleasure. Up, 
 down, around, the kingdom of thought has no en- 
 closures, but the Muse makes us free of her city. 
 Well, the world has a million writers. One would 
 think, then, that good thought would be as famil- 
 iar as air and water, and the gifts of each new 
 hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count 
 all our good books ; nay, I remember any beauti- 
 ful verse for twenty years. It is true that the 
 discerning intellect of the world is always greatly 
 in advance of the creative, so that always there 
 are many competent judges of the best book, and 
 few writers of the best books. But some of the 
 conditions of intellectual construction are of rare 
 occurrence. The intellect is a whole, and de- 
 mands integrity in every work. This is resisted 
 equally by a man's devotion to a single thought, 
 and by his ambition to combine too many. 
 
 Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten 
 his attention on a single aspect of truth, and ap- 
 ply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth 
 becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood ; 
 herein resembling the air, which is our natural 
 element, and the breath of our nostrils, but if a 
 stream of the same be directed on the body for a 
 time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How 
 wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the 
 political or religious fanatic, or indeed any pos- 
 sessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exag-
 
 INTELLECT, 297 
 
 geration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. 
 Every thought is a prison also. I cannot see what 
 you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind 
 and blown so far in one direction, that I am out 
 of the hoop of your horizon. 
 
 Is it any better, if the student, to avoid this 
 offence, and to liberalize himself, aims to make a 
 mechanical whole, of history, or science, or phil- 
 osophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts 
 that fall within his vision ? The world refuses to 
 be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When 
 we are young, we spend much time and pains in 
 filling our note-books with all definitions of Re- 
 ligion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope 
 that in the course of a few years, we shall have 
 condensed into our encyclopedia, the net value of 
 all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. 
 But year after year our tables get no complete- 
 ness, and at last we discover that our curve is a 
 parabola, whose arcs will never meet. 
 
 Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, 
 is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its 
 works, but by a vigilance which brings the intel- 
 lect in its greatness and best state to operate every 
 moment. It must have the same wholeness which 
 nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild 
 the universe in a model, by the best accumulation 
 or disposition of details, yet does the world reap- 
 pear in miniature in every event, so that all the 
 laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. 
 The intellect must have the like perfection in its 
 apprehension, and in its works. For this reason,
 
 298 ESSA Y XL 
 
 an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is 
 the perception of identity. We talk with accom- 
 plished persons who appear to be strangers in na- 
 ture. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are 
 not theirs, have nothing of them : the world is 
 only their lodging and table. But the poet, whose 
 verses are to be spheral and complete, is one 
 whom nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of 
 strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict 
 consanguinity, and detects more likeness than 
 variet}' in all her changes. We are stung by the 
 desire for new thought, but when we receive a 
 new thought, it is only the old thought with a 
 new face, and though we make it our own, we in- 
 stantly crave another ; we are not really enriched. 
 For the truth was in us, before it was reflected to 
 us from natural objects; and the profound genius 
 will cast the likeness of all creatures into every 
 product of his wit. 
 
 But if the constructive powers are rare, and it 
 is given to few men to be poets, yet every man is 
 a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may 
 well study the laws of its influx. Exactly paral- 
 lel is the whole rule of intellectual duty, to the 
 rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no less austere 
 than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He 
 must worship truth, and forego all things for that, 
 and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure 
 in thought is thereby augmented. 
 
 God offers to every mind its choice between 
 truth and repose. Take which you please, you 
 can never have both. Between these, as a pe*n-
 
 INTELLECT. 299 
 
 dulum, man oscillates ever. He in whom the 
 love of repose predominates, will accept the first 
 creed, the first philosophy, the first political party 
 he meets, most likely, his father's. He gets rest, 
 commodity, and reputation ; but he shuts the door 
 of truth. He in whom the love of truth predom- 
 inates, will keep himself aloof from all mooring* 
 and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and 
 recognize all the opposite negations between 
 which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits 
 to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect 
 opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the 
 other is riot, and respects the highest law of his 
 being. 
 
 The circle of the green earth he must measure 
 with his shoes, to find the man who can yield him 
 truth. He shall then know that there is some- 
 what more blessed and great in hearing than in 
 speaking. Happy is the hearing man : unhappy 
 the speaking man. As long as I hear truth, I am 
 bathed by a beautiful element, and am not con- 
 scious of any limits to my nature. The sugges- 
 tions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The 
 waters of the great deep have ingress and 
 egress to the soul. But if I speak, I define, I 
 confine, and am less. When Socrates speaks, 
 Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame 
 that they do not speak. They also are good. He 
 likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he 
 speaks. Because a true and natural man contains 
 and is the same truth which an eloquent man ar- 
 ticulates : but in the eloquent man, because he
 
 300 ESS A Y XL 
 
 can articulate it, it seems something the less to 
 reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful with 
 the more inclination and respect. The ancient 
 sentence said, Let us be silent, for so are the gods. 
 Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and 
 gives us leave to be great and universal. Every 
 man's progress is through a succession of teachers, 
 each of whom seems at the time to have a super- 
 lative influence, but it at last gives place to a new. 
 Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, Leave 
 father, 'mother, house and lands, and follow me. 
 Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true 
 intellectually, as morally. Each new mind we 
 approach, seems to require an abdication of all our 
 past and present possessions. A new doctrine 
 seems, at first, a subversion of all our opinions, 
 tastes, and manner of living. Such has Sweden- 
 borg, such has Kant, such has Coleridge, such has 
 Cousin seemed to many young men in this coun- 
 try. Take thankfully and heartily all they can 
 give. Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them 
 not go until their blessing be won, and after a 
 short season, the dismay will be overpast, the ex- 
 cess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no 
 longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright 
 .^tar shining serenely in your heaven, and blend- 
 ing its light with all your day. 
 
 But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to 
 that which draws him, because that is his own, he 
 is to refuse himself to that which draws him not, 
 whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, be- 
 cause it is not his own. Entire self reliance belongs
 
 INTELLECT. 301 
 
 to the intellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all 
 souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance 
 for the sea. It must treat things, and books, and 
 sovereign genius, as itself also a sovereign. If 
 jEschylus be that man he is taken for, he has not 
 yet done his office, when he has educated the 
 learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now 
 to approve himself a master of delight to me also. 
 If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him 
 nothing with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a 
 thousand JEschyluses to my intellectual integrity. 
 Especially take the same ground in regard to ab- 
 stract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, 
 the Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant, or who- 
 soever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, 
 is only a more or less awkward translator of things 
 in your consciousness, which you have also your 
 way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say 
 then, instead of too timidly poring into his obscure 
 sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back 
 to you your consciousness. He has not succeeded ; 
 now let another try. If Plato cannot, perhaps 
 Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps 
 Kant. Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will 
 find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, com- 
 mon state, which the writer restores to you. 
 
 But let us end these didactics. I will not, 
 though the subject might provoke it, speak to the 
 open question between Truth and Love. I shall 
 not presume to interfere in the old politics of the 
 skies; "The cherubim know most; the seraphim 
 love most." The gods shall settle their own quar-
 
 302 ESSA Y XI. 
 
 rels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws 
 of the intellect, without remembering that lofty 
 and sequestered class of men who have been its 
 prophets and oracles, the high priesthood of the 
 pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the 
 principles of thought from age to age. When at 
 long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages, 
 wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these 
 few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked 
 in the world, these of the old religion, dwelling 
 in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christi- 
 anity look parvenues and popular ; for "persuasion 
 is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.'' This 
 band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, 
 Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, 
 and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, 
 so primary in their thinking, that it seems antece- 
 dent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric 
 and literature, and to be at once poetry, and 
 music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathe- 
 matics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of 
 the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the 
 soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth 
 and grandeur of their thought is proved by its 
 scope and applicability, for it commands the entire 
 schedule and inventory of things, for its illustra- 
 tion. But what marks its elevation, and has even 
 a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with 
 which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, 
 and from age to age prattle to each other, and to 
 no contemporary. Well assured that their speech 
 is intelligible, and the most natural thing in the
 
 INTELLECT. 303 
 
 world, they add thesis to thesis, without a mo- 
 ment's heed of the universal astonishment of the 
 human race below, who do not comprehend their 
 plainest argument ; nor do they ever relent so 
 much as to insert a popular or explaining sen- 
 tence ; nor testify the least displeasure or petu- 
 lance at the dullness of their amazed auditory. 
 The angels are so enamored of the language that 
 is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their 
 lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of 
 men, but speak their own, whether there be any 
 who understand it or not.
 
 ART, 
 
 20
 
 ESSAY XII, 
 
 ART. 
 
 BECAUSE the soul is progressive, it never quite 
 repeats itself, but in every act attempts the pro- 
 duction of a new and fairer whole. This appears 
 in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we 
 employ the popular distinction of works according 
 to their aim, either at use or beauty. Thus in our 
 fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim. 
 In landscapes, the painter should give the sugges- 
 tion of a fairer creation than we know. The 
 details, the prose of nature he should omit, and 
 give us only the spirit and splendor. He should 
 know that the landscape has beauty for his eye, 
 because it expresses a thought which is to him 
 good ; and this, because the same power which 
 sees through his eyes, is seen in that spectacle ; 
 and lie will come to value the expression of nature, 
 and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy, the 
 features that please him. He will give the gloom 
 of gloom, and the sunshine of sunshine. In a por- 
 trait, he must inscribe the character, and not the 
 features, and must esteem the man who sits to 
 him as himself only an imperfect picture or like- 
 ness of the aspiring original within. 
 
 (307)
 
 308 ESSA Y XII. 
 
 What is that abridgment and selection we ob- 
 serve in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative 
 impulse ? for it is the inlet of that higher illumin- 
 ation which teaches to convey a larger sense by 
 simpler symbols. What is a man but nature's 
 finer success in self -explication ? What is a man 
 but a finer and compactor landscape than the 
 horizon figures ; nature's eclecticism ? and what is 
 his speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but 
 a still finer success? all the weary miles and tons 
 of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral 
 of it contracted into a musical word, or the most 
 cunning stroke of the pencil? 
 
 But the artist must employ the symbols in use 
 in his day and nation, to convey his enlarged sense 
 to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always 
 formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hour 
 always sets his ineffaceable seal on the work, and 
 gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagina- 
 tion. As far as the spiritual character of the 
 period overpowers the artist, and finds expression 
 in his work, so far it will alwa} ? s retain a certain 
 grandeur, and will represent to future beholders 
 the Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No 
 man can quite exclude this element of Necessity 
 from his labor. No man can quite emancipate 
 himself from his age and country, or produce a 
 model in which the education, the religion, the 
 politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have 
 no share. Though he were never so original, 
 never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out 
 of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst
 
 ART. 309 
 
 which it grew. The very avoidance betrays the 
 usage he avoids. Above his will, and out of his 
 sight, he is necessitated, by the air he breathes, 
 and the idea on which he and his contemporaries 
 live and toil, to share the manner of his times, 
 ^without knowing what that manner is. Now that 
 which is inevitable in the work, has a higher charm 
 than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as 
 the artist's pen or chisel seems to have been held 
 and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in 
 the history of the human race. This circumstance 
 gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to 
 the Indian, Chinese, and Mexican idols, however 
 gross and shapeless. They denote the height of 
 the human soul in that hour, and were not fantas- 
 tic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the 
 world. Shall I now add that the whole extant 
 product of the plastic arts has herein its highest 
 value, as history; as a stroke drawn in the por- 
 trait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, according 
 to whose ordinations all beings advance to their 
 beatitude. 
 
 Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office 
 of art to educate the perception of beauty. We 
 are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no 
 clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single 
 traits, to assist and lead the dormant taste. We 
 carve and paint, or we behold what is carved and 
 painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The 
 virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one 
 object from the embarrassing variety. Until one 
 thing comes out from the connection of things, there
 
 310 ESSAY XII. 
 
 can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. 
 Our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. 
 The infant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individ- 
 ual character, and his practical power depend on 
 his daily progress in the separation of things, and 
 dealing with one at a time. Love and all the pas- 
 sions concentrate all existence around a single 
 form. It is the habit of certain minds to give an 
 all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought, 
 the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the 
 time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, 
 the orators, the leaders of society. The power to 
 detach, and to magnify by detaching, is the essence 
 of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the 
 poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the moment- 
 ary eminency of an object, so remarkable in 
 Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle, the painter and 
 sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The power 
 depends on the depth of the artist's insight of 
 that object he contemplates. For every object has 
 its roots in central nature, and may of course be 
 so exhibited to us as to represent the world. There- 
 fore, each work of genius is the tyrant of the 
 hour, and concentrates attention on itself. For 
 the time, it is the only thing worth naming, to do 
 that, be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a 
 statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a cam- 
 paign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently we 
 pass to some other object, which rounds itself into 
 a whole, as did the first ; for example, a well laid 
 garden : and nothing seems worth doing but the 
 laying out of gardens. I should think fire the best
 
 ART. 3 1 1 
 
 thing in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, 
 and water, and earth. For it is the right and prop- 
 erty of all natural objects, of all genuine talents, 
 of all native properties whatsoever, to be for their 
 moment the top of the world. A squirrel leaping 
 from bough to bough, and making the wood but 
 one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less 
 than a lion, is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands 
 then and there for nature. A good ballad draws 
 my ear and heart whilst I listen, as much as an epic 
 has done before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a 
 litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality not less 
 than the frescoes of Angelo. From this succes- 
 sion of excellent objects, learn we at last the im- 
 mensity of the world, the opulence of human 
 nature, which can run out to infinitude in any di- 
 rection. But I also learn that what astonished 
 and fascinated me in the first work, astonished me 
 in the second work also, that excellence of all 
 things is one. 
 
 The office of painting and sculpture seems to be 
 merely initial. The best pictures can easily tell 
 us their last secret. The best pictures are rude 
 draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines 
 and dyes which make up the ever-changing " land- 
 scape with figures " amidst which we dwell. Paint- 
 ing seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the 
 limbs. When that has educated the frame to self- 
 possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps 
 of the dancing- master are better forgotten; 
 so painting teaches me the splendor of color and 
 the expression of form, and, as I see many pictures
 
 3 1 2 ESS A Y XII. 
 
 and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless 
 opulence of the pencil, the indift'erency in which 
 the artist stands free to choose out of the possible 
 forms. If he can draw everything, whj 7 draw any- 
 thing? and then is my eye opened to the eternal 
 picture which nature paints in the street with 
 moving men and children, beggars, and fine ladies, 
 draped in red, and green, and blue, and gray ; 
 long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, 
 wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish, capped 
 and based by heaven, earth, and sea. 
 
 A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely 
 the same lesson. As picture teaches the color- 
 ing, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When I 
 have seen fine statues, and afterwards enter a 
 public assembly, I understand well what he meant 
 who said, " When I have been reading Homer, all 
 men look like giants." I too see that painting and 
 sculpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training 
 to the niceties and curiosities of its function. 
 There is no statue like this living man, with his 
 infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of per- 
 petual variety. What a gallery of art have I 
 here! No mannerist made these varied groups 
 and diverse original single figures. Here is the 
 artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his 
 block. Now one thought strikes him, now 
 another, and with each moment he alters the 
 whole air, attitude and expression of his clay. 
 Away with your nonsense of oil and easels, of 
 marble and chisels : except to open your eyes to
 
 ART. 313 
 
 the witchcraft of eternal art, they are hypocritical 
 rubbish. 
 
 The reference of all production at last to an 
 Aboriginal Power, explains the traits common to 
 all works of the highest art, that they are univer- 
 sally intelligible ; that they restore to us the 
 simplest states of mind ; and are religious. Since 
 what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of 
 the original soul, a jet of pure light ; it should 
 produce a similar impression to that made by nat- 
 ural objects. In happy hours, nature appears to 
 us one with art ; art perfected, the work of 
 genius. And the individual in whom simple tastes 
 and susceptibility to all the great human in- 
 fluences, overpowers the accidents of a local and 
 special culture, is the best critic of art. Though 
 we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we 
 must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best 
 of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, 
 in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, 
 a radiation from the work of art, of human 
 character, a wonderful expression through stone 
 or canvas or musical sound of the deepest and 
 simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore 
 most intelligible at last to those souls which have 
 these attributes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, 
 in the masonry of the Romans, and in the pic- 
 tures of the Tuscan and Venetian masters, the 
 highest charm is the universal language they 
 speak. A confession of moral nature, of purity, 
 love, and hope, breathes from them all. That 
 which we carry to them, the same we bring back
 
 314 ESSAY XII. 
 
 more fairly illustrated in the inemor}'. The trav- 
 eller who visits the Vatican, and passes from 
 chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, 
 vases, sarcophagi, and candelabra, through all 
 forms of beauty, cut in the richest materials, is in 
 danger of forgetting the simplicity of the princi- 
 ples out of which they all sprung, and that they 
 had their origin from thoughts and laws in his own 
 breast. He studies the technical rules on these 
 wonderful remains, but forgets that these works 
 were not always thus constellated ; that they are 
 the contributions of many ages, and many coun- 
 tries ; that each came out of the solitary workshop 
 of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of 
 the existence of other sculpture, created his work 
 without other model, save life, household life, and 
 the sweet and smart of personal relations, of beat- 
 ing hearts, and meeting eyes, of poverty, and 
 necessity, and hope, and fear. These were his in- 
 spirations, and these are the effects he carries 
 home to your heart and mind. In proportion to 
 his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet 
 for his proper character. He must not be in any 
 manner pinched or hindered by his material, but 
 through his necessity of imparting himself, the 
 adamant will be wax in his hands, and will allow 
 an adequate communication of himself in his full 
 stature and proportion. Not a conventional na- 
 ture and culture need he cumber himself with, nor 
 ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris, but 
 that house, and weather, and manner of living, 
 which poverty and the fate of birth have made at
 
 ART. 315 
 
 once so odious and so dear, in the gray, unpainted 
 wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire 
 farm, or in the log hut of the backwoods, or in the 
 narrow lodging where he has endured the con- 
 straints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve 
 as well as any other condition, as the symbol of a 
 thought which pours itself indifferently through 
 all. 
 
 I remember, when in my younger days, I had 
 heard of the wonders of Italian painting, I fan- 
 cied the great pictures would be great strangers ; 
 some surprising combination of color and form ; a 
 foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like the 
 spontoons and standards of the militia, which 
 play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations ot 
 school boys. I was to see and acquire I knew not 
 what. When I came at last to Rome, and saw 
 with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to 
 novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, 
 and itself pierced directly to the simple and true ; 
 that it was familiar and sincere , that it was the 
 old, eternal fact I had met already in so many 
 forms; unto which I lived; that it was the plain 
 you and me I knew so well, had left at home in 
 so many conversations. I had the same experi- 
 ence already in a church at Naples. There I saw 
 that nothing was changed with me but the place, 
 and said to myself, ' Thou foolish child, hast 
 thou come out hither, over four thousand miles of 
 salt water, to find that which was perfect to thee t 
 there at home ? ' that fact I saw again in the 
 Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculp-
 
 316 ESS AY XII. 
 
 ture, and yet again when I came to Rome, and to 
 the paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, 
 and Leonardo da Vinci. " What old mole ! work- 
 est thou in the earth so fast?" It had travelled 
 by my side ; that which I fancied I had left in 
 Boston, was here in the Vatican, and again at 
 Milan, and at Paris, and made all travelling ridic- 
 ulous as a treadmill. I now require this of all 
 pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they 
 dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. 
 Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense 
 and plain dealing. All great actions have been 
 simple, and all great pictures are. 
 
 The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent 
 example of this peculiar merit. A calm, benig- 
 nant beauty shines over all this picture, and goes 
 directly to the heart. It seems almost to call } T OU 
 by name. The sweet and sublime face of Jesus 
 is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid 
 expectations ! This familiar, simple, home-speak- 
 ing countenance, is as if one should meet a friend. 
 The knowledge of picture-dealers has its value, 
 but listen not to their criticism when your heart 
 is touched by genius. It was not painted for 
 them, it was painted for you ; for such as had eyes 
 capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty 
 emotions. 
 
 Yet when we have said all our fine things about 
 the arts, we must end with a frank confession, 
 that the arts, as we know them, are but initial. 
 Our best praise is given to what they aimed and 
 promised, not to the actual result. He has con-
 
 ART. 317 
 
 ceived meanly of the resources of man, who be- 
 lieves that the best age of production is past. 
 The real value of the Iliad, or the Transfigura- 
 tion, is as signs of power; billows or ripples they 
 are of the great stream of tendency ; tokens of 
 the everlasting effort to produce, which even in 
 its worst estate, the soul betrays. Art has not 
 yet come to its maturity, if it do not put itself 
 abreast with the most potent influences of the 
 world, if it is not practical and moral, if it do not 
 stand in connection with the conscience, if it do 
 not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it 
 addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. There 
 is higher work for Art than the arts. They are 
 abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. 
 Art is the need to create ; but in its essence, im- 
 mense and universal, it is impatient of working 
 with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples 
 and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. 
 Nothing less than the creation of man and nature 
 is its end. A man should find in it an outlet for 
 his whole energy. He may paint and carve only 
 as long as he can do that. Art should exhilarate, 
 and throw down the walls of circumstance on 
 every side, awakening in the beholder the same 
 sense of universal relation and power which the 
 work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect 
 is to make new artists. 
 
 Already History is old enough to witness the 
 old age and disappearance of particular arts. 
 The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any 
 real effect. It was originally a useful art, a mode
 
 318 ESSAY XII. 
 
 of writing, a savage's record of gratitude or de- 
 votion, and among a people possessed of a wonder- 
 ful perception of form, this childish carving was 
 refined to the utmost splendor of effect. But it 
 is the game of a rude and youthful people, and 
 not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual na- 
 tion. Under an oak tree loaded with leaves and 
 nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, I stand in 
 a thoroughfare ; but in the works of our plastic 
 arts, and especially of sculpture, creation is 
 driven into a corner. I cannot hide from myself 
 that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as 
 of toys, and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculp- 
 ture. Nature transcends all our moods of thought, 
 and its secret we do not yet find. But the gal- 
 lery stands at the mercy of our moods, and there 
 is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do 
 not wonder that Newton, with an attention habit- 
 ually engaged on the path of planets and suns, 
 should have wondered what the Earl of Pern- 
 broke found to admire in " stone dolls." Sculp- 
 ture may serve to teach the pupil how deep is 
 the secret of form, how purely the spirit can 
 translate its meanings into that eloquent dialect. 
 But the statue will look cold and false before 
 that new activity which needs to roll through 
 All things, and is impatient of counterfeits, and 
 things not alive. Picture and sculpture are the 
 celebrations and festivities of form. But true 
 art is never fixed, but always flowing. The 
 sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the 
 human voice when it speaks from its instant life,
 
 ART. 319 
 
 tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The ora- 
 torio has already lost its relation to the morning, 
 to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading 
 voice is in tune with these. All works of art 
 should not be detached, but extempore perform- 
 ances. A great man is a new statue in every at- 
 titude and action. A beautiful woman is a pic- 
 ture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life 
 may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a ro- 
 mance. 
 
 A true announcement of the law of creation, 
 if a man were found worthy to declare it, would 
 carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and 
 destroy its separate and contrasted existence. 
 The fountains of invention and beauty in mod- 
 ern society are all but dried up. A popular 
 novel, a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that 
 we are all paupers in the almshouse of this world, 
 without dignity, without skill, or industry. Art 
 is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, 
 which lowers on the brows even of the Venuses 
 and the Cupids of the antique, and furnishes the 
 sole apology for the intrusions of such anomalous 
 figures into nature, namely, that they were in- 
 evitable; that the artist was drunk with a passion 
 for form which he could not resist, and which 
 vented itself in these fine extravagancies, no 
 longer dignifies the chisel or the pencil. But the 
 artist, and the connoisseur, now seek in art the 
 exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the 
 evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the 
 figure they make in their own imagination, and
 
 320 ESSAY XII. 
 
 they flee to art, and convey their better sense in 
 an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes 
 the same effort which a sensual prosperity makes, 
 namely, to detach the beautiful from the useful, 
 to do up the work as unavoidable, and hating it, 
 pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and compen- 
 sations, this division of beauty from use, the laws 
 of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is 
 sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, 
 it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer 
 attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, 
 or in lyrical construction ; an effeminate prudent, 
 sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can 
 be formed ; for the hand can never execute any- 
 thing higher than the character can inspire. 
 
 The art that thus separates, is itself first sepa- 
 rated. Art must not be a superficial talent, but 
 must begin farther back in man. Now men do 
 not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to 
 make a statue which shall be. They abhor men 
 as tasteless, dull and inconvertible, and console 
 themselves with color-bags, and blocks of marble. 
 They reject life as prosaic, and create a death 
 which they call poetic. They despatch the day's 
 weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries 
 They eat and drink, that they may afterwards ex- 
 ecute the ideal. Thus is art vilified ; the name 
 conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; 
 it stands in the imagination, as somewhat contrary 
 to nature, and struck with death from the first. 
 Would it not be better to begin higher up, to 
 serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to
 
 ART. 321 
 
 serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing 
 the breath, and in the functions of life ? Beauty 
 must come back to the useful arts, and the dis- 
 tinction between the fine and the useful arts be 
 forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were 
 nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possi- 
 ble to distinguish the one from the other. In 
 nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is there- 
 fore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, repro- 
 ductive ; it is therefore useful, because it is sym- 
 metrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the 
 call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England 
 or America, its history in Greece. It will come, 
 as always, unannounced, and spring up between 
 the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain 
 that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles 
 in the old arts ; it is its instinct to find beauty 
 and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the 
 field and roadside, in the shop and mill. Proceed- 
 ing from a religious heart it will raise to a divine 
 use, the railroad, the insurance office, the joint 
 stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, 
 our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric 
 jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which 
 we seek now only an economical use. Is not the 
 selfish, and even cruel aspect which belongs to our 
 great mechanical works, to mills, railwaj^s, and ma- 
 chinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses 
 which these works obey ? When its errands are 
 noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the At- 
 lantic between Old and New England, and arriv- 
 ing at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, 
 21
 
 322 ESSA Y XII. 
 
 is a step of man into harmony with nature. 
 The boat at St Petersburg, which plies along the 
 Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sub- 
 lime. When science is learned in love, and its 
 powers are wielded by love, they will appear the 
 supplements and continuations of the material 
 creation. 
 
 THE END.
 
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