REESE' LIBRARY 
 
 OP THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received. 
 Accessions No. 
 
Uniform with this Volume. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY. 
 
 A SERIES OF SERMONS. 
 
 By THOMAS STARR KING. Edited, with a Memoir, by EDWIN P. 
 WHIPPLE. Fine Steel Portrait. 121110. $2.00. 
 
 " The volume contains twenty-two discourses, all of which are alive 
 with the vigorous and persuasive eloquence which raised Mr. King to so 
 high a rank among the distinguished preachers of the country. Though 
 
 liberal in creed, they are singularly evangelical in spirit These 
 
 extracts give no real conception of the richness of these sermons of Mr. 
 King in thought, knowledge, expression ; far less of the evidences they 
 afford of the elevation and nobility of nature which no fertility of think- 
 ing and no resources of rhetoric can mimic. The man was, in soul and 
 will, what he preached." New York Tribune. 
 
 "They present every aspect of his many-sided mind and character, 
 and are upon topics which will never lose their freshness or impor- 
 tance as long as man has a religious nature, which lifts him heaven- 
 ward. Read only for their literary beauty and grace of style, and for 
 their keen appreciation of Nature, they will be found very charming 
 and suggestive ; but read for their quickening and stimulating influence 
 upon the religious life, they take on added significance, and are full of 
 power and helpfulness." Boston Journal. 
 
 HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO., Publishers, Boston. 
 
SUBSTANCE AND SHOW, 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS STARR KING. 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
 
 BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 
 BOSTON : 
 HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 &be ftttotoe lircss, Cambrfoge. 
 1879. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1877. 
 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
K 
 1*7* 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 I. SUBSTANCE AND SHOW; OR, FACTS AND 
 
 FORCES i 
 
 II. THE LAWS OF DISORDER .... 34 
 
 III. SOCRATES 78 
 
 IV. SIGHT AND INSIGHT 148 
 
 V. HlLDEBRAND IQO 
 
 VI. Music 231 
 
 VII. EXISTENCE AND LIFE 254 
 
 VIII. THE EARTH AND THE MECHANIC ARTS . 275 
 
 *~ IX. DANIEL WEBSTER 299 
 
 X. BOOKS AND READING .... 354 
 
 ^ XI. THE PRIVILEGE AND DUTIES OF PATRIOTISM 389 
 
 INTELLECTUAL DUTIES OF STUDENTS IN 
 
 THEIR ACADEMIC YEARS .... 413 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVKHSITV <>F 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THOSE who have read the biographical pref- 
 ace to Mr. King's sermons, published about 
 a month ago under the general title of " Christian- 
 ity and Humanity," do not need to be informed 
 that his influence extended far beyond his parish 
 and his denomination, and included that vast mul- 
 titude of listeners who are more or less magneti- 
 cally affected by the lyceum lecturer. Indeed, he 
 was one of the foremost speakers who followed 
 in the train of Ralph Waldo Emerson in erecting 
 the lecture platform into a kind of free pulpit, 
 from which the advanced ideas of spiritual think- 
 ers, philanthropists, and reformers were diffused 
 through the community. It is needless to speak 
 of Emerson's supremacy in this line of thought 
 and endeavor, for it is now universally acknowl- 
 edged. By carefully avoiding all controversy 
 with the good and learned men who were both 
 shocked by his radicalism and charmed by his 
 genius and character, he made his simple affirma- 
 tions felt as forces wherever his voice was heard 
 in our multitudinous lyceums. In the course of 
 a few years he did much to emancipate the popu- 
 lar mind from its ingrained theological and politi- 
 
viii Introduction. 
 
 cal prejudices, and he did this without severely 
 wounding or insulting the feelings and opinions 
 of the champions of the established order. In 
 spite of his occasional indulgence in certain 
 caprices and audacities of his individuality, he 
 commonly confined himself to the glad work of 
 shedding light on the questions he treated ; and 
 the main object of his teaching was directed to 
 disentangling the imperative ideas of truth and 
 goodness, of beauty and justice, from the partial 
 views of all forcible individualities, including his 
 own. He aimed to purify his intellect and moral 
 sentiment from all personal bias, and to make his 
 reason and conscience worthy to receive and an- 
 nounce the inspirations of impersonal truth and 
 morality. His constitution of mind and charac- 
 ter instinctively led him to avoid controversy as 
 something which would inevitably enfeeble his 
 faculty of spiritual insight, and give him a cheap 
 victory over opponents at the immense expense 
 of interrupting his work of patient self-discipline 
 as a seer. Then his friend, Theodore Parker, was 
 always at hand to concentrate on himself every 
 element of pugnacious opposition to the new ideas 
 with a pugnacity that no controversies could ap- 
 pease, and who was incapable of feeling any per- 
 secution so keenly as the persecution of silence, 
 especially when it came from the Unitarian breth- 
 ren whom he criticised. Both of these men la- 
 bored, each after his particular fashion, to make the 
 lecture-room a place where both independence of 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 opinion and peculiarity of character could be freely 
 expressed ; and a third, Wendell Phillips, needed 
 nothing but his incomparable power of eloquence, 
 which was at once seductive and smiting, to rec- 
 ommend himself to any audience which he con- 
 sented to address, whether he spoke on "The 
 Lost Arts," or on subjects connected with the re- 
 form movements of the time. 
 
 Mr. King became a force in the lecture-room, 
 as he became a force in the pulpit, by the happy 
 union in his nature of brilliancy of talent with 
 beneficence of character. Few persons will stand 
 the test of that pitiless analysis which austerely 
 probes down through intellect and conscience to 
 the roots of individual disposition, regardless of 
 all the " grafts " which culture or " grace " have 
 added to the original stock ; but those who knew 
 King intimately must admit that, in penetrating to 
 the heart of his being, they found nothing there 
 which contradicted the first impression that he was 
 sound to the core, that he was instinctively 
 sympathetic, unselfish, and humane. This essen- 
 tial goodness made him loved and respected even 
 by those who most violently disagreed with him 
 in opinion ; for there was nothing of the sullen and 
 arrogant self-sufficiency of the dogmatist and ego- 
 tist in his most confident, masculine, and joyous 
 utterance of his own perceptions of truth. Only 
 such persons as were under the slavery of fear, 
 envy, and malignity could suspect that his intellect 
 ever became the organ of such ignoble passions. 
 
x Introduction. 
 
 As a result of this original felicity of nature, his 
 eloquence was as persuasive as it was inspiring 
 and instructive. It had that subtle element of 
 influence which can only come from a humane 
 disposition, underlying thought and style, and 
 vitalizing both. What King said was excellent ; 
 but the spirit in which he said it was felt by per- 
 sons of all grades of culture as a precious some- 
 thing which abolished all distinctions of social 
 " clanship," and, for the time, bound them together 
 in the kinship of a common humanity. In short, 
 his eloquence had that nameless charm which 
 made it universally attractive. It will be observed, 
 by the reader of the present volume, that this per- 
 sonal attractiveness was accompanied by knowl- 
 edge, thought, wit, humor, fancy, and imagination ; 
 that every faculty of the lecturer's mind and every 
 feeling of his heart was engaged in the task of 
 fastening the attention of his hearers to the sub- 
 ject he discussed ; but still, even in the reading, 
 we feel that the great beauty of the performance 
 streaming through all the minor beauties of detail, 
 is the beautiful character of Starr King uncon- 
 sciously impressed upon it. 
 
 There are many lecturers still living who will 
 remember the effect of the lecture on " Substance 
 and Show " by their experience in following King 
 the week after its delivery. As soon as they 
 arrived, the Lecture Committee inevitably began 
 to talk about King's " Substance and Show" ; as 
 soon as each had concluded his particular address, 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 the Lecture Committee, after the briefest of all 
 polite pauses, recurred to the more pleasing topic 
 of King and his "Substance and Show." The 
 popularity of this admirable lecture was one of 
 the finest of all tributes ever paid to the average 
 taste and intelligence of the lecture audiences of 
 the country. In a letter to a friend, in December 
 1851, King says : " My lecture has become a fact 
 and a show ; whether it is a substance and a force 
 
 is questionable You do not, I think, take 
 
 the antithesis I make, or exactly appreciate the 
 drift of the plan. The aim of it is wholly prac- 
 tical, to break down, in the popular mind, the 
 inveterate association of strength and permanence 
 with the visible side of the world and things we 
 can * sense.' The illustrations from science are 
 taken to buttress faith in the invisible and intangi- 
 ble as being the causal and productive agencies. 
 Substance is that which stands under, supports, 
 moulds, etc. ; and the whole visible universe really 
 leans upon secret impalpable energies, to which it 
 owes shape, color, and its myriad varieties. I make 
 no antithesis between material and immaterial 
 forces, but show how all the glories and differences 
 in nature are due to the secret working of electric, 
 actinic, magnetic powers, and that the whole order 
 and science of nature is in the last analysis the 
 expression of Divine ideas. With this aid from 
 nature, I go into the historic world and moral life, 
 to show that ideas, sentiments, moral truth, are 
 the most vigorous, despotic, un wasting substances, 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 since nations lean on them ; and character, the 
 great reality and most efficient force we know, is 
 the organization of these. It is a Lyceum Ser- 
 mon." As to his figurative style, he tells his cor- 
 respondent that rhetoric, considered " as jewelry 
 and rouge, is sufficiently contemptible," but that 
 it is legitimate when it is the expression of what 
 is in itself beautiful. " You are not," he adds, 
 " charitable enough to rhetoric. Equations, plus 
 and minus, algebraic signs and diagrams, are not 
 the ideals of the perfection of speech. God is 
 a glorious rhetorician. How he hides his mathe- 
 matics and bald geometry ! Does n't he orna- 
 ment all the truth he states to us through nature, 
 and when he teaches a chemical and vegetable 
 science in the oak, the elm, and the palm, does n't 
 he perorate in their bossy, waving canopy of 
 leaves?" 
 
 In the lectures on "The Laws of Disorder," 
 " Sight and Insight," and " Existence and Life," 
 the same general tendency is observable which 
 lends so much attractiveness to " Substance and 
 Show." In reading them we are constantly wit- 
 nessing the transformation of physical into spirit- 
 ual laws, or, as Emerson would say, " the meta- 
 morphosis of natural into spiritual facts." The 
 fertility of the writer's mind in illustrations, analo- 
 gies, and images compels the reader to follow the 
 course of the thinking with a pleased and ever- 
 expectant attention to the end. These lectures, 
 as originally delivered before lyceums, met the 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 wants of all the classes huddled together in a 
 lecture audience. The general strain was so high 
 and noble that everybody who listened felt up- 
 lifted and ennobled.- It was not merely, in the 
 case of King's discourse, that 
 
 " Rustic life and poverty 
 Grew beautiful beneath his touch," 
 
 but that wealth and poverty were alike made to 
 admit the superiority of mental and moral "good" 
 over mere worldly " goods." The expressions of 
 satisfaction varied with the grammatical rather 
 than the human peculiarities of the persons who 
 were addressed. " What a grand, inspiring, and 
 instructive lecture ! " was the verdict of those clad 
 in silk and broadcloth, after the speaker had con- 
 cluded. " Them 's idees," was the judgment of one 
 hard-headed, horny-handed workman in home- 
 spun, as he came out of the hall by the side of 
 King. 
 
 The lecture on " Socrates " attained a popularity 
 nearly as great as that on " Substance and Show." 
 This was the more remarkable because the sub- 
 ject might be supposed foreign to the sympathies 
 of those who made up the bulk of the audience 
 of a village or town lyceum. But King, though 
 necessarily not a profound Greek scholar, was 
 passionately attracted to Plato at an early age, 
 and had so absorbed Cousin's French translation 
 of that great master in p ilosophy that he ven- 
 tured, when he had hardly attained legal man- 
 hood, to contribute a critical exposition of Plato's 
 
xiv Introduction. 
 
 doctrine of immortality to the " Universalist Re- 
 view," and in the course of it to question the 
 accuracy and the insight of so accomplished a 
 scholar as Professor Andrews Norton. The 
 figure of Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, had 
 been impressed so vividly on his imagination, that 
 Socrates at last became to him as actual a per- 
 sonage as any acquaintance he daily passed in the 
 streets of Charlestown or Boston. He thought 
 he could contrive to transfer to other minds the 
 image of this heathen saint and sage as it ex- 
 isted, warm, glowing, and lifelike, in his own. 
 His success was complete. Indeed, the lecture 
 is a masterpiece of its kind. Scholarship can 
 doubtless paint a finer portrait of Socrates ; but 
 to naturalize him, morally and intellectually, so 
 as to make him a sort of fellow-citizen of the 
 honest inhabitants of ordinary American towns 
 and villages, is a task which mere scholarship is 
 incompetent to perform ; yet King succeeded in 
 doing this difficult work. In English literature 
 the most admirable exposition of the life, char- 
 acter, and method of Socrates is doubtless to be 
 found in Grote's " History of Greece" ; but no Cape 
 Cod fisherman or Western pioneer could have 
 been induced to read Grote, whereas both heard 
 King with delight. In the records of our Ameri- 
 can lyceums there is probably no other instance 
 of such a subject being made universally popular 
 by the attractive genius of the speaker. 
 
 The lecture on " Hildebrand " was written for a 
 
Introduction. xv 
 
 special occasion, and its interest was not tested 
 by being repeated before miscellaneous audi- 
 ences. It is a favorable specimen of King's 
 power of dealing with the great crises and char- 
 acters of ecclesiastical history. The editor had 
 intended to include in this volume a still more 
 elaborate lecture on "Constahtine and his Times"; 
 but the publication of that, as well as of two ad- 
 dresses on the " Life and Writings of St. Paul," 
 is reluctantly postponed for the present. Indeed, 
 an editor who thoroughly explores the mass of 
 manuscripts which Mr. King left behind him, for 
 the purpose of selecting a few for publication, 
 finds his task all the more difficult on account 
 of the very richness of the materials. He knows 
 what he would like to print, but his literary con- 
 science is troubled by the thought of those which 
 he is compelled to omit. 
 
 Mr. King was intensely sensitive to the in- 
 fluences . of music, though he had no tech- 
 nical knowledge of it as a science, and could not 
 read its language. One of the most eloquent 
 discourses in his volume of sermons is that on 
 "The Organ and its Symbolism"; and readers 
 of the present volume cannot fail to be impressed 
 by the address on " Music," recording, as it does, 
 the ideas and emotions awakened in the writer by 
 listening to the works of the great composers. 
 It was a privilege to sit near him when a work of 
 Handel, Mozart, or Beethoven was performed ; 
 for the ecstasy which thrilled his own frame 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 became infectious, and one enjoyed the double 
 delight of hearing the music and of participating 
 in the rapture of a companion whose soul was in 
 most delicious accord with it. 
 
 Five of the lectures in the present volume were 
 written and delivered in California. That on 
 " Books and Reading " speaks for itself as one of 
 the best of all addresses ever delivered on a topic 
 which has seemingly been worn threadbare by 
 the efforts equally of genius and mediocrity, but 
 which, in King's hands, comes out fresh and 
 new, as though he were the first man who had 
 ever discoursed about it. As far as advice on 
 such a subject is ever an aid to intellectual educa- 
 tion, it may be said that King succeeded in his 
 aim ; for the lecture had not only a surprising pop- 
 ularity, but numbers of his hearers really adopted 
 his plan of reading, and doubtless found it to be 
 of much practical value. The other four lectures 
 refer more or less to the Rebellion. King, while 
 he was in California, could no more keep Jeffer- 
 son Davis and the secessionists out of his ser- 
 mons and addresses, than Dickens's Mr. Dick 
 could keep Charles the First out of his " Memo- 
 rial." The lecture on "Daniel Webster" was 
 one of three which he delivered to immense audi- 
 ences in California before the war broke out. It 
 is now printed, not for its literary merit, but be- 
 cause it contains many felicitous touches of char- 
 acterization, unfolds and forecasts the principles 
 on which the impending struggle must be con- 
 
Introduction. xvii 
 
 ducted, and was a cause of much irritation to 
 those " conservatives " who could not openly op- 
 pose the doctrines of such an apostle of conser- 
 vatism as Webster, but who were still doubtful 
 whether, in the event of a war, they should cast 
 their fortunes with the free or the slave States. 
 The lecture was written in headlong haste, and 
 some of the paragraphs are evidently mere notes 
 of what the lecturer afterwards expanded in the 
 delivery ; but it did its appointed work more 
 effectually than if it had been a perfect specimen 
 of rhetoric ; for it brought into the discussion the 
 authoritative name of Webster, as the one states- 
 man of the country who had not only crushed 
 and trampled under foot all the sophisms of the 
 most redoubtable logicians of disunion and of 
 liberticide, but had made the preservation of the 
 Union the one practical object and supreme ideal 
 of American statesmanship. King's "Webster" 
 was not only denouncedby politicians in news- 
 papers, but gently rebuked by priests in the 
 pulpit. As to the latter, they professed to 
 have no objection to the eulogy of any promi- 
 nent statesman of the past, but they thought 
 it indecorous to apply Webster's principles in a 
 satirical and offensive way to the problems of the 
 present. When the war actually burst out, King 
 plainly told his parishioners that his religion was 
 identical with his patriotism ; and he referred, in 
 a strain of bitter-sweet eloquence, to the theologi- 
 cal rancor which had ostracized him as a dis- 
 
xviii Introduction. 
 
 turber of the public peace, because he had fore- 
 seen and stated those perversions of constitutional 
 law which alone endangered it. 
 
 Up to the time of Mr. King's death it was gen- 
 erally believed that he, more than any other man, 
 had prevented California and the whole Pacific 
 coast from falling into the gulf of disunion. It is 
 certain that Abraham Lincoln held this opinion ; 
 and it was an opinion which the President shared 
 with thousands of prominent men in all sections 
 of the country, including those California sympa- 
 thizers with the South who were most vexed by 
 King's opposition to their schemes. The usual 
 answer to this general impression of the effect 
 of his work comes, of course, from patriots who 
 maintain that California was sound for the Union 
 from the first ; that King merely felt the pulse of 
 the people, and gave eloquent expression to the 
 general sentiment of the State. But in fact he did 
 not merely feel the people's pulse ; he gave inces- 
 santly an zw-pulse to the vague Union feeling, and 
 directed it to a definite object. Doubtless a large 
 majority of the population were Unionists. Had it 
 been otherwise, it would not have been necessary 
 for some of the most unscrupulous politicians of 
 the State to conceal their treasonable designs un- 
 der patriotic professions of loyalty. Then there 
 was a large body of honest men who insisted that 
 the war should be conducted on principles which 
 would insure the defeat of the Union armies. 
 Miracles are now banished from authentic secular 
 
Introduction. xix 
 
 history ; but still there is something almost mirac- 
 ulous in the triumph of the national cause against 
 the wrong-headiness of those well-meaning patriots 
 who contended that the war should be prosecuted 
 on the constitutional principles which Jefferson 
 Davis and Alexander Stephens laid down for the 
 edification and guidance of Federal statesmen and 
 generals. The leading opponents of the Consti- 
 tution, armed to overturn both /'/ and the gov- 
 ernment founded on it, still managed to steal some 
 time from their conferences with foreign powers, 
 and their direction of military operations, to in- 
 struct the loyal people as to the proper limitations 
 of their power in putting down the most formida- 
 ble of all rebellions ; and there is something comi- 
 cal in the thought that these admonitions not to. 
 violate the provisions of the Constitution were 
 keenly felt, not merely by secret traitors in the 
 loyal States, but by a large body of Unionists who 
 were eager and ready to sacrifice life and property 
 to sustain the Union and the Constitution. 
 
 " Pleased to the last they cropped the flowery food, 
 And licked the hands just raised to shed their blood." 
 
 When therefore we say that King kept California 
 strong for the Union, we do not mean that he sim- 
 ply was the eloquent voice through which the gen- 
 eral Union sentiment found expression, but that 
 he guided Union opinion ; that he both anticipated 
 and defended the measures which eventually made 
 the cause of the Union successful. He became a 
 power in California, because he had the sagacity 
 
xx Introduction. 
 
 to detect, and the intrepidity to denounce, the 
 treason that skulked under loyal phrases and 
 catchwords ; and his influence was measured, 
 not by his bursts of declamatory eloquence on 
 the blessings of union, but by the skill with which 
 he took the people, as it were, out of the hands 
 of disloyal politicians, and induced them to give 
 their vigorous support to the administration of the 
 national government. 
 
 It has not been the intention of the editor of 
 this volume to publish any lecture which specially 
 represents King's deadly animosity to the enemies 
 of the country j indeed, it has now become 
 fashionable to speak of treason as an amiable 
 weakness of generous and susceptible natures; 
 but the reader will note that this animosity 
 bursts forth here and there in the noble lecture 
 on "The Earth and the Mechanic Arts," and 
 even affords the occasion for a sublime image 
 of "the earthquake wave," in the college ad- 
 dress on " The Intellectual Duties of Students." 
 The grand spirit which animates the oration on 
 " The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism " will 
 be felt, appreciated, and acknowledged by hun- 
 dreds who may be irked by the relentless assault 
 made in it on the old aristocracy of Southern 
 slaveholders. But King, during the whole period 
 of his life in California, was so penetrated, 
 through and through, with the sentiment of pa- 
 triotism, that his hostility to the enemies of the 
 Union and the Federal government broke out, 
 
Introduction. xxi 
 
 not merely in such addresses as this to Union 
 soldiers, but in every form in which his moral and 
 intellectual activity found expression. 
 
 Throughout the lectures in the present volume 
 the reader can hardly fail to be impressed by 
 King's broad humanity. He had a horror of all 
 social arrangements which tended to confirm 
 sterile and stunted natures in the self-satisfaction 
 they derived from contemplating their own little- 
 ness of soul. He ranked men and women, not 
 according to their social position, but according 
 to their place in the ascending scale of intellect 
 and virtue. " Think," he says, in speaking of the 
 future life, " think of the poor exclusives from 
 this sphere carrying their petty measures, which 
 limit their sympathies on earth, into the world of 
 substance, setting up their little coteries to cut 
 Gabriel if he did not belong to their set, or ex- 
 clude some spirit whose brow is freighted with 
 truth, if he was not born quite high enough to suit 
 their fancy ! " The one unmistakable mark of 
 vulgarity was, in his view, narrowness of mind 
 and insensibility of heart, the stupid prejudice 
 which rails at ideas, and the inhuman selfishness 
 which scoffs at philanthropy. 
 
 In his lectures, as in his sermons, the largeness, 
 liberality, and humanity of his disposition found 
 their natural expression in genial breadth of 
 thought and beneficence of feeling. Everything 
 small and mean was as abhorrent to his soul as 
 
xxii Introduction. 
 
 was everything base and cruel. His heart and 
 brain agreed in instinctively rejecting whatever 
 had a tendency to degrade humanity, and in in- 
 stinctively admitting whatever was calculated to 
 purify, enrich, elevate, and invigorate it. Through- 
 out the present volume, on whatever subject he 
 exercises his bright and joyous faculties, it will 
 ever be found that he is a teacher of manliness 
 as well as of godliness. " Circumstances," he 
 says, " may determine how much show a man 
 shall make. To be famous, depends on some for- 
 tuities ; to be a president, depends on the acute 
 smellers of a few politicians and a mysterious set 
 of wires ; to be rich, depends upon birth or luck ; 
 to be intellectually eminent, may depend on the 
 appointment of Providence ; but to be a man, in 
 the sense of substance, depends solely on one's 
 own noble ambition and determination to live in 
 contact with God's open atmosphere of truth and 
 right, from which all true manliness is inspired 
 and fed." 
 
 And again he says, in reference to the three 
 methods of observing the material universe which 
 are so prominent in all his lectures : " Out of three 
 roots grows the great tree of nature, truth, beauty, 
 good. The man of science follows up its mighty 
 stem, measures it, and sees its branches in the 
 silver-leaved boughs of the firmament. The poet 
 delights in the symmetry of its strength, the grace 
 of its arches, the flush of its fruit. Only to the 
 man with finer eye than both is the secret of its 
 
Introduction. xxiii 
 
 glory unveiled ; for his vision discerns how it is 
 fed and in what air it thrives. To him it is only 
 an expansion of the burning bush on Horeb, seen 
 by the solemn prophet, glowing continually with 
 the presence of Infinite Law and Love, yet remain- 
 ing forever unconsumed." 
 

 L i i> it A K Y 
 
 UNIVKKS1TY OF 
 
 CAi.IFOL.tNI' 
 
 X 
 
 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW; OK, FACTS AND FOECES, 
 
 I PROPOSE to speak on the difference be- 
 tween substance and show, or the distinction 
 we should make between the facts of the world 
 and life, and the causal forces which lie behind 
 and beneath them. No mind which comprehends 
 the issues involved in the distinction will fail to see 
 that the topic is vitally practical ; for scepticism, 
 or mistaken conceptions of the truth upon this 
 point, must degrade our whole theory of life, 
 demoralize our reverence, and make the region 
 with which our faith should be in constant contact 
 thin, dreamy, and spectral. 
 
 Most persons, doubtless, if you place before 
 them a paving-stone and a slip of paper with some 
 writing on it, would not hesitate to say that there 
 is as much more substance in the rock than in 
 the paper as there is heaviness. * Yet they might 
 make a great mistake. Suppose that the slip of 
 paper contains the sentence, "God is love" ; or, 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"; or, 
 " All men have moral rights by reason of heav- 
 enly parentage," then the paper represents more 
 
 I A 
 
2 Substance and Show ; 
 
 force and substance than the stone. Heaven and 
 earth may pass away, but such words can never 
 die out or become less real. 
 
 The word "substance" means that which stands 
 under and supports anything else. Whatever then 
 creates, upholds, classifies anything which our 
 senses behold, though we cannot handle, see, 
 taste, or smell it, is more substantial than the 
 object itself. In this way the soul, which vivifies, 
 moves, -and supports the body, is a more potent 
 substance than the hard bones and heavy flesh 
 which it vitalizes. A ten-pound weight falling on 
 your head affects you unpleasantly as substance, 
 much more so than a leaf of the New Testament, 
 if dropped in the same direction ; but there is a 
 way in which a page of the New Testament may 
 fall upon a nation and split it, or infuse itself into 
 its bulk and give it strength and permanence. 
 We should be careful, therefore, what test we 
 adopt in order to decide the relative stability of 
 things. 
 
 There is a very general tendency to deny that 
 ideal forces have any practical power. But there 
 have been several thinkers whose scepticism has 
 an opposite direction. " We cannot," they say, 
 " attribute external reality to the sensations we 
 feel." We need not wonder that this theory has 
 failed to convince the unmetaphysical common- 
 sense of people that a stone post is merely a stub- 
 born thought, and that the bite of a dog is noth- 
 ing but an acquaintance with a pugnacious, four- 
 
or. Facts and Forces. 3 
 
 footed conception. When a man falls down stairs 
 it is not easy to convince him that his thought 
 simply tumbles along an inclined series of percep- 
 tions and comes to a conclusion that breaks his 
 head ; least of all, can you induce a man to be- 
 lieve that the scolding of his wife is nothing but 
 the buzzing of his own waspish thoughts, and her 
 use of his purse only the loss of some golden fan- 
 cies from his memory. We are all safe against 
 such idealism as Bishop Berkeley reasoned out so 
 logically. Byron's refutation of it is neat and 
 witty : 
 
 " When Bishop Berkeley says there is no matter, 
 It is no matter what Bishop Berkeley says." 
 
 And yet, by more satisfactory evidence than 
 that which the idealists propose, we are warned 
 against confounding the conception of substance 
 with matter, and confining it to things we can see 
 and grasp. Science steps in and shows us that 
 the physical system of things leans on spirit. We 
 talk of the world of matter, but there is no such 
 world. Everything about us is a mixture or mar- 
 riage of matter and spirit. A world of matter 
 simply would be a huge heap of sandy atoms or 
 an infinite continent of stagnant vapor. There 
 would be no motion, no force, no form, no order, 
 no beauty, in the universe as it now is ; organization 
 meets us at every step and wherever we look ; 
 organization implies spirit, something that rules, 
 disposes, penetrates, and vivifies matter. 
 
 See what a sermon Astronomy preaches as to 
 
4 Substance and Show ; 
 
 the substantial power of invisible things. If the 
 visible universe is so stupendous, what shall we 
 think of the unseen force and vitality in whose 
 arms all its splendors rest? It is no gigantic Atlas, 
 as the Greeks fancied, that upholds the celestial 
 sphere ; all the constellations are kept from fall- 
 ing by an impalpable energy that uses no muscles 
 and no masonry. The ancient mathematician, 
 Archimedes, once said, "Give me a foot of ground 
 outside the globe to stand upon, and I will make 
 a lever that will lift the world." The invisible 
 lever of gravitation, however, without any fulcrum 
 or purchase, does lift the globe, and make it waltz 
 too, with its blond lunar partner, twelve hundred 
 miles a minute to the music of the sun, ay, 
 and heaves sun and systems and milky- way in 
 majestic cotillons on its ethereal floor. 
 
 You grasp an iron ball, and call it hard ; it is 
 not the iron that is hard, but cohesive force that 
 packs the particles of metal into intense socia- 
 bility. Let the force abate, and the same metal 
 becomes like mush ; let it disappear, and the ball 
 is a heap of powder which your breath scatters in 
 the air. If the cohesive energy in nature should 
 get tired and unclench its grasp of matter, our 
 earth to use an expressive New-England phrase 
 would instantly become " a great slump " ; so 
 that what we tread on is not material substance, 
 but matter braced up by a spiritual substance, for 
 which it serves as the form and show. 
 
 All the peculiarities of rock and glass, diamond, 
 
or y Facts and Forces. 5 
 
 ice, and crystal are due to the working of unseen 
 military forces that employ themselves under 
 ground, in caverns, beneath rivers, in mountain 
 crypts, and through the coldest nights, drilling 
 companies of atoms into crystalline battalions and 
 squares, and every caprice of a fantastic order. 
 
 When we turn to the vegetable kingdom, is not 
 the revelation still more wonderful? The forms 
 which we see grow out of substances and are sup- 
 ported by forces which we do not see. The stuff 
 out of which all vegetable appearances are made 
 is reducible to oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and ni- 
 trogen. How does it happen that this common 
 stock is worked up in such different ways ? Why 
 is a lily woven out of it in one place and a dahlia 
 in another, a grape-vine here, and a honeysuckle 
 there, the orange in Italy, the palm in Egypt, 
 the olive in Greece, and the pine in Maine ? 
 Simply because a subtile force of a peculiar kind 
 is at work wherever any vegetable structure adorns 
 the ground, and takes to itself its favorite robe. 
 We have outgrown the charming fancy of the 
 Greeks that every tree has its Dryad that lives in 
 it, animates it, and dies when the tree withers. 
 But we ought, for the truth's sake, to believe that 
 a life-spirit inhabits every flower and shrub, and 
 protects it against the prowling forces of destruc- 
 tion. Look at a full-sized oak, the rooted Levia- 
 than of the fields. Judging by your senses and 
 by the scales, you would say that the substance of 
 the noble tree was its bulk of bark and bough and 
 
6 Substance and Show; 
 
 branch and leaves and sap, the cords of woody 
 and moist matter that compose it and make it 
 heavy. But really its substance is that which 
 makes it an oak, that which weaves its bark and 
 glues it to the stem, and wraps its rings of fresh 
 wood around the trunk every year, and pushes 
 out its boughs and clothes its twigs with digestive 
 leaves and sucks up nutriment from the soil con- 
 tinually, and makes the roots clench the ground 
 with their fibrous fingers as a purchase against the 
 storm wind, and at last holds aloft its tons of matter 
 against the constant tug and wrath of gravitation, 
 and swings its Briarean arms in triumph over the 
 globe and in defiance of the gale. Were it not for 
 this energetic essence that crouches in the acorn 
 and stretches its limbs every year, there would be 
 no oak ; the matter that clothes it would enjoy its 
 stupid slumber; and when the forest monarch 
 stands up in his sinewy lordliest pride, let the 
 pervading life power, and its vassal forces that 
 weigh nothing at all, be annihilated, and the whole 
 structure would wither in a second to inorganic 
 dust. So every gigantic fact in nature is the index 
 and vesture of a gigantic force. Everything which 
 we call organization that spots the landscape of 
 nature is a revelation of secret force that has 
 been wedded to matter, and if the spiritual powers 
 that have thus domesticated themselves around 
 us should be cancelled, the whole planet would 
 be a huge desert of Sahara, a black sand-ball 
 without a shrub, a grass-blade, or a moss. 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 7 
 
 As we rise in the scale of forces towards greater 
 subtility the forces become more important and 
 efficient. Water is more intimately concerned 
 with life than rock, air higher in the rank of ser- 
 vice than water, electric and magnetic agencies 
 more powerful than air, and light, the most deli- 
 cate, is the supreme magician of all. Just think 
 how much expenditure of mechanical strength, is 
 necessary to water a city in the hot summer months. 
 What pumping and tugging and wearisome trudg- 
 ing of horses with the great sprinklers over the 
 tedious pavement ! But see with what beautiful 
 and noiseless force nature waters the cities! The 
 sun looks steadily on the ocean, and its beams lift 
 lakes of water into the air, tossing it up thousands 
 of feet with their delicate fingers, and carefully 
 picking every grain of salt from it before they let 
 it go. No granite reservoirs are needed to hold in 
 the Cochituates and Crotons of the atmosphere, 
 but the soft outlines of the clouds hem in the vast 
 weight of the upper tides that are to cool the 
 globe, and the winds harness themselves as steeds 
 to these silken caldrons and hurry them along 
 through space, while they disburse their rivers of 
 moisture from their great height so lightly that 
 seldom a violet is crushed by the rudeness with 
 which the stream descends. 
 
 Our conceptions of strength and endurance are 
 so associated with visible implements and mechan- 
 ical arrangements that it is hard to divorce them, 
 and yet the stream of electric fire that splits an ash 
 
8 Substance and Show ; 
 
 is not a ponderable thing, and the way in which 
 the loadstone reaches the ten-pound weight and 
 makes it jump is not perceptible. You would 
 think the man had pretty good molars that should 
 gnaw a spike like a stick of candy, but a bottle of 
 innocent-looking hydrogen gas will chew up a piece 
 of bar-iron as though it were some favorite Cav- 
 endish ; and Mr. Faraday, the great chemist, claims 
 to have demonstrated that each drop of water is 
 the sheath of electric force sufficient to charge eight 
 hundred thousand Leyden jars. In spite of Maine 
 liquor laws, therefore, the most temperate man is 
 a pretty hard drinker, for he is compelled to slake 
 his thirst with a condensed thunder-storm. The 
 difference in power between a woman's scolding 
 and a woman's tears is explained now. Chemistry 
 has put it into formulas. When a lady scolds a 
 man has to face only a few puffs of articulate car- 
 bonic acid, but her weeping is liquid lightning. 
 
 The prominent lesson of science to men, there- 
 fore, is faith in the intangible and invisible. Shall 
 we talk of matter as the great reality of the world, 
 the prominent substance? It is nothing but the 
 battle-ground of terrific forces. Every particle of 
 matter, the chemists tell us, is strained up to its 
 last degree of endurance. The glistening bead 
 of dew from which the daisy gently nurses its 
 strength, and which a sunbeam may dissipate, is 
 the globular compromise of antagonistic powers 
 that would shake this building in their unchained 
 rage. And so every atom of matter is the slave 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 9 
 
 of imperious masters that never let it alone. It 
 is nursed and caressed, next bandied about, and 
 soon cuffed and kicked by its invisible overseers. 
 Poor atoms ! no abolition societies will ever free 
 them from their bondage, no colonization move- 
 ment waft them to any physical Liberia. For 
 every particle of matter is bound by eternal fealty 
 to some spiritual lords, to be pinched by one and 
 squeezed by another and torn asunder by a third ; 
 now to be painted by this and now blistered by 
 that; now tormented with heat and soon chilled 
 with cold ; hurried from the Arctic Circle to sweat 
 at the Equator, and then sent on an errand to the 
 Southern Pole; forced through transmigrations of 
 fish, fowl, and flesh; and, if in some corner of crea- 
 tion the poor thing finds leisure to die, searched 
 out and whipped to life again and kept in its con- 
 stant round. 
 
 Thus the stuff that we weigh, handle, and tread 
 upon is only the show of invisible substances, the 
 facts over which subtle and mighty forces rule. 
 
 Next, let us look at ideas as substantial things. 
 If the true definition of substance is causal and 
 sustaining force, then ideas take the first rank as 
 substances, for the whole universe was thought 
 into order and beauty. The word was, " Let 
 there be light, and there was light." Nature is 
 the language and imagery of Divine ideas. A 
 Persian poet said : " The world is a bud from the 
 bower of his beauty ; the sun is a spark from the 
 light of his wisdom ; the sky is a bubble on the 
 
io Substance and Show ; 
 
 sea of his power," A row of types, as arranged 
 by a compositor, not only present to the eye cer- 
 tain shapes, colors, and other sensible qualities, 
 but also intimate to the mind some thought that 
 once arose in a human intellect, and which they 
 have been selected to represent to others. So all 
 the objects of nature constitute a hieroglyphic 
 alphabet, which states great truths and senti- 
 ments that dwell in the Infinite intellect ; with 
 this difference, that the objects of nature are cre- 
 ated and upheld by the idea or sentiment which 
 possesses them. They would fall away and dis- 
 solve if the eternal truth they represent should 
 vanish, just as the body would crumble if the soul 
 should leave it. Not a planet that wheels its circle 
 around its controlling flame, not a sun that pours its 
 blaze upon the black ether, not one of all the con- 
 stellated chandeliers that burn in the dome of 
 heaven, not a firmament that spots the robe of 
 space with a fringe of light, but is a visible 
 statement of a conception, wish, or purpose in 
 the mind of God, from which it was born, and to 
 which alone it owes its continuance and form. 
 Jonathan Edwards imagined that the Almighty 
 creates and upholds the universe, as a reflection 
 on a mirror is caused and sustained by the person 
 or object that stands before it. The rays fall 
 from the object upon the mirror every moment, 
 and the reflection would cease as soon as the 
 object should remove ; so, he conceived, the uni- 
 verse is the continuous image of the Creator's 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 1 1 
 
 constant thought, and would change instantly if 
 the expression of his purpose varied, and would 
 fade from space if his ideas should be dismissed. 
 The mind cannot entertain a more sublime thought 
 than this, and we learn from it that the man who 
 does not delight in the beauty of the universe, and 
 does not receive into his soul some impressions 
 of the meaning of nature, has no contact with the 
 world of Divine Substance, but lives in a vast 
 baby-house of Show. 
 
 Let us see, next, how applicable the principle 
 we are considering is to the world of man and 
 history. All the shows of social life are mani- 
 festations of a secret and impalpable substance. 
 Every house, workshop, church, school-room, 
 athenaeum, theatre, is the representative of an 
 opinion. What the eye sees of them is built of 
 bricks, iron, wood, and mortar by carpenters, 
 smiths, and masons ; but the seed from which 
 they grew and the forces by which they are up- 
 held are ideas, affections, conceptions of utility, 
 sentiments of worship. Strike these out of a 
 people's mind and heart, and its homes, temples, 
 colleges, and art-rooms fall away, like the trunk 
 of the oak when its life-power is smitten, and only 
 the bald, sandy surface of savage life remains. 
 
 What a difference it would make in the physical 
 and moral landscape of a new country, whether a 
 race of Saxons or of Turks were dropped upon it ! 
 In the latter case the timber and stone are slowly 
 conjured into the form of mosques and minarets, 
 
12 Substance and Show ; 
 
 Sultan's palaces and harems, and the various fea- 
 tures of a lazy Moslem civilization ; while the 
 coming of the Saxon genius bids the forests pre- 
 pare to be^hewn for homes and factories, humble 
 shrines of learning, and thickly strewn domes for 
 Sabbath praise and prayer. The iron can no 
 longer sleep in its hiding-places ; the coal the 
 only black slave whose labor the white man may 
 rightfully impress must bring its hot tempera- 
 ment to human service ; the streams are com- 
 pelled to pour their strength upon muscular and 
 busy wheels, that weave fabrics of comfort and 
 luxury ; valleys are exalted, and mountains bend 
 their necks ; steam hurries with monstrous bur- 
 dens ; magnetism shoots thoughts along its slen- 
 der veins ; mighty piles that stand for justice, law, 
 and equal government overlook a thousand cities ; 
 and the white wings of commerce, vying in num- 
 ber and in speed with the pinions of the sea-birds, 
 flap in every breeze that stirs the polar, the mod- 
 erate, or the tropic waves. There may be as 
 many men, as much bodily strength, among the 
 Turks as with the Saxons ; but there is not the 
 spirit, there are not the ideas, to make the fingers 
 so cunning and the muscles so strong. It is the 
 hidden spiritual substance in the Saxon frames 
 that makes their bones and blood its purchase and 
 pulleys, to lift up the myriad structures that bear 
 witness to Saxon civilization. All that we see in 
 England and America, so different from what Cal- 
 cutta and Canton exhibit to the eye, is the cloth- 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 13 
 
 ing and show of different ideas, principles, and 
 sentiments that pervade our vigorous blood. 
 
 Thus, each nation of the globe is a huge bat- 
 tery of spiritual forces to which each individual 
 contributes something. The oneness of the na- 
 tion is the unity of the galvanic current that is 
 generated from the many layers of metal and acid. 
 And the question of the superior power of one 
 nation over another is not at all to be decided by 
 the relative numbers of population and armies, 
 nor by the forts, guns, and magazines, but rather 
 by the relative mental and moral energies of the 
 lands. France, for instance, is a magnificent in- 
 carnation of a certain temperament, and the gen- 
 erations that rise up in her borders continually 
 supply the same mental and social forces, thus 
 giving her one character through centuries. Eng- 
 land, moreover, is the hive of very different pas- 
 sions and powers, and the point whether, in a 
 long war, giving each side money enough, Eng- 
 land or France would triumph, is reduced to the 
 question whether the effervescent impulses and 
 military enthusiasm of the Celtic blood are supe- 
 rior, as spiritual qualities, to the more slow and 
 sullen force, the cautious but persistent resolution, 
 and the tough obstinacy of resistance that make 
 up the power of an Anglo-Saxon army. In the 
 great campaigns of Wellington in Spain, and in 
 the conduct of -the struggle at Waterloo, this was 
 the real strife, a wrestle of certain spiritual 
 qualities with each other. The charge of the 
 
14 Substance and Show ; 
 
 French under Ney or Mural, and beneath the eye 
 of Napoleon, was the gathering roll and swing of 
 the storm-waves ; whatever was movable must 
 fall before it ; but the mind and the resources of 
 Wellington and the temper of the men who served 
 him were the Saxon rock on which those magnifi- 
 cent Celtic surges swung their white wrath in vain. 
 Every charge of Ney's cavalry against Wellington's 
 central position at Waterloo was the beat of a fiery 
 sensibility against a stony patience. The whole 
 scene was less a contest of military science than 
 a visible conflict of different passions and a thor- 
 ough testing of their strength. It was the old 
 hypothesis, in dramatic play, of an irresistible in 
 contact with an immovable. The irresistible was 
 spent ; the immovable stood fast. 
 
 All fighting illustrates the same law. In the 
 old Greek days Darius could oppose a hundred 
 spears to each one of Alexander's, and we won- 
 der that the Persians were so easily beaten. The 
 reason is that the fighting in the young Greek 
 general's army was done by spears plus brains, 
 courage, enthusiasm. Discipline in a battalion is 
 of more consequence than numbers, because it 
 adds a spiritual force to that of muscles ; fervor 
 is often found superior to the most thorough dis- 
 cipline, for fervor is a higher spiritual force and 
 outweighs the weaker. Bayonets are never so 
 sharp and terrible in the hands of an advancing 
 line, as when they are bayonets that think, as was 
 the case in our own Revolution; and there are 
 
or. 
 
 ; Facts and Forces. 1 5 
 
 no regiments so mighty and dangerous as those 
 which Cromwell headed, where the highest spirit- 
 ual qualities were drilled into the ranks, and the 
 bayonets could not only think, but pray. 
 
 Thus, in all cases, a nation or an army, so far 
 as its persons all that we can see of it are 
 concerned, is only a show ; the substance of it is 
 the ideas, passions, genius, enthusiasm, that per- 
 vade it, and are not seen. 
 
 Our doctrine is illustrated, also, by the fact that 
 the power of a nation is made up, in part, by the 
 generations of past years, whose bodily forms 
 long ago mouldered to dust. There is no more 
 beautiful or impressive law of history than that 
 by which the past genius, heroism, and patriotic 
 clevotedness are woven into the structure of a 
 people, giving it character. The acts and spirit 
 of a person's former years are not lost, but are 
 represented in the face, the habits, the weakness, 
 or the power of the person's mind and heart to- 
 day. In the same way a state has a personality 
 that endures through centuries ; all its great men 
 and bad men, its good laws and vile laws, its 
 faithfulness and its crimes, contribute to its char- 
 acter ; nothing dies ; but what was fact and show 
 in a living generation becomes force and sub- 
 stance when the actors have departed. Look at 
 England, for instance. Is that which we call 
 England composed simply of twenty millions of 
 men and women that inhabit that island now? 
 How truly do the statesmen, patriots, orators, 
 
1 6 Substance and Show ; 
 
 poets, kings, cabinets, and parties of several hun- 
 dred years, belong to our conception of what 
 England is ! The witness of their activity is not 
 only prominent in the literature and art, the cas- 
 tles and cathedrals, the palaces and towers, the 
 liberties and laws, that are visible on the English 
 land and in their society, but an incalculable 
 force has been shed from this background of 
 greatness and genius into the generation of to- 
 day, and through the present will be transmitted 
 into the future. Let a hostile cabinet declare war 
 against England, and try to tread out her spirit 
 and influence, and they would find that a force is 
 needed competent to crush twenty generations. 
 For, though the merchants, traders, and laborers 
 little think of it in time of peace, and perhaps 
 care not half a fig for the men that walked through 
 the streets they tread, two centuries ago, Sidney, 
 Russell, Pym, and Hampden, Newton, and Shake- 
 speare, and Chatham, the great dead of West- 
 minster Abbey, and the honored names of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, still stand in the background, 
 and in an emergency would start forward and 
 give the immense momentum of their spirit to an 
 onset against an invading foe. As the ghost of 
 the hero Theseus appeared, according to the 
 Athenians, on the field of Marathon, and inspir- 
 ited their ranks against the Persians, the great- 
 ness which a nation has enshrined in its tradi- 
 tions is part of its deepest present life ; and it 
 often happens that the shades of the fathers are 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 17 
 
 a more substantial rampart for a land than the 
 swords of the children. 
 
 See, too, how our revolutionary experience, 
 genius, and fidelity are involved in the character 
 of America. They are not dead facts written in 
 mute annals; they are vital memories of the 
 nation, as though the same men that are now on 
 the stage had once performed them. We take 
 the credit of that wisdom, persistence, and sacri- 
 fice partly to ourselves ; we are proud of them ; 
 and in any crisis our arms would be the stronger, 
 our wit the quicker, our fortitude the more heroic, 
 because of the impulses that would thrill bur 
 veins from the beatings of that revolutionary 
 heart. Strike out the idea of America and the 
 hope of America from our people, and a great 
 portion of the force and enthusiasm of our people 
 would be annihilated. That period of our na- 
 tional fortunes is far more than a show in our his- 
 tory ; it is part of our present substance. It was 
 not a fact of the past merely ; it is a force of our 
 national character. 
 
 The most mournful sight in the case of any 
 nation is the evident destitution of any great po- 
 litical sentiments and principles that have grown 
 for centuries, and are rooted in its heads, habits, 
 and hearts. What a sad thing that, on the intel- 
 lectual and moral soil of France, beautiful, enthu- 
 siastic France, whose genius has been refining for 
 ages like the wine its own vineyards distil, no 
 ideas of rights and constitutional freedom have 
 
1 8 Substance and Show ; 
 
 grown, that could not be pulled up in a night 
 by a dissolute ruffian, wearing and polluting a 
 splendid name ! Think you that in England or 
 here any cowardly conspirator could weave the 
 noose that in one night should drag down the 
 form and the sentiment of Liberty from its sacred 
 niche in the popular affections, and the next day 
 make the people themselves applaud that it was 
 done so well ? A Bedouin robber might as well 
 try to lasso and uproot a hickory-tree that had 
 toughened its roots in the ground for a century. 
 Poor France was overgrown with the merest 
 weedy sentiments of liberty ; for it is only weeds 
 that bayonets can scratch up. 
 
 If we reflect on the sources of national power 
 and prosperity, we shall soon see how its strength 
 rests on an invisible and ideal base, and is devel- 
 oped out of mental and moral resources. Little 
 Greece resisted the flood of Persian arms, and at 
 last conquered the East, because there was more 
 vitality more courage, genius, enthusiasm in 
 her people than in the swarming myriads which 
 the bulk of the Persian Empire enclosed. Rome, 
 too, rose to supreme sway by the despotic influence 
 of character, not of legions. When Rome fell she 
 had more troops and fortifications than in the 
 height of her republican supremacy, but she had 
 lost her real and invisible strength, that of tem- 
 perance, hardihood, valor, moral soundness; in- 
 ternal dissension, luxury, and bad government had 
 unnerved her hands; and therefore her visible 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 19 
 
 defences of battalions and armaments were noth- 
 ing but empty shell and show. The British domin- 
 ion is supported now by the strong fibres of Saxon 
 wisdom and pride that run through the whole 
 extent of it. It is those that knit Calcutta and 
 Australia, Gibraltar and Cape Town, to London 
 and Liverpool and the Parliament House. 
 
 The most effectual way to paralyze the pros- 
 perity of our country at this moment would be 
 to smite an ideal element that interpenetrates 
 the land. The soil over half our area might be 
 blighted, pestilence might decimate our laborers, 
 tornadoes might scatter a great portion of our 
 tonnage in ruins upon the sea, droughts might 
 shrivel the rivers into thin and feeble rills; but 
 all this would be less disastrous than to annihilate 
 the system of credit that pervades the mercantile 
 world. Destroy that impalpable thing, break down 
 the confidence between city and country, the re- 
 liance which State feels upon State and East upon 
 West, the trust which man reposes in his neighbor, 
 and it is the same as if you arrest the pitch of 
 waterfalls, and smother the breezes that ruffle the 
 deep, and wilt the fierce energy of steam, and un- 
 string the laborer's arm, and quench the furnace- 
 fires, and stop the hum of wheels, and forbid emi- 
 grants to seek the West and cities to rise amid the 
 silence of its woods. Our prosperity and our hopes 
 lean back on that moral bond more than they do 
 on nature or on capital ; shake it, and there is an 
 earthquake of society ; restore it, and order, activ- 
 ity, happiness, and wealth return. 
 
2O Substance and Show ; 
 
 As a bond of union for our States, moreover, 
 there is one element more substantial than even 
 the wisdom of our Constitution, the interlocked 
 geographical unity of our territory, and the power 
 of our central government. It is our common 
 memories of a great history, and the one language 
 that is spoken in all our zones and over all the 
 breadth of the lines of longitude, that mark the 
 leagues from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores. 
 It is hardly possible that any wisdom of political 
 structure or administration could hold so many 
 States together against such diversities of social 
 customs, intelligence, and interest, if the different 
 districts of our empire spoke different languages. 
 But our unity of speech, the common way in 
 which we articulate our breath and write our 
 thoughts, enabling the farthest backwoodsman to 
 feel kindred with the culture of the East, making 
 all commercial correspondence simple and easy, 
 allowing us to read the same books, to read the 
 same speeches with common delight in a common 
 eloquence, this is like a soul breathed through 
 all the limbs of our confederacy, giving it a 
 stronger unity than its geological skeleton or its 
 political muscles can. Destroy this community 
 of language, give a distinct tongue to each great 
 division of our land, introduce confusion of dia- 
 lects into our capital, and we could have no more 
 permanent unity than the mechanical one which 
 Nebuchadnezzar's image had, with its head of 
 gold, its breast of silver, its thighs of brass, its 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 21 
 
 legs of iron, and its feet of clay. Its parts might 
 be dislodged from each other. There would not 
 be invisible unity to mould into vital permanence 
 its unity of show. 
 
 The politicians every now and then get up their 
 schemes of division, but the common mother 
 .tongue drowns them before they swim far. As 
 long as the free soil and the Hunker speeches in 
 Congress are made in the same dialect the danger 
 of their antagonism is greatly abated. Only the 
 old mother tongue does try to tell us, through the 
 dictionaries, that the word "slave" is not Saxon. 
 It came into our speech by foreign immigration ; 
 it cannot show any naturalization papers, the Con- 
 stitution rejected it, and so certainly, according 
 to the present tendencies of party, it ought not to 
 be allowed to gain power and office over the good 
 native American noun "freedom." 
 
 I have several times used the word "civilization" 
 in connection with the subject we are considering. 
 Let us see now what light the meaning of that 
 word sheds upon our theme. There are a vast 
 number of things that make up civilization. They 
 are invisible, but they are among the most sub- 
 stantial and potent realities connected with our 
 globe. 
 
 Besides the men and women, the houses and 
 wealth, that exist in Christendom, there is such 
 a thing as civilization, which has been growing 
 steadily, and which lives on while the generations 
 die. There is government in the civilized world, 
 
22 Substance and Show ; 
 
 there are reverences, laws, manners and habits, 
 tastes and principles, and all these make up the 
 structure of society. Just as the surface of the 
 globe is composed of various layers of clay, sand- 
 stone, slate, and granite, which successive geologi- 
 cal epochs deposited, and the united strength of 
 which uphold our soil and support our steps, the 
 moral world is constructed of strata of laws, cus- 
 toms, opinions, truths, discoveries, sentiments, 
 which successive races and generations have de- 
 posited, and which our souls live upon now. The 
 best life of the nations that are gone is still in our 
 civilization. Influences from the Old Testament, 
 from Grecian literature and character, from Roman 
 heroism and law, are steadily poured into our 
 moral life from countless churches and colleges, 
 although the Hebrew State, the Greek Republics, 
 and the Roman Empire have been buried for cen- 
 turies. And so from the German barbarians of 
 the Northern forests, from the feudal customs, 
 from the Crusades, from the Catholic church in its 
 ripe power and glory, from the life of Socrates 
 and the intellect of Augustine, from the speech 
 of Paul on Mars Hill and the thinking of John 
 Huss, from what Bacon wrote and Shakespeare 
 imagined and Faust invented and Newton discov- 
 ered and Fulton devised ; in short, from all the 
 victories of heroes and the blood-sealed fidelity 
 of martyrs and the holy achievements of saints 
 some contributions have been made to that pro- 
 gressive reality we call civilization, and they all 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 23 
 
 exist around us now as beneficent forces that en- 
 noble our lives with privileges and a value which 
 cannot be estimated. Your father may not have 
 left you any legacy of houses and stock, but the 
 whole past is your mental and moral father, and 
 that leaves to every one of us an inheritance 
 which it would be a miserable bargain for us to 
 sell for a fortune of millions on condition of being 
 disentangled from the civilized life of the race. 
 
 The poorest man in this neighborhood is im- 
 mensely rich, so far as attaining the great objects 
 of life is concerned, especially if he has a family, 
 compared with what his poverty would be if he 
 could own a hundred square miles of original na- 
 ture, and must live on it alone with his family, cut 
 off from all privileges of society and with the 
 wealth of civilized influence forever cancelled 
 from his brain and breast. 
 
 Thus we see that the substance of the past lives 
 on nnd is vitally present with us now. All that is 
 visible of a nation dies, but its soul survives ; the 
 truth it discovered and illustrated is preserved ; 
 its essence passes into civilization, improves so- 
 ciety, and becomes the common property of after 
 times. 
 
 In the old furniture-shops of Boston you can 
 buy chairs and tables that came out of the May- 
 flower to an extent that would load a fleet. How- 
 ever much humbug there may be about this, thank 
 Heaven the spiritual cargo that was packed into 
 that little hull is not all unloaded yet. New Eng- 
 
24 Substance and Show ; 
 
 land liberty and thrift have been disembarked 
 from it ; half of New York and Ohio and Illinois 
 and Wisconsin have been heaved out of its hold 
 by invisible stevedores ; and there is enough left 
 yet to set up good Constitutions in the farther 
 slopes of the Rocky Mountains and make Kansas 
 free. 
 
 Think for a moment, too, of the order in a 
 great city, and how it is preserved. What pas- 
 sions are boiling in London and Boston and the 
 streets of New York ! And how is it that we are 
 kept from conspiracies and mobs and devastations 
 of license ? How is it that the spirit of our social 
 life is higher in respect of peace than the aggre- 
 gate of individual lives, which is the splendid 
 mystery of civilization ? It is not by direct and 
 visible pressure of resisting force, but by the fine 
 network of interests, opinions, reverences, feelings 
 of honor and shame, fears and loves, disposed 
 over the community, which hold the brutal ele- 
 ments of our nature in check, as Gulliver was 
 made prisoner by the threads which the cunning 
 Lilliputians wove over his bod) 7 , and. one of which 
 they fastened to each of his hairs. 
 
 Does any man say that the laws, the courts 
 and sheriffs, uphold our order? Plainly the sanc- 
 tity of the laws does not consist in their enact- 
 ments by legislatures, or their preservation in 
 sheep-skin binding (a style of binding, by the 
 way, which many of our laws had when they were 
 yet in the brains of their authors). Sentiments 
 
or. Facts and Forces. 25 
 
 and principles in the people, faith and loyalty, 
 varnish the laws with their real majesty. 
 
 Once in a while a great officer of the law comes 
 along, like the venerable Hays, so famous in Bos- 
 ton, who stands forth as a physical Napoleon of 
 police. It is not by his personal finite genius 
 that he wears such terror. But he is a good con- 
 ductor of the respect for law which is latent in 
 the community. His frame is electric with the 
 potency of civil authority everywhere. We had 
 a marshal in Boston lately that sometimes ap- 
 peared on a Saturday night in a circle of gamblers, 
 and though he was but one man among a score or 
 two, he changed the game very quick, and he in- 
 fused a sudden passion for a different shuffle and 
 cut than any laid down in Hoyle. The play shifted 
 by magic from whist and loo to leap-frog and all- 
 fours, because a worthy embodiment of social law, 
 invested with the moral force of civilization, ap- 
 palled and scattered them. When the lightning 
 strikes a tree there is a stream of electricity from 
 the ground that conspires with the flame from 
 heaven to complete the bolt, else it is harmless ; 
 and so the law in the guilty men leaps out and 
 combines with the electric flash from every great 
 officer's form, to do the work of moral paralysis. 
 There was great wisdom sententiously expressed 
 in the exclamation of a little constable I heard of 
 once who went to arrest a burly offender against 
 the statutes, and was threatened with a shaking if 
 he did not " clear out." If it had been a matter of 
 
26 Substance and Show; 
 
 fists and muscles, the majesty of the law would 
 have been miserably bruised. But the intrepid 
 little officer responded : " Do it if you please 
 only remember, if you shake me you shake the 
 whole State of Massachusetts." 
 
 The substance of power is that which sways 
 the minds and hearts of the people ; all else is 
 the show of it. And so the highest badge of 
 civic authority now is not the sceptre of a king, 
 not the dress of a president, not the uniform of a 
 general, but the pole of a constable. The English 
 or Yankee policeman wears a badge which so- 
 ciety spontaneously respects, which innocence and 
 weakness instinctively rejoice in, which guilt and 
 knavery instinctively fear. What is the authority 
 of Nicholas the Czar, or Louis Napoleon in his 
 rocking-chair of bayonets ? (may every point of 
 them prick the tanned hide of his conscience yet !) 
 what are they but imperial bullies with military 
 bull-dogs to keep the wrath of the human race at 
 bay ? Mr. Bumble the beadle sits on the throne 
 of civil power ; to him the human race goes down 
 with honest awe upon its knees. 
 
 Surely this nation could better afford to part 
 with its 'armies and navy, its forts, guns, maga- 
 zines, and military science, than to have an abate- 
 ment of one per cent from the regard which the 
 people have for the forms of a town-meeting, 
 their deep reverence for the statutes, their quick 
 submission to a writ, their dread of mobs, their 
 love of home, and the awe that attends the hear- 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 27 
 
 ing a sentence of death from a judge. In the 
 first case the country would lose some visible facts 
 which represent its strength, and which might be 
 replenished by taxation ; in the latter case it would 
 part with forces, inherited from past ages, which 
 are its strength, and by which it is swung over the 
 abyss of lawlessness, as the globe is hurried over 
 the black depths of space by the threads of gravi- 
 tation that are more subtle than sunbeams. 
 
 Finally, character is one of the prominent sub- 
 stances of the world, that is, it is one of the things 
 which do the most as causes to uphold society 
 and quicken it. Character, in the sense of great 
 personal energy, changes the face of nature, digs 
 mines, builds railroads, levels mountains, founds 
 cities, evokes factories, dwarfs the oceans to con- 
 venient ponds. And in higher senses, we cannot 
 tell what impress one original soul like David's, 
 so splendid in genius, so sensitive to every breath 
 of circumstance, so sincere in his piety, his sin, 
 and his terrible remorse, leaves on the fortunes of 
 after generations. His great heart has been an 
 electric battery to the bosoms of countless millions 
 of whom he never dreamed. Who of us is acute 
 enough to untwist the whole of our debt to the 
 burly substance of Martin Luther's spirit ? Strike 
 him out of the last three centuries, and you tear 
 out the very spine of our liberties and mechanical 
 arts ; our railroads and steamships, and most of 
 the material forces of Protestant civilization are 
 rent away with him, for they radiate from his 
 
28 Substance and Show ; 
 
 rough generic thought. The Duke of Wellington 
 assented to the estimate which somebody made, 
 that the presence of Napoleon on the field was 
 equal to forty thousand men. See, too, what 
 the character of the Puritans is doing for New 
 England at this moment. It gives it a firmer basis 
 than its granite strata. It is the stamina of the 
 present virtue of those States. It has built and 
 reared their colleges and schools. It is the vigor 
 of their intelligence and the sinew of their piety, 
 and thus is a substantial benefit after the bodily 
 forms that once housed it are crumbled. And 
 advert, for a moment, to what the character of. 
 Washington has done, and will yet do, for Amer- 
 ica and freedom. Better for our country in the 
 crisis of its history to have lost its collected treas- 
 ures, to have parted with half its territory and 
 half its citizens, than to have been robbed of the 
 heart of Washington. His soldiers derived cour- 
 age, faith, and food from his serene and hopeful 
 majesty, and during that terrible winter at Valley 
 Forge the nourishment of future ages was in the 
 continuance of the resources in that one breast. 
 His character is part of this Western World for- 
 ever, as much part of it as our forests and our rocks. 
 So there is an ascending series of creative and 
 substantial forces, beginning with mechanical 
 energies and running up through chemical affin- 
 ities, vital powers, perception, will, ideas, to per- 
 sonality. We often use the expression with regard 
 to a person in society, that " he is a man of sub- 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 29 
 
 stance." Generally this phrase conveys the idea 
 that a man has acquired some property. It would 
 be very applicable if it stood for the " real estate " 
 which a man has amassed, that is, for his per- 
 sonal estate of great qualities, forces of genius, 
 learning, truth, moral power, and influence. For 
 it happens that, in the supreme realm of which we 
 are citizens, and where the eternal laws tax and 
 weigh us, our personal estate, that is, what we are, 
 is our real estate. How absurd to use the word 
 "substance" of a man, and make it signify a house, 
 bank-stock, a heap of guineas, a store full of mer- 
 .chandise ; things that do not touch his humanity 
 at all. He is the man of substance that has the 
 noble qualities which belong to human nature 
 packed into him, and that can stand up, strong 
 and solid, if all the accidents, such as fame, posi- 
 tion, money, worldly consideration, are stripped 
 away. It would be just as sensible to take a man 
 in the last stages of consumption, a weak and 
 wasted frame of bones, and after getting a tailor 
 to dress him up and pad him out large with batting, 
 to call him a man of physical substance, as to use 
 that phrase of persons that only have a market 
 control over some dollars, and are destitute of the 
 forces and resources that belong to a mind, heart, 
 and soul. Your Herschel and Newton are men 
 of intellectual substance, Fenelon and Wesley of 
 spiritual substance, Wilberforce of moral sub- 
 stance, Luther of heroic substance, Howard of 
 affectional substance ; and if we are lean in these 
 
3O Substance and Show ; 
 
 qualities, we are shadows, and all the bricks and 
 mortar, land-deeds, certificates, and doubloons, in 
 London cannot redeem us from being thinner than 
 mush, a body-load of mist and fog. 
 
 Character is the culminating substance of na- 
 ture ; and we may say here that a man may be 
 what he pleases to be. The forms of our activity 
 are prescribed for us by nature, but circumstances 
 do not make the real, central man. Circumstances 
 often determine how much show a man shall 
 make. To be famous depends on some fortuities ;' 
 to be a president depends on the acute smellers of 
 a few politicians and a mysterious set of wires ;. 
 to be rich depends on birth or luck ; to be intel- 
 lectually eminent may depend on the appointment 
 of Providence ; but to be a man, in the sense of 
 substance, depends solely on one's own noble 
 ambition and determination to live in contact with 
 God's open atmosphere of truth and right, from 
 which all true manliness is inspired and fed. We 
 often talk about ghosts, and wonder, sometimes, 
 at our winter firesides whether any ghost has ever 
 returned from the regions of the dead. For one, 
 I am content to leave that question of revisits to be 
 decided by Mrs. Crowe's " Night Side of Nature " 
 and the vast and increasing crowd of spiritual 
 rappers, who are able to make any luckless spirit 
 beat a tattoo on smooth walnut or mahogany. 
 
 Now, the answer we should give if anybody 
 should ask us if we had ever seen a ghost will 
 depend wholly on our standard of what a ghost 
 
or.; Facts and Forces. 31 
 
 is. Some men would not be satisfied unless they 
 could shoot a bullet through him without injuring 
 any intestines. Another would want to strike a 
 club at him, and have it pass through as though it 
 were six feet of moonshine. In Dickens's " Christ- 
 mas Carol " the old miser was satisfied he beheld 
 his dead partners ghost, when he looked right 
 through his stomach and saw the buttons on the 
 back of his coat. Any test which would prove 
 that an unfortunate being had no body would 
 satisfy most persons of its claim to ghostship. By 
 any such standards we must probably give up the 
 honor of having seen a ghost. And yet the world 
 is plentifully spotted with apparitions ; they are 
 all about us, in the streets and the stalls and the 
 stores ; they are in the Congress rooms, and 
 editors' chairs, and pulpits, transacting a great 
 deal of the business of the world, not revisitants 
 of the earth, because they have never left it, but 
 shows of people, human haze and ghastliness, 
 without the substance of energy, virtue, truth, to 
 fill out the plain promise of their clothes. For our 
 popular definition of a ghost is just the reverse of 
 the truth ; it makes one consist of a soul without a 
 body, while really a spectre, an illusion, a hum- 
 bug of the eyesight and the touch, is a human 
 body not 'vitalized through and through with a 
 soul. 
 
 When a person has only money to support his 
 claim to substance, his highest nature is made up 
 of mortgages and rent-rolls, notes and titles, a 
 
32 Substance and Show; 
 
 + 
 
 man of bank paper, not of realities, and a com- 
 mercial revolution would tear him up. Some 
 men's claim to substance depends on a large 
 stock of calicoes ; and a fall in J:he thermometer 
 of trade reduces them to zero. -Where station is 
 the sole basis of that claim, the person's soul is a 
 great bladder blown up' by popular breath, and 
 a pin-hole of accident will make him collapse. 
 But of all those classes which the world puts for- 
 ward as its darlings, the dandy is the most re- 
 moved from the domain of real qualities and 
 takes first rank as a ghost, since he is " a whis- 
 kered essence and an organized perfume." 
 
 The climax of my purpose in this address will 
 be gained if it will lead any of you to see that 
 the stuff a great soul is made of is the most real 
 and unwasting material of the universe, some- 
 thing which moth and rust cannot corrupt, nor 
 death with the tooth of its savage chemistry im- 
 pair. As men walk the streets they seem about 
 alike ; the differences they show seem to be the 
 difference of height, weight, complexion, and 
 clothes. But it is not so. As you stand at a 
 little distance from this metropolis, upon a hill 
 that commands its avenues and circuit, you see 
 of what various buildings, differing widely in cost 
 and splendor, its beautiful panorama is composed. 
 And so would its human inhabitants seem, if you 
 could stand on some spiritual eminence and see 
 the realities which their fleshly tenement conceal. 
 .... Thence would we see the churches of our 
 
or, Facts and Forces. 33 
 
 spiritual city ; and over them, kindred but su- 
 perior, with more intricate grace and capacious 
 measure, the cathedral spirits, like such as Chan- 
 ning, whose voices, are bells that call to worship, 
 and whose thoughts, like spires, are always lifted 
 above the world, conversing with light and God, 
 rebuking the vanity of the earth, and shedding 
 over all below the promise of immortality. 
 
 1851. 
 
 ( LIBK 
 
 Ui*l VKKS1TY 
 
 CAL1FOKNIA. 
 
 X= s 
 
II. 
 
 THE LAWS OF DISORDER, 
 
 UNTIL a more accurate and luminous for- 
 mula suggests itself, I must announce the 
 address which it is my privilege to offer you, 
 under the paradoxical and vague title of " The 
 Laws of Disorder.". Let me hope that the illus- 
 trations to be brought forward will sufficiently in- 
 terpret the fundamental purpose of the lecture, 
 which is to show how laws wind into regions of 
 nature and society that we never conceive of as 
 subject to a plan and a purpose, but rather as cha- 
 otic, or, at any rate, at loose ends. 
 
 If a die should be thrown a million times, it 
 would turn out that aces, trays, sixes, would ap- 
 pear in about equal proportions. The result of 
 each throw would be uncertain enough, but a 
 man might stake his estate on the ratio of deuces 
 or sixes in the million casts with less risk of loss 
 than most of the lines of business are attended 
 with. This fact, drawn from the logic of chances, 
 furnishes the keynote of my lecture. The order 
 which nature loves and weaves is not a stiff and 
 laborious regularity, but an easy and beautiful play 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 35 
 
 with materials that seem to the senses huddled 
 and anarchical, a harmony soaring, at last, out 
 of independent, interlaced, and often tangled 
 forces. 
 
 We often say, for instance, that the order of the 
 solar system is made up of two great forces, the 
 centrifugal tendency of the planets and the gravi- 
 tating energy of the sun. But this statement gives 
 one no idea of the intricacy and complexity of the 
 plan in which we live. If we could stand outside 
 of any one of the planets in our family, we should 
 not find it cutting a regular path in space in obe- 
 dience to two simple forces, but beating this way 
 and that, now swinging out towards its neighbor 
 next beyond, and then reeling the other way to 
 hail its fellow-orb whose path is next within, and 
 so oscillating and whirling through all its months 
 until it accomplishes its round. We should im- 
 agine, could we see them very near, that the 
 planets were let loose, to cut up capers in space, 
 rather than to measure a marvellous harmony. 
 The earth never travels the same track any two 
 successive years, and yet it never fails to be 
 punctual to the minute, and the fraction of a 
 minute, when its revolutions should be accom- 
 plished, but keeps time, in spite of its roving, 
 more accurately than any machine of human in- 
 vention can be made to do. The forces that whip 
 and curb the planets suffer them to dally and 
 prance and curvet on the great race-course of the 
 ecliptic, but are sure to bring them in swift and 
 
36 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 punctual to a second at the goal ; so that the 
 order of the solar system is not the poise of two 
 forces merely, but the balance of constant and 
 countless perturbations of that poise. As though 
 it were not enough to bring our globe around true 
 to its second every year over a track of six hun- 
 dred millions of miles, her path is changed every 
 year, and still the time is kept exact ; and if it 
 were not for the jaggedness, the continual shift- 
 ing, and the seeming disorder of her orbit, the 
 accuracy of her obedience and the stability of our 
 harmony would be ruined. 
 
 So the regularity of the mean temperature of 
 any district is a striking instance of the secret play 
 of law in a most frolicsome way. The wind is 
 our type of inconstancy ; but a physical atlas of 
 the globe will show us that its currents are about 
 as well defined as the outlines of the continents. 
 What is more uncertain than the weather a day 
 or two from now, what more capricious than the 
 changes of the weather during a week ? Yet the 
 powers of vegetation are so nicely fitted to a cer- 
 tain average temperature, that trees and plants 
 would die if in the whole year, or in a succession 
 of two or three years, the mean warmth should 
 fall five degrees. Such a variation never takes 
 place. Irregular as our winters are, and uncer- 
 tain as the summer heat is, we get the needed 
 result with wonderful precision when the tempera- 
 tures of our three hundred and sixty-five days are 
 shuffled together and brought to an average. Of 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 37 
 
 course, the electrical laws, the evaporating forces, 
 the disturbances that generate winds, the way in 
 which the earth turns to the sun every month and 
 the swiftness of its rotatory motion, the laws of heat 
 with respect to the earth, the water, and the air, 
 are all balanced to each other as the condition 
 of this order ; and the mean temperature is the 
 beautiful figure which these shuttles that fly criss- 
 cross and hap-hazard from all quarters of the uni- 
 verse weave patiently, as a witness of providential 
 order, into the warp of time. 
 
 We find, too, that the minutest organizations 
 on the earth's surface are so related to the largest 
 and wildest forces of nature as to show wonderful 
 delicacy and subtlety of law. When we see com- 
 mon plants and shrubs growing so easily, we have 
 no idea how the general order of the globe and 
 sky is toned to their necessities. With regard 
 to a common wild-flower, we may see that the 
 force of gravitation which holds its fibres in the 
 earth and strengthens its stalk is graduated so 
 that, while it supports a constellation, it shall not 
 prevent the juices from rising through its cells to 
 carry life to the leaves. So the bulk and heat of 
 the sun, the constitution of the air, the size of the 
 sea, the swiftness of the earth's whirling and the 
 diameter of its orbit, are determined with admi- 
 rable relation to its need of heat and rain and 
 wind, its alternations of light and gloom, and the 
 changes of seasons from spring to winter. An 
 alteration even of a slight percentage in the mix- 
 
38 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 ture and partnership of these great forces would 
 destroy the possibility of the daisy's life. But 
 these brawny and furious powers are ordered to 
 bend themselves carefully to the needs of the most 
 delicate structures ; and every flower is so nice an 
 index of the adjustment between the forces of the 
 universe, that one might believe, looking at it ex- 
 clusively, the globe and the solar system were built 
 by the Almighty as a factory to turn out the violets 
 which embroider the spring. 
 
 In the methods of atomic combinations, also, 
 a striking instance of the same subtle presence 
 of law is seen. Everything we see in nature is a 
 chemical compound, and an analyst can untwist 
 its component elements and show them in their 
 simplicity. And various as the mixtures are, it is 
 found that a splendid regularity rules over them. 
 Separate the parts of water, for instance, and we 
 get 8 parts oxygen to i part hydrogen. Now, 
 whenever oxygen and hydrogen combine in any 
 substance, it will be in a ratio of which 8 is the 
 basis. There may be 16 parts oxygen to i hydro- 
 gen, or 24 parts to i, or 40 to i ; but no instance 
 can be found, no substance in all known nature, 
 in which the ratio will be 9 to i or 7 to i, or 
 any other than strictly 8 or some multiple of 8. 
 So we find that carbon will combine with other 
 substances only in the ratio of which 6 is the key, 
 nitrogen in a proportion of 14 or some of its mul- 
 tiples, iron by parts represented by 28, gold by 
 199, etc. Thus it is plain that the invisible atoms 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 39 
 
 of things are under strictest chemical drill, and, 
 stir them together as we may, they will file by 
 regular platoons, and only according to the origi- 
 nal word of command, into steady combinations. 
 
 The science of botany has unfolded some very 
 singular and beautiful facts which contribute richly 
 to the illustration of our subject. Many of the 
 most important plants and trees are dependent, as 
 to their fruit-bearing, upon intermediate agencies 
 that carry perhaps from a great distance the vege- 
 table, dust or pollen to the flower of the plant by 
 which it is made productive. The whole date- 
 harvest in some countries of the East, on which 
 the sustenance of millions of men depends, is 
 intrusted to the fidelity of the winds, which sweep 
 the quickening seed-dust sometimes even across 
 Sahara to the waiting germens of the fruit-bear- 
 ing palm. Sometimes insects are the mediating 
 agents between the different trees. The fig-trade 
 of Smyrna, and the food of thousands of our race, 
 is dependent on the yearly fidelity of the gall-fly, 
 which carries in season the needed stimulant from 
 tree to tree. So the Syrian silk-plant is made 
 productive by the bees that, in search of nectar, 
 carry on their waxen thighs the feathery principle 
 of life from flower to flower. And so the increase 
 of the Kamschatkan lily, by whose bulbs some- 
 times the whole population of Greenland is saved 
 from starvation in a hard winter, is suspended on 
 the regular theft of a kind of beetle which carries 
 the quickening principle of growth to the plant, 
 
4O The Laivs of Disorder. 
 
 when it means only to steal its own support. Thus 
 the one beneficent purpose of Providence is se- 
 cured year by year through means that seem to 
 be chances or accidents : what seems fluctuating 
 disorder to the senses is the easy and joyous 
 pulse of law. 
 
 Thus the great force and beauty of the argu- 
 ment against atheism, as constructed by modern 
 science, lie in this, that so many independent laws 
 conspire in producing the regularity and system 
 of Nature. One might conceive that out of the 
 tumultuous heavings of chaos for ages some gen- 
 eral order might turn up at last ; but a mechan- 
 ism so intricate as our globe displays, and yet so 
 delicate, perfected by a thousand junctions and 
 conspiracies of separate threads of design, the 
 failure of any one of which would entangle the 
 skein, what length of ages seems sufficient to 
 produce so many beneficent concurrences of acci- 
 dent, what calculus of probabilities is able to 
 state the infinitesimal likelihood of such a system 
 happening into existence ? 
 
 We may represent it in this way. A heap of 
 types many millions in number might be tossed 
 up so that every now and then they would fall 
 into combinations of words. But can you con- 
 ceive of a throw that should leave them in words 
 grammatically joined, so that each independent 
 sentence would be readable ? Now try to imagine 
 what chance there is that a throw could happen in 
 which the separate sensible sentences should make 
 
TJie Laws of Disorder. 41 
 
 consecutive paragraphs? And when you have 
 tried that calculation, think of a throw occurring 
 in which the types should fall so that words fit 
 into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and 
 these again into chapters, nay, perhaps rhymes 
 or measured lines, paragraphs and chapters giving 
 you a Waverley novel or a tragedy of Shakespeare 
 or the Iliad of Homer, not only connected 
 grammatical sense, but characters drawn and re- 
 lated to each other, the finest strokes of genius 
 visible in the subordinate portions, and all fitting 
 into a subtle unity which the most cultivated critic 
 studies with greatest marvel and delight ! There 
 you have the problem of atheism partially pre- 
 sented in the light of science now. The unity 
 and harmony of the natural world are analogous 
 to the unity and symmetry of a printed work of 
 genius ; and so the doctrine of chances ridicules 
 the theory of cha?ice. 
 
 A whole lecture might be devoted to the beau- 
 tiful proofs from the physical world for the play 
 of law amid seemingly chaotic and accidental 
 facts ; but I must pass on and invite your atten- 
 tion to the most striking illustrations that may be 
 drawn from society. The idea very seldom enters 
 any mind that there is any organization of society 
 at all except that which men deliberately produce 
 by rules of laws or by military force. The general 
 feeling is that outside these arbitrary arrangements 
 social facts are casual and at loose ends. But the 
 truth is, that the order which man makes in society 
 
42 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 is very slight compared with that which secret forces 
 make, over which he has no control, and whose 
 processes human wisdom cannot fathom at all. 
 
 No statutes of human enactment, no progress 
 of the age, no increase of scientific, educational, 
 or mechanical advantages, nothing in the range 
 of human wisdom and power, is of such vital im- 
 portance to the interests and growth of society as 
 that there should be in every generation a particu- 
 lar and stable proportion between the men and 
 women that inhabit the globe. The idea of set- 
 ting a man to guess how many boys and how 
 many girls there are in each household of Boston 
 would seem ridiculous ; and yet extend your sur- 
 vey to the State of Massachusetts or to New Eng- 
 land, and a mathematician will tell you with sur- 
 prising correctness, not only what the proportion 
 of boys to girls is now, but also what it will be in 
 the next generation. Looking over this civilized 
 world, we find that the ratio of births is always 
 one hundred and six males to one hundred females. 
 Various speculations have been entertained as to 
 the cause for this preference by Providence of a 
 slight excess of the sterner sex. Some have said 
 that it is to compensate for the wastes of war and 
 to furnish material for standing armies; others have 
 imagined that it is Nature's method of supplying 
 candidates for the Catholic priesthood ; again, it 
 has been suggested that civilization needs the 
 peculiar influence that is shed into society from 
 a certain number of old bachelors, the delicate 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 43 
 
 aroma and flavor they impart to civilization, like 
 the drops of lemon in a punch, or mustard in a 
 salad, and therefore that the constitution of things 
 ordains that there must be four or five per cent 
 at least of the masculine race for whom no part- 
 ners are furnished in the waltz of life ; but per- 
 haps the most philosophical and satisfactory rea- 
 son is that which a lady gave me the other day, 
 namely, that it is to insure an equilibrium of 
 character, this inequality being Nature's subtle way 
 of confessing that a hundred women amount to as 
 much, any day, as one hundred and six men. 
 
 But whatever theory we adopt, here is the won- 
 derful fact that this proportion continues century 
 by century, upholding civilization by its mysterious 
 constancy. If it should alter by any considerable 
 percentage in favor of a large majority of males, 
 civilization would be encircled by a ferocity as 
 pleasant to contemplate as a circle of wolves belt- 
 ing the huts of settlers in the forest! If it should 
 alter in favor of a large majority of women, the 
 present discussions and movements in favor of 
 women's rights would simply change the gender of 
 their pronouns, and the position of Mrs. Abby 
 Folsom in a public meeting now would be a type 
 of masculine influence and heroism among the 
 feminine autocrats and politicians. 
 
 Moreover, subordinate to this general law which 
 fixes the proportions of births, we may see a sin- 
 gular and unfailing order in the boundless diver- 
 sity of expression produced out of the general 
 
44 The Lazvs of Disorder. 
 
 likeness of features among people. It is very 
 difficult for an artist to conceive and chisel a new 
 face out of the proportions of the Greek outline, 
 or any strong national type. Yet out of the mil- 
 lions living in any large country, out of the hun- 
 dreds of millions on the globe, nay, out of the 
 myriads of millions since Adam, scarcely any two 
 could be mistaken for each other. And all this is 
 effected by dissimilarities so slight, when measured 
 by the compass, as to seem of no consequence 
 when mathematically stated. Nature distinguishes 
 the red-haired people from each other as easily as 
 the brown and black heads; pug noses are dis- 
 criminated most happily; dark complexions do not 
 confuse the individualities of countenance ; no two 
 pairs of blue or hazel eyes are steeped with the 
 same gentleness or brilliancy ; and even the Chi- 
 nese, who look certainly to an uneducated eye like 
 a monotonous nation of universal twins, no doubt 
 seem to their* own visual organs broken up into 
 distinguishable personalities. 
 
 Now, we need not reflect long to discover the 
 various and indispensable benefits of this beauti- 
 ful law. How apparent it is that the subtlest 
 pleasures of social intercourse, the possibilities of 
 friendship, the interesting arts and the delicate joys 
 of courtship, and even the solemn interests of jus- 
 tice, hang upon these fine distinctions in the faces 
 of people. Of how trifling avail would laws be, if 
 men could hide their guilty personalities under a 
 mask of universal resemblance, so that the rogue 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 45 
 
 need only say in the court-room, where fifty copies 
 of himself perhaps surrounded the bench, " Thou 
 canst not say I did it." In case of marriage, too, 
 the only question for a person to decide would be 
 what age he or she would prefer for husband or 
 wife, taking the first that offers ; the only sure 
 way of proving identity would be for persons to 
 wear tickets with proper labels, attested by the 
 minister or court, "This may certify that I am 
 Henry Johnson's wife," or " This is proof that I 
 have married Sarah Jones " ; while the ludicrous 
 experiences of the two Dromios in Shakespeare 
 would be the keynote of daily life, and society 
 would be a magnificent " Comedy of Errors." 
 The illustration may be light, but is not the fact 
 suggestive and sublime, that hidden laws alto- 
 gether beyond human will provide for this diversity 
 of expression on which the glory of society de- 
 pends, and .do it all so easily and within such 
 moderate limits that nature seldom strays into a 
 monstrosity, seldom offends us with Albinas and 
 bearded women, Aztec children and Siamese twins? 
 Some of the statistics concerning the physical 
 development of man are quite interesting. Thus 
 it is a law of nature that the pulse shall vary by 
 regular gradation by the increase of years. The 
 hearts of the infants on the planet six months 
 old are tiny time-keepers, beating one hundred 
 and thirty-seven strokes a minute, at a year old 
 one hundred and twenty-six beats a minute, at two 
 years old one hundred and twenty, and so by 
 
46 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 regular decrease till in maturity it is from seventy- 
 five to eighty, and in old age from sixty to sixty-five. 
 Those, therefore, who complain of the restless ac- 
 tivity of children might as well complain that the 
 minute hand of a watch moves faster than the hour 
 hand. Stop the fever in their veins, and you may 
 stop their mischief, their disquiet, and their glee. 
 By these swift and constant pulses through their 
 arteries Nature tells us that she will have all the 
 children alike in the quickness of their motion, 
 the agility and spirit of their intellect, the keen- 
 ness of their sensibility, and calls on all parents and 
 teachers to graduate the laws of their home and 
 the customs of the school to the motion of blood 
 that is faster than the fever-speed. 
 
 So in regard to growth there is law. All the 
 children of the world gain nearly eight inches in 
 height the first year of their existence, gaining 
 two fifths from their birth to that period ; during 
 the second year, the gain is one seventh ; during 
 the third, one eleventh ; and so on in regular 
 gradations till increasing height terminates, which 
 in man is a little after twenty-five and in woman 
 about twenty. Those who live in affluence are 
 generally taller than those who do not; those 
 who live in town at the age of nineteen are taller 
 than those who live in the country. The stature 
 we reach is about three and a fourth times greater 
 than our measurement at birth, and our weight 
 almost twenty times as much. At twelve years 
 old, the two sexes weigh about the same. Man 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 47 
 
 attains the maximum of his weight at about forty, 
 and woman at about fifty. 
 
 As to mortality, the statistical tables all bear wit- 
 ness to secret and constant laws. We talk of the 
 uncertainty of life ; and with regard to the duration 
 of any particular person's existence, nothing can 
 seem to be more uncertain. But take a city oi 
 state into account, and we can prophecy with sin- 
 gular accuracy how many of any ten thousand 
 infants will live to be a year old ; how many will 
 pass on to two, three, and five years ; how many 
 will weather the diseases and dangers of youth ; 
 in a word, what number will be sifted out by each 
 year into the grave, and how few will be left at 
 eighty, ninety, and one hundred to tell of a gen- 
 eration that has gone down into the dust. It is 
 impossible to designate, or calculate, the particu- 
 lar individuals that will fulfil this law ; but the 
 law itself will hold as rigidly as the rule of three. 
 We may even foretell what proportions of those 
 that die will be males and what females ; what 
 diseases will carry them off; how many will die of 
 brain, of liver, of lung, or stomach disorders ; 
 what months will be most disastrous ; what profes- 
 sions and trades will send the largest percentage 
 to the tomb; and among what classes of occupa- 
 tion those who live the longest will be distributed. 
 We may mention here what an aged clergyman 
 said, not long ago, of bronchitis, which does so 
 much to swell the profits of transatlantic naviga- 
 tion : " Seems to me, I never heard of bron- 
 
48 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 chitis till they began to talk about the independ- 
 ence of the pulpit." The law of the statistics of 
 any ten or twenty years is the law for the statis- 
 tics of the next ten and the next twenty ; except 
 when there has been increase of cleanliness and 
 of sanitary fidelity on the part of governments, 
 for this care reaches directly into the census-tables, 
 and reduces at once the percentage of mortality. 
 We know with what confidence life-insurance 
 offices rely upon the stability of law with regard 
 to the duration of existence. They may lose on 
 Mr. A. or Mr. B., but they lay their premiums so 
 that on ten thousand lives they are sure of the 
 result, and can foretell the profit they will make. 
 Life-insurance, dealing in risks and staking on 
 accidents, stands in the front rank of those lines 
 of business in which there is no uncertainty. 
 
 In the more literal sense of the term, the dis- 
 orders of the world obey some law. For the dis- 
 eases to which the human body is subject have 
 their order. The variety of them, the regularity 
 of the symptoms, the methodical stages of their 
 progress, the spiritual uses they serve, show that 
 the same providence which is manifested in our 
 health and the symmetry of our organs is hidden 
 in the disorders that afflict us. All measles have 
 the same stamp. Fevers are classified, and train 
 in companies with uniform. Contributions to 
 natural theology as rich and conclusive can be 
 made from the laws of malady as from the health- 
 ful action of our frames. A distinguished phy- 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 49 
 
 sician of Dublin pulished, two or three years ago, 
 a very interesting work called " God in Disease," 
 to illustrate the subtle plan and under-current of 
 beneficence in the sickness of mankind. Nature 
 is no Vandal in destroying our health : she does 
 not attack the frame usually with a lawless bat- 
 tering-ram, but takes down the pillars and orna- 
 ments and roofing of our bodily temple very 
 carefully and systematically, as though she was 
 packing up the parts for shipment to another 
 clime. 
 
 Even crime is not incalculable. The lawless 
 elements in human nature, the anarchy in a state, 
 obeys a law. The moral darkness, the social 
 neglects, and the inward depravities of a state or 
 nation, reveal themselves steadily in a remarkably 
 constant proportion of criminals and of the kinds 
 of criminals. So that the problem would not be 
 at all insoluble, How many forgers, burglars, 
 murderers, and counterfeiters will New England 
 turn out next year? It could more easily be 
 ciphered than the number of bales of manufac- 
 tured goods which our factories will supply could 
 be forecast. The scamp element is less subject 
 to fluctuation in society than the cotton element ; 
 and in regard to cotton, its moral influence upon 
 the politics and feelings of New England would 
 be a question admitting of surer prophecy than 
 the amount of money to be made on it. 
 
 Thus we find it continues true that about one 
 man in every six hundred and fifty in France is a 
 3 D 
 
50 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 criminal (beginning with the Emperor). And a 
 moral map of the country has been drawn, show- 
 ing definitely shaded districts within which crimes 
 against persons or crimes against property are 
 shown to be predominant, steady moral causes 
 lying underneath which reveal themselves in these 
 different disturbances of order. So the number 
 taken in charge by the police in London and 
 other great cities for drunkenness and disorder 
 keeps, week by week, the same percentage, except 
 where the Maine Liquor Law jumps with a con- 
 stable's pole into the arena ; then the number 
 is very sensibly reduced. 
 
 It is discovered that the number of suicides 
 observes a constant proportion to the number of 
 people. A statistician can tell how many per- 
 sons will take their life in Paris during the next 
 two or three years ; the proportion of these that 
 will hang, drown, poison, and shoot themselves, 
 and also between what hours most of such deaths 
 will occur. For it is a fact that between six and 
 eight-in the morning is the most fatal time, and 
 that while suicides between twenty and thirty 
 years old prefer to die by the bullet, those be- 
 tween fifty and sixty, which furnish the largest 
 number, select the rope. 
 
 It is singular how the most out-of-the-way facts, 
 when rigidly inspected, betray a curious order. 
 Thus it is found in the post-offices of large cities 
 that mistakes and oversights of direction, and the 
 number of letters mailed without addresses, is, 
 
The Laws of Dis&dler\ 5 f 1{ V> 
 
 A i* . < 
 
 /^ ' 'S' / * 
 
 year by year, proportionately th4 ^irne. ^ And } w 
 
 " Guaranty Society " was formed a few yelars/ agjo 
 in London to insure the integrity of clerks, secre-/ < 
 taries, and collectors. The instances of dishon- 
 esty were so regular, that by clubbing all the 
 clerks and taxing each one a slight sum, they 
 could be security for each other on the principle 
 of fire or life insurance. So railroad and steam- 
 ship accidents keep a sufficiently steady ratio to 
 indicate some law and order in their confusion. 
 As to shipwrecks, it is said the average is one to 
 every tide, the storm spirit levying that tax 
 upon the world's commerce to offset the general 
 safety of the sea. It was the " London Punch," 
 I believe, that made a mathematical demonstra- 
 tion, a few months ago, of the folly of ever ex- 
 pecting to go to the moon by railroad. (No mat- 
 ter, it said, if a track should be laid and the 
 trains start regularly from this planet, and the 
 passengers get ticketed through, the case is hope- 
 less. Scientific calculations show, it said, that 
 one hundred and eighty thousand miles is the ut- 
 most limit that any train could travel without a 
 perfect smash-up, by series of disasters, axle-break- 
 ings, collisions, explosions, open draws, snake- 
 heads, spreading of tracks, snow-storms, etc. ; 
 and as the distance to the moon is two hundred 
 and forty thousand miles, it follows, by arithmetic, 
 that every train would be demolished and all the 
 passengers used up by the time they had gone 
 three quarters of the distance.) It is affirmed, 
 
52 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 also, now, as a settled truth, that the number of 
 those who draw any tolerable prizes in lotteries is 
 about the same as the number of those who are 
 struck by lightning. So that a man has only to 
 ask himself, when about to try that species of 
 gambling, what he is willing to pay for the likeli- 
 hood of a visit from a thunderbolt, and offer his 
 cash as a conductor. So it is reported that of the 
 five hundred and thirty-seven young ladies who 
 fainted the last year, it is quite remarkable that 
 only two fell upon the floor. Somewhere, too, I 
 have seen it stated that if on a public road you 
 meet a party of four women, it is at least fifty to 
 one that they are all laughing ; whereas, if you 
 meet an equal party of my own unhappy sex, you 
 may wager, safely, that they are talking gravely, 
 and that one of them is uttering the -word " money." 
 Mr. Beecher has lately, I believe, discovered that 
 the proportion of ministers' sons who turn out 
 rascals is two and a half per cent, thus deducting 
 ninety-seven and a half per cent from the truth 
 of the maxim that " ministers' sons are the devil's 
 grandsons." Thus the survey of the tables of 
 birth and death in all their minuteness, and of 
 other eccentric statistics, justifies the remark of an 
 essayist, that if you find one man in fifty, in any 
 community, who eats his shoes and marries his 
 grandmother, you may be sure that all over the 
 world it will turn out that one man in fifty eats his 
 shoes and marries his grandmother. 
 
 Perhaps I have delayed too long an allusion to 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 53 
 
 the curious columns which the records of marriage 
 offer as contributions to our subject. Not only the 
 proportion of marriages is generally the same, but 
 the ages of the parties maintain regular relations. 
 Moreover, statistics are continually forcing upon, 
 our notice a fixed percentage of repentant old bach- 
 elors ; also of young bachelors that marry widows ; 
 also of young women that marry old men and of 
 widowers that renew their vows ; while the ratio of 
 second, third, and fourth marriages is very constant. 
 It is no more singular than true that eccentric 
 unions are as regular as the more natural ones. In- 
 deed, it has most profanely come to pass that, just 
 as the stars are nothing but points of vast triangles 
 and diagrams to a cold-blooded astronomer, so 
 every unmarried woman in the community stands 
 as an algebraic symbol to the eye of a social 
 mathematician : if she is twenty years old, repre- 
 senting three quarters of a likelihood that she will 
 change her name ; if twenty-five, standing for one 
 quarter of the same possibility ; if thirty, reduced 
 to a fraction of one divided by ten ; and then 
 decreasing in a geometrical ratio which it would 
 hardly be polite to put into figures here. On the 
 contrary, a man of twenty-five represents the frac- 
 tion one-half as to the probabilities of marriage, 
 which is so vulgar a fraction that most young men 
 of that period- strive ardently to annihilate it by 
 finding the other and better half which restores 
 their integrity. 
 
 This last point suggests the fact that even love 
 
54 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 indefinable, capricious, romantic, as we often think 
 it is most delicately restricted within bounds of 
 law. No doubt every young lady in her early dreams 
 is very particular as to the looks and quality of the 
 youth that shall gain her heart. He must be the 
 very flower of the human race. And every young 
 man is equally dainty in his reveries concerning 
 his ideal partner. She must be the very flower 
 of the human race. But the stock of Adam does 
 not bear flowers enough to supply this wide de- 
 mand of perfection ; so that if we should compare 
 the dreams which are in the hearts of youths of 
 both sexes, nothing would seem so hopeless as to 
 match the world in the long contra-dance of mar- 
 riage. Plato, in one of his dialogues, worked out 
 a sportive fancy that the human race was originally 
 created so that each was complete, the proper 
 partner of each soul being joined to it from birth. 
 But as the race was altogether too happy and in- 
 dependent thus, Jupiter cut the blissful couples in 
 two, as quinces are divided before they are pre- 
 served, and then dispersed them over the planet. 
 So, he said, that each person is the counterpart of 
 another human creature, and goes about seeking 
 its complement. The happiness of every mar- 
 riage, he maintained, depends on finding the real 
 half that belongs to the soul ; all unhappy ones 
 are false assortments, the man sometimes not 
 being a fair match for the woman, and very often 
 the woman being an overmatch for the man. Now 
 if the difficulties of mating people happily were 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 55 
 
 as great as they should seem beforehand, if 
 there were not a large probability that those ex- 
 quisite feminine dreams should embody themselves 
 in the young man that really offered his "hand, 
 transforming him into the Adonis ; or if the celes- 
 tial ideal of the youth did not, after a while, 
 almost surely interfuse itself into the form and 
 glorify the face of some young lady not far from 
 his own terrestrial latitude and longitude, what 
 a miserable world we should have of it ! Senti- 
 mental Raphaels pensive and melancholy over the 
 mocking beauty of their reveries, a world love- 
 sick for ghosts ! But Providence has ordained that 
 love shall wear the gossamer harness of law ; and 
 so the race falls into line, two and two, by mar- 
 riages that are generally happy, as naturally and 
 regularly as the animals walked two and two into 
 the ark. 
 
 Indeed, as we take the moral world more 
 strictly into the domain of our survey, the results 
 are more marvellous. Society is an immense 
 organization, intellectually and morally, as well 
 as politically and by statute. As to conservative 
 and radical tendencies, it has a structure as de- 
 fined as the relation between nerves and bones 
 in the physical frame. In every community there 
 are enough of those restless by constitution, and 
 reformatory by vision, to prevent society from 
 sinking into stupid lethargy ; while the majority 
 are made to be reverent of the past, content with 
 the present, and needing great stimulant and the 
 
56 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 pressure of great wrong to provoke them into 
 attitudes of resistance or the countenance of 
 revolutionary schemes. This is a matter of birth 
 and temperament, resulting from the infusion of 
 different classes of sentiment into the original 
 structure of souls ; and thus permanent basis is 
 provided for the strong and solid growth of civil- 
 ization. In fact, it is a decree of our organization 
 that the reformer himself shall grow conservative 
 after he is forty or forty-five, while the shell of 
 the natural Hunker hardens on him then like the 
 case of the crocodile. If a generation should be 
 born in which no fiery souls with burning demo- 
 cratic instincts and hopes, impatient for the future, 
 should appear, society would be like a long train 
 of cars without an engine. And if, for once, all 
 the individuals of a race should grow up scornful 
 of past wisdom and rabid for advance, social 
 Jehus, what a moral stampede would be ex- 
 hibited ! A general rush on all sides for no par- 
 ticular object except " the good time coming," 
 making society like a long train of engines, each 
 with the steam up, each crowding the one ahead, 
 but with no train attached, no passengers or 
 freight, everybody an engineer or fireman, and 
 bound for no place in particular, only for prog- 
 ress as long as the track will hold out ! 
 
 How beautiful, too, is the law that distributes 
 multitudes of society into different occupations, 
 thus insuring a full development of social good ! 
 Different callings are provided for by inborn 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 57 
 
 tastes. Nature predestines some of our race to 
 be sailors. They are baptized to be agents and 
 expressmen of the world's commerce by the spray 
 of the sea. Their fancy in childhood is busy with 
 the restless waves ; their hearts are cradled in 
 young dreams upon the maternal swell of the 
 deep, and the " Pirate's Own Book " only adds 
 the charm of danger to the other invitations away 
 from the comforts of a settled life which the bil- 
 lows whisper to them. 
 
 So the classes of farmers and mechanics, of 
 merchants, surveyors, and engineers, have natures 
 among them predestined by their aptitudes to be 
 eminent and successful. Many have an inborn 
 passion for an adventurous life ; explorers, pion- 
 eers, settlers of states, frontiersmen, the first on 
 the ground in Californias and Australias, burrow- 
 ers after buried Ninevehs ; while there are others 
 whom no temptations could induce to abandon 
 the settled ways and regular comforts of home. 
 Some, moreover, are foreordained to be mathema- 
 ticians ; in childhood, Euclid is their story-book. 
 A few are appointed to be poets ; they lisp in 
 numbers, for the numbers come. Others are com- 
 pelled to be artists ; while here and there a musi- 
 cian starts up in whose heart winged melodies 
 nestle that by and by visit a thousand homes and 
 charm the attention of a grateful world. Every 
 profession, too, finds those that have its stamp 
 upon them, marked by nature to be physicians 
 or instructors, lawyers, legislators, or clergymen. 
 3* 
 
58 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 Each of the sciences has its predetermined vota- 
 ries ; for there are eyes that turn spontaneously 
 to the sky ; men like Kepler, Newton, Laplace, 
 Herschel, Le Verrier, as much ordained to 
 track the stars as the stars are ordained to move 
 and shine ; tastes, too, there are that find their 
 nutriment in chemistry, in botany, in optics and 
 statics, in geology and mineralogy ; while the 
 bees find their poets, the birds impassioned Au- 
 dubon, the animalcules their delighted analysts, 
 every tribe of animals its biographer and critic, 
 and every bone, nerve, and disorder of the human 
 frame its preordained anatomist and skilful bene- 
 factor. 
 
 With regard to the rarer manifestations of liter- 
 ary character and tastes some law seems to hold. 
 There are always enough with a delicate appetite 
 for old wisdom to give the best authors of the past 
 an appreciative audience, and continually renew 
 their dress in modern type. Critics do not fail, 
 who shall be nice tasters and appraisers of the 
 great creative and constructive minds. We find, 
 too, that every community is supplied with anti- 
 quarians, mousers of genealogies, rummagers of 
 old print-shops and pamphlet-baskets, autograph- 
 collectors, coin-fanciers, microscopic sceptics who 
 must have a focal blaze upon every received fact 
 of history ; whitewashes of old rascalities who 
 find subtle reasons to reverse the judgment of 
 centuries, and to turn Catiline and Tiberius Cae- 
 sar, Richard III., Robespierre, and Napoleon into 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 59 
 
 unrecognized and injured saints. A fixed per- 
 centage also seems to limit the number of those 
 who shall carry on the ultra-abolition meetings, 
 and carry on in them. So the Women's Rights 
 conventions, Fourier newspapers and plans, the 
 Kossuth hats and Bloomer costume, Second Ad- 
 vent Miller, and the Mormon Bible are in pre- 
 established harmony with a certain proportion of 
 every civilized community that must be fed on 
 excitements, extravagances, and vagaries. The 
 social world has been compared to a vast board 
 with all kinds of apertures in it, square, three- 
 cornered, queer, crooked, and every generation 
 to a set of plugs carved by Providence into shapes 
 to fit the openings. But alas ! on one point sta- 
 tistics begin to stand aghast ; percentage and pro- 
 portions have rapidly risen till we begin to ask 
 what limit shall be set to the number of mediums 
 that can throw healthy chairs into fits and make 
 a sober table tipsy, or the believers in the univer- 
 ccelum who take the wrigglings of furniture for 
 inspiration, and delight in the electric jigs of a 
 ghost on smooth walnut and mahogany. 
 
 We all know with what beautiful accuracy the 
 wastes of the human body are supplied with 
 blood, how the right proportion of nutriment is 
 carried to every limb and organ and each particle 
 of the skin. Thus the various limbs and organs 
 of society are refreshed and restored by the new 
 currents 6f population which feed its veins against 
 the wastes of death. With regard to masculine 
 
60 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 and feminine elements, it is plain and it is well 
 that the proportion does not fluctuate ; for society 
 depends not only upon the continued ratio be- 
 tween men and women, but also on the continu- 
 ance of the manly and feminine type of character 
 underneath the wide diversities of individuals in 
 each sex. The women's rights movement is wise 
 and wholesome to this extent, that it is bringing 
 into prominence the ministry and the worth of the 
 feminine side of the social organism. The next 
 great movement in civilization, we may believe, 
 will be to bring this into equipoise with the energy 
 and strength of man, so that the finer and softer 
 qualities of the other sex, with all the wisdom that 
 may ripen upon them and all the influence that 
 must belong to them when perfected, shall become 
 of account in education and appear in the com- 
 plexion of society. The demands that women 
 shall have equal political authority with men, be 
 legislators, merchants, commodores, and generals, 
 are only the momentary contortions of a move- 
 ment that has deep roots and immense impor- 
 tance, founded in the necessity, for the sake of 
 social health, that women should be more than 
 elegant autocrats of the kitchen, graceful orna- 
 ments of the parlor and ball-room, and walking 
 advertisements of lace-stores and bonnet-rooms ; 
 that they shall become sources of qualities which 
 shall make society refined as well as strong, cover 
 it with affections and sensibilities that enwrap 
 its vigor, and save it from standing to our imagi- 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 6 1 
 
 nation like a bony and slab-sided Yankee, hard, 
 calculating, arid shrewd, uncouth, irreverent, and 
 clumsy. Let those who would be acquainted with 
 the best sense upon this vexed and vexing ques- 
 tion obtain the published lectures of Mr. Mann. 
 
 In further illustration of this organization in 
 society, we may say that some men do for it the 
 service of an eye ; others of a brain ; others again 
 of the lungs ; some are its muscles, some its feet, 
 some its hands. Historians stand for the faculty 
 of memory in the large human nature of which we 
 are a part ; poets and artists its imagination ; he- 
 roes its enthusiasm ; mechanics its constructive- 
 ness ; soldiers its brutal bumps behind the ears ; 
 believers its reverence; saints its love and hope. 
 These, and all the functions essential to the grand 
 man, are supplied steadily to the character of 
 society by the new nutriment that bubbles up 
 through the fresh comers into the world to restore 
 the wastes of death. In some periods one faculty 
 is developed more than another, and progress 
 consists in the strong and equable development 
 of the great organs, brain, heart, and lungs, which 
 the prominent orders represent ; but society is 
 never without all these organs in some degree of 
 vigor. And we cannot reflect too reverently on 
 the laws of this permanence established by Provi- 
 dence. If all the great men of one generation 
 should be endowed, as some of them are, with 
 despotic tendencies to one line of study, if men 
 were not made to be equally eminent in walks so 
 
62 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 wide apart as statesmanship, science, law, me- 
 chanical ingenuity, the pulpit, mercantile life, 
 if foe a single half-century there should be a dead 
 level of capacity in every line of power but one, 
 how would civilization surfer ! To use the perti- 
 nent metaphor of St. Paul : " If the whole body 
 were an eye, where were the hearing? if the whole 
 were hearing, where were the smelling?" And 
 the conclusion of St. Paul is the one we are 
 brought to by considering the subtile provisions 
 for the welfare of society : " But now hath God 
 set the members every one of them in the body 
 as it hath pleased him that there should be no 
 schism, but that the members should have the 
 same care one for another." 
 
 Just as every army has its grade of officers, 
 from the corporal to the chief, society has its com- 
 missioned men, who prevent the race from falling 
 into disorder and keep it in a regular march. 
 With regard to labor we talk of a law of demand 
 and supply which determines how many men 
 shall be miners, iron-workers, factory-hands, shoe- 
 makers, carpenters, blacksmiths. But this law 
 does not account for the great poets, discoverers, 
 reformers, and constructive thinkers of history. 
 They are born, not made by circumstances. And 
 if every crisis seems to have its great man ready, 
 if every great opportunity seems to be met by 
 some man that fits it, it is not because the crisis 
 or opportunity makes the man, but provokes him 
 out, that he may show himself in his grand pro- 
 
TJie Laws of Disorder. 63 
 
 portions of power, as God made him. The needs 
 of the Hebrew people in their Egyptian slavery 
 were answered by a Moses ; but was it those 
 needs that wove the faculties of Moses into his 
 frame, fitting him to be their deliverer and law- 
 giver? Was it any set of circumstances that we 
 can comprehend which stretched the musical 
 nerves of David upon his body, or kindled in 
 another heart the enthusiastic fire of a Paul, that 
 has warmed the air of the world ? Was it by the 
 coarse law of demand and supply that a Colum- 
 bus was haunted by the ghost of a round planet, 
 at the time when the New World was needed 
 for the interests of civilization, or that a Luther 
 sprung up with a brain and energy competent 
 to organize a new movement for human liberty ? 
 Can we tell why it was that a Shakespeare rose 
 from the crowd of boys which an English village 
 bore, or a Milton started up to refresh the re- 
 ligious sense with the sound of majestic music 
 and the sight of an athletic virtue ? Was it the 
 necessities of our country that built the grand 
 architecture of Washington's patriotism ? or, rath- 
 er, was it not most fortunate for us that Provi- 
 dence did not suffer the crisis to come without 
 first fashioning a nature competent to be its rep- 
 resentative and guide ? And, standing in the 
 shadow of our last great man's departure, should 
 we not consider whether it is by any wisdom that 
 we can understand, that such a stately intellect 
 was ordained to be the guest of that massive 
 
64 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 brow, that such a stalwart understanding rose up 
 by the side of the Constitution, ready, at the criti- 
 cal period, to be its interpreter and defence, and 
 that the tongue which Nature gave him was made 
 minister of an eloquence that echoes back to De- 
 mosthenes ? No ! great men are made for us, 
 and the law by which every generation supplies 
 one or two of such in every line of human labor 
 is a law which Providence has secretly estab- 
 lished and which is sustained for our welfare, that 
 truth may steadily advance, that the ranks of the 
 race may always have their competent captains 
 and generals, and that civilization shall not stag- 
 nate and waste away. 
 
 In regard to the tastes of people for food, there 
 is singular uniformity of law supporting wide 
 diversities of appetite. Some persons would n't 
 touch a cabbage ; to others an onion is an abom- 
 ination ; with others a turnip is a kind of produce 
 that produces a quality which the word represents 
 upon the nose ; many will not look at condiments 
 and spices ; and there are those to whom a goose, 
 or a leg of venison, or a dish of eels, or a rabbit, or 
 a mess of pork and greens, is perfectly repulsive. 
 And yet, as a whole, the civilized stomach is very 
 catholic ; and all the produce of the fields, from 
 parsnips up to peaches, finds a ready welcome, 
 and the diversity of the tastes 'keeps commerce 
 busy, as the purveyor of appetite, and all the 
 tribes of the earth and the sea that are eatable 
 travel and swim towards the larder and the kitchen. 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 65 
 
 The different races have the bump of alimentive- 
 ness split up queerly and regularly between them ; 
 the Hibernian Celts, with a little assistance from 
 the Dutch, pay their respects to the cabbages ; 
 the Saxons attack the beef and mutton ; the 
 French celebrate the creative goodness that made 
 onions and frogs ; the Chinese pride themselves 
 on rats ; the Esquimaux attend to all the waste 
 whale-blubber ; Italians rejoice in macaroni ; and 
 the unsqueamish army of beggars devour what 
 they can get. Statisticians call for statistics. I 
 would respectfully suggest to them this : 
 
 " Jack Sprat could eat no fat, 
 His wife could eat no lean ; 
 Betwixt them both they cleared the cloth, 
 And licked the platter clean." 
 
 In any family of eight or ten we shall find that 
 tastes are related to the roast turkey as skilfully 
 as those of Mr. Sprat and his wife were bal- 
 anced. There are so many that love white meat, 
 so many that can eat nothing but dark meat, two 
 that prefer a wing, two that lie in wait for the 
 drumsticks, and as surely as there is a wish-bone 
 will there be a demand at least equal to the 
 supply. Now, whether we conceive the turkey as 
 prefigured for the family, or the family tastes as 
 an after arrangement, the order is equally admi- 
 rable, and bears ample witness to the prudence of 
 nature. 
 
 In riding in the stage-coaches also in New 
 Hampshire, among the mountains, I have been 
 
 E 
 
66 The Laws of Disorder. . 
 
 compelled to notice the admirable distribution of 
 characters in every load of twenty-five : how there 
 are always sixteen that prefer the places for eight 
 on the outside, and how of these two are always 
 clergymen and one a doctor, one has travelled in 
 the Alps and can give you comparative criti- 
 cisms ; one is a grumbler and thinks the moun- 
 tains humbugs, puffed up by hotel-keepers and 
 stage-proprietors to gull the public; one is a 
 punster, and one a Southerner ; nine and a baby 
 that could not ride anywhere but on the inside 
 seats ; three of the nine that can ride backwards 
 without discomfort ; and how regularly it happens 
 that the baby is gifted with a taste for music, and 
 shows its lineage from Adam by its crying sin. 
 
 Among the other steady relations I have spoken 
 of as belonging to society, the fact may be men- 
 tioned that the idiots and the insane are in regu- 
 lar ratio to the whole population. The deaf and 
 dumb, too, maintain a strict proportion to the bulk 
 of society. According to the last census there 
 were 9,717 deaf-mutes in the United States. A 
 careful calculation will show that these are just 
 about enough to furnish the proper number of 
 legislators for the whole country. May we not 
 guess that Providence intends that this unfortu- 
 nate class should be educated to be our repre- 
 sentatives and senators ? Then we should have 
 deliberative assemblies. No speeches for Bun- 
 combe, no lobbying, and the most eloquent man 
 would surely be he that should make the best 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 67 
 
 motions. Our feminine reformers insist that 
 things will not go right till ladies are elected par- 
 tially to represent the nation, which would relieve 
 us about as pouring oil on a fire would soothe a 
 conflagration ; but we think true patriotism will 
 seriously consider whether the deaf and dumb are 
 not born to be our lawmakers. There could be, 
 it is true, no Speaker of the House, but we should 
 not need one, for there would be no speakers in 
 the House. Ruffianism of language would be 
 avoided, for how absurd to call a man a liar by 
 the fingers ; and justice would be more likely to 
 be done to the great interests of a nation, in the 
 solemn silence of such a conclave, than it is now 
 amid the general chatter which is intended, not to 
 elucidate the subject, but to fetch an echo of ap- 
 plause from home. 
 
 If we reflect upon it carefully, we shall be 
 struck also, I think, with the marvellous secret 
 and constant action of the laws which superin- 
 tend the growth of national life. In the case of 
 every individual there is steady development of 
 character and unity of experience from childhood 
 to old age. All the powers, memory, sensation, 
 reason, wit, imagination, conscience, are vitally 
 welded together into one consciousness, so that 
 often the sins of the past are punished in the 
 present, and the rewards of goodness are received 
 from the bright hopes which the blended fancy 
 and conscience paint upon the future. Now, by 
 a law of which this is only a miniature, every 
 
68 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 nation has a distinct character to which all its 
 individuals contribute and which successive gen- 
 erations help to develop. Think what boundless 
 personal peculiarities there are in the millions 
 that make up a great kingdom ; and yet the na- 
 tional type is distinctly marked to a vivid imagi- 
 nation. The qualities of the Irish character re- 
 main the same through centuries ; the difference 
 between a Frenchman to-day and a Gaul of two 
 thousand years ago is a difference which the 
 polytechnic school and the dancing-master make, 
 that is, a difference of polish, not of substance ; 
 and the Jew with his old clothes now is essen- 
 tially the Jew of Herod's and Pilate's days. How 
 easily we typify national qualities, and make our 
 pictures of Brother Jonathan, John Bull, Johnny 
 Crapeau, and the Russian Bear, thus proving that 
 each empire is a grand man, and unites all the 
 varieties of temperament and qualities in its citi- 
 zens into a constant expression, as the different 
 elements of character in a person run together 
 into a distinct and constant countenance ! A re- 
 cent physiognomist has called attention to this 
 fixity of national types, by showing, in an odd 
 way, that different national faces have always a 
 marked resemblance to certain animals. Thus, 
 Prussians resemble cats, Germans look like lions 
 (though the Hungarians seem, in our country at 
 least, to turn most easily to lions), Chinamen 
 favor hogs, Yankees humanize the physiognomy 
 of bears, and Persians have the likeness of pea- 
 cocks entailed upon them. 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 69 
 
 The beneficent results of this constancy of 
 national character are very various. Without it 
 there would be no stability to society, no moral 
 order in civilization. If there was no certainty 
 that the next generation in a country should pos- 
 sess essentially the same qualities with their fa- 
 thers, if the Irish might produce a race of English 
 temperaments, and France give birth to a colony 
 of German or Italian heads and hearts, and Amer- 
 ica rear a race of stolid, quiet, ease-loving China- 
 men or Turks, with no go-ahead infused into their 
 blood, of course history would be like a succes- 
 sion of cross-readings of a newspaper. It would 
 be exactly as if men might sleep away their char- 
 acters and moral identity, the honest man at 
 night waking up a scamp in the morning, the cow- 
 ard shifted into a moral hero, the thrifty man into 
 a loafer, the Hunker into a furious Abolitionist, 
 and the cotton-planter transmuted into an enthu- 
 siastic patron of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 
 This constancy of national temperament and 
 character shows its beneficent influence in litera- 
 ture. There are national literatures, just as there 
 are national languages and peculiarities of feature 
 and expression. The English imagination and 
 pathos, the French keenness and brilliancy, the 
 Spanish romance, the German subtlety, and the 
 Jewish reverence run through all their intellectual 
 activity; and so the intellectual world has consist- 
 ency and permanence, the literatures of nations 
 being, for diversity and consequent charm, like the 
 
70 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 conversation of a circle of cultivated gentlemen, 
 one wise and sombre, one gay and witty, one filled 
 with sprightly recollections and anecdote, one 
 scientific, another poetic, this one religious, that 
 one gloomy, here an artist and there a sage. 
 
 In respect of literature, as a general thing we 
 may say that there are statistics of genius : the 
 inventive powers come first to maturity, judgment 
 ripens more slowly, and the highest dramatic and 
 poetic capacities find their perfection, the tragic 
 from thirty-five to forty, and the comic, which de- 
 mands clearer insight and a cooler poise of the 
 brain, from forty to fifty. 
 
 There seems to be a law, too, which determines 
 that great genius shall come in clusters upon the 
 branches of national history. The culminating 
 periods of intellectual life in Greece were the 
 times of Pericles a^d Alexander. In Rome, the 
 century of which Augustus was the centre bore 
 the ripest shock of minds. And there are plenty 
 of modern instances, besides the era of the great 
 painters and the age of Shakespeare, to show that 
 the intellectual soil nourishes rich growths and 
 then lies fallow for an interval. But all this is 
 only introductory to the fact that each nation has 
 a literature of a distinct character. 
 
 The conclusions we should reach from this wide 
 survey are very important. First, society is belted 
 by law. The best definition of Providence is con- 
 stant and beneficent law, and when we see how 
 social statistics fall, as it were, into order and 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 71 
 
 rhyme; we find that there is the same scientific 
 proof of Providence in society that there is of an 
 organizing and controlling hand in the balanced 
 harmonies of the sky. Some persons have felt 
 reluctance to dwell upon the facts which the sta- 
 tisticians have presented, from the fear that they 
 indorse fatalism, showing that man is a tool and 
 a puppet But they do not add any important 
 weight to the argument for fatalism which logic 
 is able to frame without them. They only show 
 that man has not such freedom of will as to make 
 society perfectly lawless ; they show that the Deity 
 will have some order in society in spite of sin, and 
 that sin itself, as in the case of the regularity of 
 crimes and of criminals at certain ages, will ex- 
 press itself in results by a constant and terrific 
 arithmetic. 
 
 And so the most important sequence to which 
 our survey points is this : that society is one com- 
 pact, organic, living thing, that the laws of the 
 world treat it as a whole, play with it as though 
 it were a person morally responsible, and appor- 
 tion its punishment or its good exactly in the ratio 
 of its fidelity or its vice. The statistics of crime, 
 ignorance, mortality by pestilence, blight of in- 
 dustry by war, degeneracy of physical power, point 
 back to a certain proportion of evil in the heart 
 of the nation. Does any man say it is a proof 
 of fatalism that there are so many thousands of 
 the perishing classes steadily rising up out of Bos- 
 ton and New York and London, keeping a fixed 
 
72 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 percentage every five or ten or twenty years ? It is 
 no more a proof of fatalism than the fact of indi- 
 vidual experience is, that a carousal over night 
 surely breeds a headache in the morning, or that 
 the bite of a viper corrupts the blood and makes 
 the limb swell. The great question is, Can the 
 nation reduce or rid itself of the causes whose 
 results are ciphered out with such permanent con- 
 sistency? Introduce ten per cent more of clown- 
 principle into Boston and Ne\v York, and see how 
 the annals of Broad Street and the Five Points, and 
 the reports of ignorance and crime, will acknowl- 
 edge this new element. The fidelity of society 
 as well as its infidelity will reach the statistician's 
 tables at last. The great lesson of our subject is 
 that we cannot escape law, and also that we can 
 use law. Every community, every state, every 
 empire, is in the coil of moral principles as surely 
 as every man is, as surely as every constellation is 
 played with by the law of gravity with as much 
 certainty and ease as the pebble. Truth works 
 on a large scale just as rigidly as on a small one, 
 and the algebra of social order coldly demon- 
 strates to the legislator and the statesman what 
 the prophet chants in their ears, that wrong prin- 
 ciples, false laws, popular Mammon worship, in- 
 difference to neighborly welfare, are terrible reali- 
 ties, and break out on the body politic in crimes, 
 ignorance, jails, insane asylums, pest-houses, de- 
 moralization, and at last loss of liberty and death. 
 Men are generally and foolishly sceptical as to 
 
TJie Laws of Disorder. 73 
 
 the certain play of moral causes and the reality 
 of moral laws. They imagine that the intellectual 
 and ethical domain, everything that belongs to the 
 unseen sphere of social character, is a region of 
 chance and accidents, or that what forces work 
 there work helter-skelter, without the possibility 
 of foresight or control. But everything visible in 
 society is the token of invisible essences, and the 
 regularity of statistics only betrays the surety of 
 spiritual as well as material agencies in their obe- 
 dience to law, and thus the possibility of control- 
 ling them. Celtic institutions and statistics differ 
 from the Saxon because the qualities of character 
 differ. Whether the price of grain rise in a com- 
 munity of poorly paid labor, or the opportunities 
 of education be reduced, whether a material or a 
 moral spring be touched, the effect is equally cer- 
 tain and calculable : crime will increase and public 
 suffering will ensue. There is no more uncer- 
 tainty about moral causes than about physical ones. 
 The man who can put up a new school house 
 where one was not may be as sure that he bene- 
 fits his race and abates the percentage of crime 
 as if he could directly alter the character of a 
 town by a word, or erase with his pen some of the 
 statistics of guilt. The statesman of commanding 
 influence who utters a base sentiment in the Sen- 
 ate-House, or publishes it from the Cabinet, may 
 be as sure that he contributes to the disorganiza- 
 tion of his country as if his pen had immediately 
 added to the arithmetic of public disease. The 
 4 
 
74 The Laws of ^Disorder. 
 
 laws of moral gravitation and moral chemistry have 
 no more caprice, and may be relied on as serenely, 
 as the forces of the firmament and the crucible. 
 
 And so we are told with all the precision and 
 coolness of science that, a nation being one living 
 and responsible thing, having its roots in the past 
 and its hopes in the future, its character is the 
 most important element in relation to its strength 
 and permanence. As there is a character housed 
 in every human frame, so there is a character 
 enshrined in every nation, to which its rising gen- 
 erations contribute. Its nobility and greatness 
 depend no more on its prosperity, wealth, and 
 strength than the nobility of a man depends on 
 the size of his body, the acres he owns, and the 
 gold he has at command. A ruffian may have 
 such claims to greatness as these ; and a nation 
 having these, and yet guided by no feelings of 
 honor and love of right, may be only a majestic, 
 rich, and titled savage. It is character that gives 
 nobleness; and only as a nation is pervaded by 
 the moral elements which make up worthy char- 
 acter will its statistics show progress towards 
 permanent power, and history draw its portrait 
 as a benefactor of civilization. 
 
 Ah ! how impressive and grand does history 
 seem when we think that every country is a mighty 
 pedestal lifting up a national figure symbolic of 
 the character, the prospects, and the perils of the 
 people that dwell on its domain ! The surface of 
 the world, to the imaginative eye, is dotted with 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 75 
 
 these representative forms. See the genius of old 
 Rome stand on the eminence of an all-shadowy 
 throne, with grim and cruel eyes, and traces of 
 the vices that rotted its sinewy heart. See Egypt 
 on its pyramid, with the massive voluptuousness 
 in its visage, incarnating the scourge and doom 
 of its millions ; Assyria, nodding in sottishness 
 on the high and hasty platform of its power, 
 and dropping its flashy sceptre from bloated and 
 nerveless hands ; Greece, lifting the enervated 
 beauty of its face, as of some shameless and prof- 
 ligate Apollo, from its sculptured eminence over- 
 looking the ^Egean sea ; swarthy Hindostan, lost 
 in sodden reveries over the vast volume of its cos- 
 mogonies ; China, with the swinish cunning of her 
 eyes, showing off, from her broad plateau, the un- 
 tattered robe of her customs ; Arabia, overlooking 
 her deserts with a face ploughed by the passions, 
 long since spent, that once ravaged the civilized 
 world ; decrepit Spain, with the old fire of her 
 romance gleaming out, now and then, over her 
 impoverished and seedy dress ; brilliant France, 
 with sparkling eye, blending into one expression 
 the intellectual vivacity of her Laplaces and Ra- 
 cines, and the volatile, graceful levity of dancing- 
 masters and grisettes ; Italy, lifting from the ancient 
 throne of the Caesars her manacled, delicate hands 
 that once left the Madonna upon canvas, and 
 " rounded Peter's dome " ; Austria, rooted on a 
 pedestal that crushes noble nations, and insulting 
 the sky with the depraved duplicity of her tyranny 
 
76 The Laws of Disorder. 
 
 and arrogance ; the magnetic North, gazing from 
 her throne of snow, bound about the brows with 
 the grotesque and frosty mythology of Iceland ; 
 dignified and stately England, with haughty brow 
 and stubborn breast and manly mind, wearing a 
 look that interweaves the genius of Newton, Watt, 
 and Shakespeare, but with a heart not softened yet 
 enough towards the chronic miseries of her sub- 
 jects, look at these figures with their various 
 visages and various lessons, and then raise the 
 question to your fancy, In what guise shall the 
 incarnate genius of our own land stand before the 
 centuries, on the structure that represents the lati- 
 tudes from Aroostook to the Golden Coast, and 
 the zones from Lake Superior to the Gulf of 
 Mexico ? 
 
 Shall her policy and public spirit be such that 
 she shall stand out on that eminence with a shrewd, 
 cold eye, bespeaking idolatrous quest of money, 
 and a robber's avarice for another's land, with a 
 chain in her left hand that fetters three millions 
 of hopeless bondmen, and her right pointing con- 
 tinually to that dark spot in a vast bond which 
 promises to return the fugitive ? There is danger 
 of such a destiny for the soul of our country ; and 
 what a maturity were that for the infant form that 
 was born on Plymouth Rock, baptized to freedom 
 by the cold ocean spray, and cradled in reverence 
 and prayers ! 
 
 Should she not rather rise on her pedestal 
 among the nations, as a glorious statue with the 
 
The Laws of Disorder. 77 
 
 unrolled declaration of Independence expressing 
 her steady enthusiasm for liberty, and her interdict 
 of bondage for her unstained soil, a chart that 
 has on it a dotted home and welcome for every 
 wanderer from beyond the sea, and a countenance 
 fresh as the airs of her North, a heart warm as the 
 sunshine of her South, an ambition for good vast 
 as the enterprise of her East, and a hope broad and 
 generous as the prairies of her West ? Is not this 
 the representative character we desire for our 
 blessed land ? He is the statesmen, they are the 
 patriots, who strive to have it realized, and who 
 believe that the laws which defeat disorder and 
 prevent decay are the laws of righteousness and 
 liberty. 
 
 1852. 
 
III. 
 
 SOCKATES. 
 
 THE subject of my discourse is Socrates. 
 Though his name is familiar to human 
 lips as the representative of the highest spirit of 
 duty, yet little is generally known of his life and 
 character. His spiritual physiognomy is not 
 clearly seen amid the cloudy sanctity which en- 
 velops him in the reverential regard of men. It 
 is known or believed that he was a preacher of 
 pure morals, and a man of invincible purity of 
 life, a light walking in darkness, perhaps the 
 clearest light that brightened -the ante-Christian 
 years ; still the man is but feebly perceived by 
 most of those who revere him as an ethical 
 teacher. 
 
 Socrates was born in Athens in the year 468 
 B.C., twelve years after the battle of Salamis. His 
 parents were poor, his father an ordinary sculp- 
 tor named Sophroniscus. Nothing more than the 
 common training of an Athenian lad was given to 
 him in early life. This, however, was not all his 
 education. We must not forget that his years fell 
 in the period when the intellect of his countrymen 
 was in the very bloom of its first enthusiasm, and 
 
Socrates. 79 
 
 rejoiced in the fulness of creative life ; for it was 
 when the tragedies of^Eschylus and Sophocles 
 were frightening and fascinating their first audi- 
 tors, and the chisel of Phidias cut the white rock 
 from Pentelicus as though it were snow, and Peri- 
 cles was fashioning the Athenian will to his pur- 
 poses by his eloquence. Athens, through its arts, 
 was fast becoming a sort of play-ground of Apollo, 
 and Socrates, amid the general worship of beauty, 
 was apprenticed as a sculptor. We know noth- 
 ing of him except that he worked at his profes- 
 sion till he was about thirty-five, when we find 
 that he deliberately threw down his tools, and 
 determined to be the moral schoolmaster of the 
 most intellectual city of the world. 
 
 Socrates is classed among philosophers ; yet 
 his first movement in the mental world was a pro- 
 test against all that was called philosophy in his 
 time. He had read all that the masters of Gre- 
 cian thought before his day had written, and found 
 it profitless. He found their pages busy with 
 theories about the origin of the world, the way in 
 which it had grown to its present form, and the 
 nature of God. One said the earth came up from 
 a waste of water. Another maintained that every- 
 thing solid is compressed air. A third contended 
 that it is plain enough the globe is an animal, 
 that the stars are its gills through which it takes 
 in and puffs out its breath, while the tides meas- 
 ure the heave and fall of its huge chest. Again 
 it was guessed that mud was the basis of all being, 
 
8o Socrates. 
 
 which was quickened by the sun's heat to produce 
 plants, animals, and men. Parmenides affirmed 
 that the world is a proportional mixture of light 
 and darkness. Democritus showed that all the 
 differences of form and function were caused by 
 different assortments of the imperceptible atoms 
 of which everything is made ; and Heraclitus 
 asserted that fire is the primal life element, that 
 anything is good in proportion to its dryness. In 
 proportion to a man's goodness his soul became 
 dry. He contended that a dissipated man had 
 a moist soul, so that our popular saying that a 
 drunkard is " a soaker," may be a bowlder from 
 the old Greek philosophy. 
 
 What was called philosophy in Greece before 
 Socrates was most tedious and fruitless stuff, a 
 continent of speculation and fantastically chang- 
 ing mist-clouds, having no basis, guided by no 
 law, leading to. no result. Socrates saw it, and 
 said so. He marvelled that none of the great 
 thinkers had taken up the question which the 
 soul of man suggests. The great region of in- 
 quiry and interest is not the world of nature, but 
 human nature. What is man here for ? What is 
 the law of happiness ? Where is the path of no- 
 bleness and peace ? What is the foundation of 
 the law of duty ? These themes Socrates did not 
 find treated in the books of the schools, and, at 
 about the maturity of his manhood, he determined 
 to impress upon his countrymen the importance 
 of one sentence, " Know thyself." 
 
Socrates. 8 1 
 
 And here we are arrested by the fact that Soc- 
 rates was far in advance of our own time as well 
 as of his contemporaries in his conviction that it is 
 better to study our own nature than to be turned 
 from all interest in it by ambition to know the laws 
 of the physical universe. He contended that men 
 could arrive at more certain as well as more val- 
 uable knowledge by studying their own experience 
 and powers than by investigating the world of 
 matter. " It is all guess-work," he said, " these con- 
 clusions about what the earth is made of, and how 
 it was produced. You may speculate about the 
 floor of the firmament, and what the stars are, and 
 how the winds blow, and whether the globe is like 
 a colossal turtle and paddles around the ether, 
 but you cannot know anything about it. But 
 about ourselves we can learn something. We can 
 know what virtue is, where peace may be found, 
 whether there is such a thing as justice, as truth, 
 and whether man was made for a higher walk and 
 destiny than a beaver and a goat." 
 
 Very few of us really believe that now. Few 
 acknowledge that thoughts are as substantial as 
 things, that a feeling is as real as a paving-stone, 
 that the soul is a congeries of actual forces as 
 truly as the body is, that a moral principle is as 
 persistent and fatal a thing as a chemical agent, 
 and that, in the deeps of the mind and in society, 
 laws are ever at work as constant and stem as 
 those which spin the planets and heave the sea 
 and poise the firmaments. The majority of think' 
 4* F 
 
82 Socrates. 
 
 ing men still practically believe that the track of 
 certain knowledge is in the visible and solid world. 
 The stars, the rivers, the rocks, they think afford 
 material of science, but the soul is a region of haze 
 and moonbeams, the law of right is a matter which 
 none of us can be sure about, and conscience a 
 bodiless echo of the passions and desires which 
 cannot safely be relied upon. 
 
 If this is so, our bones are the noblest part of us, 
 and religion, not being a certainty, is " a mockery 
 and a horror." Its glories are the fancies of a 
 dream, its terrors the figments of a nightmare. 
 Socrates came to the conclusion that it was not 
 so. He felt assured that the mystery in which 
 the world floats is more real than the earth's ribs ; 
 that the stone which his chisel chipped was less 
 substantial than the soul in every human form ; and 
 that the beauty which his cunning carved into the 
 block was less charming and permanent than the 
 beauty of truth, temperance, and holiness, which 
 faith and culture could leave upon the invisible 
 essence of every man. He therefore resolved to 
 abandon the lower for the higher art of sculpture, 
 and instead of being an artist in marble to be a 
 fashioner of men.' 
 
 From an obscure workman he suddenly became 
 a missionary. We must not think of him as in 
 any technical and stately sense a philosopher. 
 He never wrote a book ; he spent little time in 
 abstract thought ; he was not a student. He was 
 a home-missionary. His interest was in men, 
 
their occupation, trials, and character, 
 of instruction and influence was conversation, 
 the street, the shop, the market-place, or the 
 change was his school. He meant to be to his 
 townsmen, as he himself said, " like a gadfly to a 
 strong and sluggish horse," buzzing about him 
 continually, and stinging him from his laziness to 
 a brisk and healthy trot. 
 
 As he was not a philosopher by occupation and 
 methods, neither was he so in the character of his 
 mind, and still less in his appearance. Take him 
 as a whole, in essence and appearance, Socrates 
 was a compound of mystic, logician, and buffoon. 
 
 A spirit fellow with the Quakers and Soofes 
 inhabited that grotesque frame. In this respect 
 also he was not a philosopher, but a seer and 
 a saint. He did not spend his time in inves- 
 tigating truth ; he believed it by the assurance 
 of an inward witness ; he saw it and worshipped 
 it. When he left the sculptor's shop he took up 
 his new employment with the consciousness of a 
 heavenly call ; he boasted of a divine commission, 
 and relied on spiritual help. " This duty," said 
 he, " has been enjoined me by the Deity through 
 oracles and dreams, and in every mode by which 
 any Divine decree has ever enjoined anything to 
 man to do." 
 
 He believed in supernatural influences, in an- 
 swers to prayer, in visions, and in divination. He 
 always insisted that from boyhood he had been 
 conscious of Divine warnings in his own nature, 
 
Socrates. 
 
 a sort of Rochester rappings in his bosom, which 
 he revered, and obeyed without hesitation. They 
 dissuaded him, he said, when a course would be 
 very wrong, but gave no positive counsels. If a 
 youth desired to study under his guidance, if a 
 journey was contemplated, if a thought was about 
 to be expressed, and the inward tick was felj;, he 
 forbade the youth to approach him, he relinquished 
 the journey, he smothered the thought. Some- 
 times he was led to utter prophecies, which his 
 friends say never failed of fulfilment. 
 
 And yet, unlike other mystics, he was a logician. 
 A man of severer methods never lived. He had 
 a prophet's flaming heart, and he had a brain of 
 ice. He laid gas-pipes as systematically as Cal- 
 vin could for his Quaker light. Nothing could 
 baffle or confuse him. As a contemporary said 
 of him, he could track a principle in all its 
 windings " like a Lyconian hound." He would 
 hold a thought and inspect it as a mineralogist ex- 
 amines a crystal. The symmetry or inconsistency 
 of a thing he w^ould see as quickly and keenly as 
 an artist appreciates the proportions of a statue. 
 He would untwist the elements of a judgment as 
 an expert strips off the layers of mica. Thoughts 
 were things in his grasp. /. 
 
 Here lies the marvellous originality and power 
 of his genius, that he was a saint in his own con- 
 tact with truth, and a logician in his communica- 
 tion of it to others. He always conversed with 
 men, tried to make them see the importance of 
 
Socrates. 85 
 
 thinking accurately, linked question to question, 
 till he drew out from his interlocutor his funda- 
 mental faith, or, by the contradictions he led the 
 poor man into, showed that he had no fundamental 
 faith, and then advised him to acquire some prin- 
 ciple of action that he could live by, that would 
 stand the test of argument. He never harangued 
 or grew eloquent, but analyzed, disputed, and dis- 
 cussed, always with the view of getting down to 
 some rocky certainty that would bear the weight 
 of the understanding and afford a substratum for 
 the life. The prophet's heated utterance he dis- 
 carded, but put on the missionary robes to con- 
 vince his fellows that virtue is truth, and that noth- 
 ing else will stand the strain of inquiry and logic. 
 Therefore be sure of the foundation of your life. 
 Know why you live as you do. Be ready to give 
 a reason for it. Do not, in such a matter as life, 
 build on opinion or custom, or what you guess is 
 true. Make it a matter of certainty and science. 
 Do not one hour obey a virtuous impulse, and the 
 next a caprice or a passion. Above all things, 
 make your life consistent. If you know at any 
 time that virtue is highest and true, enthrone it 
 ever after ; follow it in all things. Else your con- 
 duct will be a miserable patchwork and discord. 
 
 And this was the principle he went by in deal- 
 ing with men and instructing them. All truth is 
 kindred, and so clear thinking is consistent with 
 holiness and leads to it, while inaccurate thinking 
 on any subject is morally dangerous, and an un- 
 
86 Socrates. 
 
 certainty or falsehood in the intellect might at last 
 be found to be the " apex of hell." Therefore he 
 determined to benefit the Athenians by testing 
 their thought, by making them appreciate the 
 moral truth which they partially believed, and show- 
 ing them that, where the soul has no moral rev- 
 erence and certainty, the life is based on quicksand 
 and marsh. 
 
 He went into the Athenian streets as an in- 
 quirer after truth. So far from writing anything, 
 or assuming to teach a system of truth, he pre- 
 tended not to know anything, to be a thirsty seeker 
 of the highest knowledge. All that he claimed 
 ability for was to detect nonsense. "I create 
 nothing," said he ; "I am only an accoucheur of 
 the mind. If possible I will assist the birth of 
 opinions in you, and choke them if they look mon- 
 strous, but do not ask me to teach anything di- 
 rectly ; I am a learner, and the humblest of all." 
 
 Most persons, however, found his ignorance 
 more tough to deal with than the wisest man's 
 knowledge. If he fell in with an atheist, his ques- 
 tions brought the argument from design into such 
 splendid prominence and concentrated strength 
 that we imagine it is Paley's pages we are read- 
 ing, and not a heathen Greek, and the climax is 
 reached in a query like this : " Seeing thou thy- 
 self, Aristodemus, a small and dependent part of 
 the extended earth, art conscious of reason and 
 intelligence, supposest thou there is no intelligence 
 elsewhere in the universe ? " 
 
Socrates. 87 
 
 If he found a man that did not worship, he 
 began a conversation which rose to such a height 
 that he assented to the conclusion of Socrates : 
 " Piety alone fits, the soul for the communication 
 of Divine secrets ; and no others reach them but 
 those who consult, adore, and obey the Deity." 
 
 If he met a voluptuary, his logic riddled the V. 
 theory of pleasure, and set in clear relief the folly 
 of tampering with the laws of spiritual health ; 
 with the rich he unveiled the truth that the soul's 
 growth is worth more than the wealth of Croesus 
 and the power of " the great king " ; talking 
 with rulers, the conversation would lead at last to 
 the fact, that to do injustice is worse than to suf- 
 fer it ; and at feast-parties he would contrive to 
 intersperse the fun and laughter with questions or 
 stories about " spiritual love and eternal beauty." 
 It will be clearly seen, as we advance, that the 
 grotesque appearance of Socrates was a symbol of 
 the homeliness and ludicrous cast of his illustra- 
 tions and imagery. Any facts that could be strung 
 upon a moral law, or made to reveal or suggest a re- 
 ligious truth, however common or coarse, he would 
 press into his service. To the mystic insight of 
 Coleridge, and the burly understanding of Dr. 
 Johnson, he joined the shrewd Yankee sense of 
 Franklin. He could draw illustrations for his 
 highest themes from the kitchen as well as from 
 the Iliad and the - religious myths. Skimmers 
 and soup-pans were hieroglyphs of truth and 
 holiness as well as poetic goddesses and fictions 
 of Elysium. 
 
88 Socrates. 
 
 It is chiefly as a pure religious thinker and 
 a moral teacher that Socrates is known to the 
 majority of persons now, and in the popular im- 
 agination he is conceived as a lofty, dignified 
 personage, with a severe and majestic presence 
 and a bearing solemn to the verge of being tragi- 
 cal. There is, probably, no great character of 
 history from whom an accurate acquaintance 
 chips so clean the mythic burr and halo of gen- 
 eral report. He was truly no saint in appear- 
 ance, and he had no clerical or prophetic method 
 or demeanor, and made no impression upon the 
 beholder of Athenian polish, politeness, or grace. 
 His head was as round as a pumpkin; he was 
 goggle-eyed, and was debtor to nature for that 
 slight cast or inequality of axis known as an in- 
 teresting squint. " Your eyes see only in a direct 
 line," said he, " but I can look not only directly 
 forward but sideways, too, the eyes being seated 
 on a kind of ridge in my head, and starting out." 
 His nose was short, flat, and snub, and the nos- 
 trils were wide and turned up, being more use- 
 ful on that account, as he said, since they were 
 "able to receive smells that come from every 
 part, both above and below." His mouth was 
 wide and his lips thick, which he " thought might 
 be envied by young men, since kisses, with such 
 a liberal application, would, as he contended, be 
 more luscious and sweet." He had a rich way, 
 too, when he had hooked a man in argument, 
 or was saying something rather sly, of holding 
 
Socrates. 89 
 
 his head still, and turning his eyes among the 
 company, a habit which his contemporaries 
 compared to the way a bull glares around him 
 with his head down. His form would have been 
 more classic and befitting a philosopher, if his 
 neck had not been quite so chunky, and if he 
 had not manifested something above the canoni- 
 cal corpulence of an alderman. The most rigid 
 temperance of diet and rigor of bodily discipline 
 did not avail to reconcile his moral temperament 
 and his physique. He even danced at home in 
 private, with the hope to disenchant his frame of 
 its fleshy encumbrance ; but to little purpose. 
 Nature had determined to intimate in his consti- 
 tution a cross between a Brahmin and a Satyr. 
 
 The information is preserved for us that he 
 had one pair of dress-shoes that lasted him for 
 life, a story we may well believe, since history 
 has recorded no instance of his wearing them. 
 Winter and summer, his custom was to go bare- 
 footed, and it was, moreover, with a slouching 
 gait and a very seedy dress that the son of So- 
 phroniscus roamed about Athens in his taberna- 
 cle of clay. He has improved a little in respect 
 of dress during the last two thousand years, 
 though his style is still somewhat eccentric, for in 
 some of the spiritual communications with which 
 our times are so favored, Socrates has revealed 
 himself as a tall, middle-aged man, dressed with 
 striped coarse trousers, very loose at the top and 
 tight near the feet, and a kind of frock open in 
 the front and without sleeves. 
 
go Socrates. 
 
 But though he was not a model Greek in out- 
 ward symmetry, he was a perfect athlete in bod- 
 ily vigor and power of endurance. Underneath 
 his dissolute-looking flesh were thews of brass, 
 muscles of oak, and sinews of steel. He inured 
 himself to hardships as a duty, in order to perfect 
 his body as a gift of Providence and an instru- 
 ment of the mind. Sleep he never needed if 
 good conversation was to be had. Report goes, 
 that during the terrible plague of Athens, although 
 he never left the city, he was the only inhabitant 
 that wholly escaped infection. Twice the tough- 
 ness of his frame was proved in the hardships 
 of the camp and the fatigues of battle. When 
 about forty, he was drafted for a winter campaign 
 in Thrace. The army, at one time, was short 
 of provisions, but hunger did n't trouble him. 
 Plenty returned, but he escaped dyspepsia. To- 
 tal abstinence societies had not then been 
 formed, and even philosophers were not expected 
 to be Washingtonians. On one or two occasions, 
 when compelled by good-fellowship to drink with 
 his young comrades, who were very fond of him, 
 so tough was his brain he might have used the 
 words of Lady Macbeth, as he surveyed the re^ 
 suit, " that which hath made them drunk, hath 
 made me bold." 
 
 To the Athenian frame a Thracian winter would 
 be something like the pleasure which a Carolinian 
 planter would enjoy among a camping party in 
 the Penobscot lumber-lands during January. But 
 
Socrates. 9 1 
 
 while his companions just ventured from their 
 tents, wrapped carefully, with hair-skins around 
 their legs and fleeced sandals on their feet, they 
 would get a hearty hail from the dialectic corpo- 
 ral, scantily covered with his single threadbare 
 summer robe, and walking barefooted on the ice. 
 It was on the expedition to Potidara, also, that 
 he surprised the camp by standing for twenty-four 
 hours motionless, in a sort of meditative trance. 
 He was as unwelcome a foe to a Thracian boor 
 with his javelin as to an Athenian demagogue 
 with his lasso of logic. In the battle of Potidara 
 he was the most valiant fighter in the troop, and 
 saved the life and weapons of the first young man 
 of Athens by his persistent valor. And after- 
 wards, on the field of Delium, when the ranks 
 were routed, he walked away steadily with the 
 general, perhaps discussing the nature of courage 
 or the mode of life in Hades, as they kept mili- 
 tary step, but, at any rate, with such a " majes- 
 tic composure," as Alcibiades says, who saw 
 him, " that the pursuers concluded to try other 
 game." 
 
 The comical antithesis of his appearance and 
 his spirit of course made him one of the most 
 interesting objects to the citizens of Athens. He 
 was always " before the people," was passionately 
 attached to his native streets and soil, and even 
 the beauty of nature could rarely tempt him be- 
 yond the walls. " From fields and trees," said he, 
 " I can learn nothing, but I can from the men in 
 
92 Socrates. 
 
 town." Now and then some young enthusiast 
 could ensnare him to the bank of the Ilissus, with 
 the bait of an oration by Lysias folded in his 
 bosom. " By holding out written speeches before 
 me, you could lead me about all Attica, and wher- 
 ever else you please, as shepherds lead their hun- 
 gry flocks by shaking leaves or fruit before them." 
 And melted by the youth's reading, while they 
 reclined in the shade of the plane-trees and the 
 flowering agnus-castus, their feet dabbling in a 
 fountain that bubbled near, the old man would 
 indulge in some rich and dreamy talk on religious 
 traditions and the beauty of goodness. But his 
 instincts usually kept him to the crooked streets 
 and dingy shops of Athens. 
 
 He knew, probably, almost every individual of 
 its fourteen thousand free male dwellers, his busi- 
 ness, his prospects, his abilities, his wealth, and 
 habits of life. He considered the city as his par- 
 ish, and could not reconcile it with his conscience 
 that the highest or lowest of his flock should slip 
 the benefits of being catechised occasionally. 
 There were no newspapers in Athens ; but Soc- 
 rates seemed to be a strolling and scattering Lon- 
 don " Punch " among the citizens. Follow in his 
 wake for a day or two, to the walking-grounds in 
 the early morning, into the forum before noon, 
 through little squads of talkers later in the day, 
 and to some party of poets, politicians, and mus- 
 tachioed gallants in the evening, and one will 
 hear the strangest medley of clear-thinking, ac- 
 
Socrates. 93 
 
 curate statement, sublime principles, queer analo- 
 gies, keen and merciless satire, drollery, eloquence, 
 and witty nonsense, as though the tongue of some 
 crazy genius was bewitched. As to the forms 
 and methods of dealing with his company, he 
 would be as flexible and compliant as a Jesuit, 
 but in his aims he was as serious as Fenelon. At 
 one time he is splitting the seemingly simple propo- 
 sition of some enthusiastic philosopher into its 
 various elements as expertly and smoothly as an 
 adept will tear apart the laminae of a thin plate 
 of mica. In a few minutes he is lashing the 
 licentiousness of a talented man through some 
 gorgeous fable, and cross-questions him about 
 what is most desirable in life, till his victim con- 
 demns himself before a crowd of eager listeners. 
 Some forenoon he may be found in the bridle- 
 cutter's shop that stood near the Athenian forum. 
 The young, rich, and handsome Euthydemus is 
 there with a circle of admiring cronies, a lad 
 who has a fine collection of the poets, and boasts 
 that he will yet govern Athens by his sweet voice 
 and fluent speech. Socrates feels moved to let a 
 little light into his mind upon the qualifications 
 of a statesman. He proposes some meek in- 
 quiries about Athenian history, diplomacy, com- 
 merce, and law, and finds that his knowledge is 
 very shallow. He probes him with some test ques- 
 tions on justice, wisdom, prudence, and law, and- 
 shows that his conceptions are feeble and hazy, 
 and then gravely informs the bystanders that the 
 
94 Socrates- 
 
 political ambition of the stripling somehow seems 
 to him like the advertisement of a doctor running 
 thus : " It is true, gentlemen, I never thought of 
 making physic my study, and did not even wish 
 to have the reputation of it ; but be so kind as to 
 choose me your physician, and I will soon gain 
 knowledge by making experiments upon you." It 
 is pleasant to know that one more interview like 
 this converted Euthydemus into a friend of Soc- 
 rates and a sober, studious man. One cannot 
 help thinking what a profitable bargain it would 
 be if our own government could have a Socrates 
 every winter at the price of his second-hand toga, 
 soup, and shoes, to dog and drill the experimental 
 politicians of Congress on the avenue or in the 
 lobbies. ' On one occasion a person could hear 
 Socrates reproving the quarrels of brothers, convin- 
 cing them of the beauty of fraternal love by induc- 
 tion, and reconciling them by syllogism. Soon he 
 is convicting a military teacher of ignorance of his 
 profession ; in a little while he is in the studio of 
 Parrhasius, and thence to the shop of Clito, the 
 statuary, drawing out of them, by his corkscrew 
 inquiries, the confession that art is never so well 
 employed as when put to the service of what is 
 noble, modest, virtuous, and amiable. His pleas- 
 antry would show itself in his enigmatical way of 
 introducing or enforcing a lofty proposition. With 
 a mixed company around him, he would quote 
 and urge the line of Hesiod, 
 
 " Employ thyself in anything rather than be idle." 
 
Socrates. 95 
 
 Then what delight it gave him to see the group 
 look somewhat sceptical as to its morality, until 
 some captious or very common-sense man asked 
 whether employment in gambling, stealing, and 
 debauchery is better than doing nothing ! How 
 would he define and examine and make the doc- 
 trine blaze before their minds that gambling and 
 all vice were not employment, but the most cor- 
 rupt and infamous idleness ! At a feast, once, 
 where the company were called upon, each by 
 another, to state what they chiefly valued them- 
 selves upon, Socrates rose in his turn and with 
 the greatest gravity said that he valued himself 
 on being a pander and procurer. The guests 
 were astounded, and most of them roared. After- 
 wards he went to show, in no joking way, how 
 earnestly it was his aim to make perfect souls 
 that should be desirable and useful to the state, 
 and to bring together those who should love each 
 other for the best qualities, and be improved by 
 each other's company. 1 What a fine union of 
 sense and fun in his criticism upon a volume of 
 Heraclitus which Euripides loaned him : " That 
 which I understand of it is excellent ; I believe 
 that also to be excellent which I do not under- 
 stand, but it would take a Delian diver to reach 
 the sense." At such parties he might often be 
 heard to preface a tough dialogue with a young 
 man by sallies like this : " My young friend Cal-- 
 lias here went to a noted instructor to learn mne- 
 monics, and succeeded well ; for if he sees a toler- 
 
g6 Socrates. 
 
 ably handsome woman he can never forget her, 
 so perfectly has he learned the art of memory." 
 It does n't need sophists to teach young men that 
 art now. The young gallant might be quite proud 
 of the pleasantry for a moment, but if he had a 
 weak spot in his character let him tremble, for 
 the humorous remark is only a coating of sugar 
 for the stringent medicine that is to follow soon. 
 At times one might find him in friendly chat 
 with a priest of the dominant religion, and when 
 he had warmed and flattered the clerical man 
 sufficiently to the temper of good-fellowship, the 
 modest query might be heard from the lips of 
 Socrates, " Can you tell me what is holy and 
 what impious?" "O, yes," is the patronizing 
 response ; " that which is pleasing to the gods is 
 holy, and what is not pleasing to them is impious." 
 " Admirably answered ; but, my excellent friend, 
 do not the gods quarrel, and is it not said that 
 there are enmities among them, and jealousies 
 one of another, so that what is pleasing to Jupiter 
 would be very uncomfortable to Saturn; and 
 what would make Vulcan clap his hands would 
 make Juno bite her lips with vexation ? " " It is, 
 truly, so said." " So, then, you see, if what is 
 pleasing to the gods be holy, the same thing 
 would be at once holy and unholy, since it is 
 pleasing to some gods and displeasing to others." 
 Here is a dilemma, indeed, but it is at last re- 
 lieved by this new and broader definition that 
 " what all the gods hate is impious, and what 
 
Socrates. 97 
 
 they all love is holy; but that what some love 
 and others hate is neither or both." " But, my 
 dear Euthyphro," resumes Socrates, " is not that 
 which is loved one thing, and that which loves 
 another ? " " Certainly." " And all the gods love 
 holiness, according to your statement ? " " Yes." 
 " But, since the gods are one thing and holiness 
 another, is holiness holy because they love it, or 
 do they love it because it is holy?" That question 
 should have made every temple shake on the 
 Acropolis. ) Thus does he suggest to the dormant 
 mind of the priest that polytheism is a blunder of 
 induction, that there is something intrinsically 
 and eternally pure and excellent which hangs 
 and flames like a zenith star above the world of 
 spirits, above all theologies and creeds, and be- 
 neath which the mythical Olympus is but a miser- 
 able, dirty ant-hill which the foot may kick into 
 dust 
 
 A man that could talk thus would, no doubt, 
 be a treasure to the delighted intellectual listeners, 
 but would not be especially welcome to the gen- 
 tleman he felt a divine impulse to enlighten, or 
 hold up spitted upon his barbed dialectics. 
 
 We may realize his relations to Athens if we 
 fancy some subtle professor of moral philosophy, 
 some acute and tough-brained Father Lamson, 
 some courteous and imperturbable Mr. Brownson, 
 inflamed with the idea that he must improve the 
 Bostonians in clear and proper thinking, and as- 
 sume the mission of reforming loafer about town. 
 5 G 
 
98 Socrates. 
 
 And so he happens in upon the broker's board at 
 eleven, with the gracious but astounding saluta- 
 tion, " Well, my friends, suppose we dismiss the 
 topic of ' Sullivan ' bonds, and the 'Old Colony ' 
 stock, and the prospects of the 'Vermont and 
 Massachusetts,' and discourse a while on the chief 
 end of man." At twelve he is disputing pitilessly 
 with a great criminal lawyer, just hurrying to the 
 bar, whether it is kind and friendly to save even 
 a relative from the just punishment of a crime, 
 and holds him by the button till he has impressed 
 on his fancy that there will be no eminent counsel 
 for villains at the last assize, but that every 
 scarred and bloated soul shall be put to the penal 
 discipline that looks to health. At half past 
 one he saunters into the rotunda of the Exchange, 
 and before they know it is exercising a group of 
 merchant princes on the nature of the beautiful 
 - and the true riches of the soul. At two find him 
 at " Parker's," where he draws his chair beside 
 some well-known epicure, and with an air of the 
 most tender interest opens this proposition : " Eat- 
 ing is not a desirable occupation, and not an 
 appetite to be pampered by a wise man. It 
 is merely, you see, the gratification of a want, 
 thus restoring the system to equilibrium. The 
 part of wisdom is to keep as free as possible from 
 the want and the necessity of serving it. The 
 satisfaction of the finest dinner is like the satis- 
 faction of rubbing an itching skin, and a clean 
 soul would as soon aspire after the erysipelas for 
 
Socrates. 99 
 
 the delight of scratching, as rejoice in a clamor- 
 ous stomach for the sake of smoothing it down 
 with venison and turtle-steak. The temperate 
 man's soul is a sound cask well filled with honey 
 and milk, and giving no trouble to the owner; 
 while the life of the epicure is like a barrel full 
 of shot-holes, which he is compelled to fill con- 
 tinually with liquors that are hard to obtain, or 
 suffer exquisite agony. If you go on in this way, 
 my brother, you will be doomed in Hades to fill 
 a colander by bailing into it with a sieve." At 
 four he is dissecting before a patriot the relations 
 of conscience and the constitution. He drops in 
 to tea with an eminent clergyman, whose brain 
 is laboring with the Sunday sermon, and cools 
 his mental fever by a challenge to prove to him 
 that virtue can be taught, and what is the sanc- 
 tion of duty. Perhaps at eight he is at the 
 museum gauging the moral influence of " Cinder- 
 ella" (and if he finds it bad, let Warren look out 
 for him the next day), and at ten appears, barefoot, 
 unshaved, and self-invited, among a supper-party 
 on Beacon Street, which he entertains by his wit 
 and the ample resources of a disciplined reason 
 till, just before the close, he silences all mirth, and 
 through a most eloquent allegory or myth lets a 
 stream of dazzling radiance upon the point that 
 the only true life is one of rigid temperance, 
 piety, and devotion to the highest duty. And 
 when we add that he extends his parochial visi- 
 tations to every tinman's, carpenter's, and hatter's, 
 
ioo Socrates. 
 
 to every cobbler's shop and bookstore and 
 bakery, to editors' sanctums, to the market-stalls, 
 to the reading-rooms, to oyster-saloons and watch- 
 houses, with his testing questions, and that terrible 
 spiritual proof-glass which brings up before a 
 man's own eyes the very sediment of his soul, we 
 know what Socrates was to Athens, and how he 
 would be welcomed here. 
 
 But the setting in which Socrates is generally 
 placed by historians of philosophy is in contrast 
 with Grecian sophists. These were a class of in- 
 structors often itinerant in rhetoric, eloquence, 
 gesture, correct use of language, and the general 
 knowledge which would be a good outfit for an 
 Athenian man of the world, and which was essen- 
 tial to polished bearing and practical success. 
 The Athenian lads delighted in talk. Extem- 
 pore fertility of invention, acuteness and supple- 
 ness in debate, apt poetic allusions, sweetness of 
 diction, and happy artifices of arrangement 'were 
 to them like the voice of Jenny Lind to a soft- 
 nerved amateur. It was part of the business of 
 their lives to speak in the assemblies of the people, 
 and no youth might hope to attain eminence in the 
 state unless he could bait the ear or captivate the 
 heads or rule the hearts of the acute, vacillating, 
 and "fierce democracie" by the honey of his 
 phrases, the agile sophistries of his tongue, or the 
 graceful heat and rhythmical intensity of his pas- 
 sion. Any teachers, therefore, who could impart 
 a dialectic or rhetorical skill were sure of busi- 
 
Socrates. 101 
 
 ness and of enthusiastic welcome in the great 
 Grecian cities. And the chief sophists did not 
 lose any scholars through an excessive modesty 
 of pretension. 
 
 Nowadays we have printed sophists which tell 
 us, " German made easy " ; " Italian taught in ten 
 short lessons " ; " History crowded into a chart." 
 Then the golden promise was, " Reading, speak- 
 ing, and fluency taught here ; universal science 
 imparted in six free conversations ; philosophers 
 manufactured in five sittings ; orators and archons 
 polished for use at the shortest notice. Price to 
 rich men's sons fifty dollars a lesson." 
 
 To tell the truth, most of the distinguished 
 sophists made an attractive appearance. They 
 were versed in the general natural science of their 
 time. They were thoroughly acquainted with the 
 great works of the poets. The mnemonic art 
 they had mastered, and could pour out by the 
 hour the great events, and even the driest details, 
 of history. One of them boasted to Socrates that 
 he could repeat fifty proper names after merely 
 reading them once. They composed allegories 
 on the virtues, the gods, and the origin of things, 
 which were at their tongues' ends. Many subtle 
 word-puzzles were stored away in their memory 
 for frequent use. Generally they boasted that 
 there was no theme on which they could not speak 
 melodiously at a moment's warning, and their 
 hearers were challenged to put them to the test 
 At times they would entertain a company with an 
 
IO2 Socrates. 
 
 oration about a bee, and a polished disquisition 
 on so unpromising a topic as salt. The bearing, 
 too, of a prominent travelling sophist was most 
 dignified. He knew how to guard his person with 
 a magic circle of nice proprieties, and to make 
 himself attractive by a most polite reserve. And 
 on important occasions he knew how to dazzle his 
 assembly by his magnificent attire, " his purple 
 robes, embroidered sandals, and fingers sparkling 
 with gold and gems." On such occasions every 
 curve was exactly the line of beauty, every motion 
 artistic, and, whatever the topic, the tropes and 
 metaphors sparkled in the gush of his speech like 
 the brilliant spray from the fountain's throat. The 
 sophists amassed immense sums by their vocation, 
 and one of them is said to have made ten times 
 as much by his profession as Phidias could gain. 
 
 When one of the most celebrated of these 
 men visited Athens, the young men among the 
 upper-ten were half wild with delight For then, 
 as a few centuries after, it was true that "the 
 Athenians spent their time in nothing else but 
 either to tell or to hear some new thing." The 
 doors of the great stranger's dwelling-place were 
 beseiged before daybreak, and we don't know but 
 that there were crowds in the Bowdoin Squares of 
 Athens to watch his outgoings and return. It was 
 a marked day in the calendar when the lordly 
 sophist had a reception. Socrates would be very 
 likely to pay his respects, wish him the freedom 
 of the city, and offer him a greeting of welcome. 
 
Socrates. 103 
 
 But his reverence and affection for a sophist 
 were those of a \veasel for a rat. They offended 
 his principles and his practice at every point. 
 They made large pretensions to knowledge; he 
 continually protested that he knew nothing more 
 than the best methods of acquiring knowledge. 
 They taught for gain ; he would take no pay for 
 his instructions. It was often pressed upon him, 
 but never touched. He thought it was as really 
 prostitution to sell wisdom as love for money. 
 In his view education was a serious and arduous 
 matter, and he thoroughly hated any methods 
 which made it seem easy. It was not that the 
 sophists openly taught immoral doctrines that 
 Socrates objected to them, but that they did not 
 teach anything scientifically ; did not ground their 
 pupils on the fundamental principles of certainty. 
 They diverted ambition from a patient and slow 
 mastery of these, turned their scholars from a 
 steady mining for the diamonds of wisdom to a 
 scramble for the spangles of a surface informa- 
 tion. And so, whatever might be their excel- 
 lences, Socrates saw that, in the light of his stern 
 theory of training, the sophists were vitiating the 
 mental principles of the young. Instead of in- 
 spiring a method they imparted a knack. Their 
 aims were wholly practical, and therefore low. 
 He would make men thorough, earnest, and rev- 
 erent thinkers ; they would make them acute 
 debaters, ready tacticians, accomplished orators. 
 They would fit them for eminence in the forums 
 
1 04 Socrates. 
 
 of Greece ; he would make them wrestlers with 
 ideas in the gymnasium of science. They did 
 not pursue nor inculcate wisdom for its own sake, 
 but only for the sake of one's private interest 
 and political success ; and so in the sight of Soc- 
 rates the sophists had no mental modesty or hu- 
 mility, and were but flaunting courtesans of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 It was worth one's while to see a meeting before 
 the best youth of Athens between these ornate 
 professors and the buffoon-prophet, the cool and 
 comic enthusiast, the pug-nosed and chuckle- 
 headed saint. To his fellow-citizens Socrates 
 was a gad-fly, but to them a vampire, sticking 
 with the gripe of a centipede, and sucking the 
 conceit out of them with glee. He was so glad 
 to see the great Protagoras, the sharp-eyed Pro- 
 dicus, the all-accomplished Gorgias, or the cel- 
 ebrated Evenus of Paros ; what a blessing to 
 Athens that they had condescended to come ; 
 now, surely, he could learn about the supreme good, 
 or the essence of wisdom, or the most fitting life, 
 or what the just may be And although he had not 
 a fourpence to pay for instruction, he would beg a 
 little talk in charity. Then how would he prick 
 their brilliant parachutes and let out the gas; how 
 would he rub clown their definitions to sand on 
 the grater of his dialectics ; how nicely would 
 he put his tweezers on the head of a fallacy 
 and " snake " it out of its artistic nest ; how 
 would he inquire and inquire, and tire the brain 
 
Socrates. 105 
 
 of his courtly antagonist by leading him through 
 the mazes of his own disorderly system \ and 
 split some pompous axiom into a forked con- 
 tradiction before his eyes, and thus teach the by- 
 standers how to think and discuss, and force the 
 baffled professor to exclaim, " I am sure, Socrates, 
 that with five minutes' leisure I could answer you 
 clearly, but just now I am tired and cannot collect 
 my thoughts." 
 
 But what offended the dainty ears of the soph- 
 ists most was the homeliness of his allusions and 
 figures. He would reduce a general idea to its 
 lowest denomination, and examine it in vulgar 
 fractions. If one of them, in the full sail of dec- 
 lamation, advanced to his auditors the general 
 and somewhat slippery principle that the wise 
 ought to have more in society than the worthless, 
 Socrates would try to get at his precise meaning 
 in this way : " Then you would say, I take it, 
 that the most skilful weaver ought to wear the 
 largest robe and have the most clothes ; that the 
 best cobbler ought to walk the streets in the 
 widest shoes, or with many pairs on his feet ; 
 and that the wisest doctor should be stuffed with 
 the most meats." He got no light on the original 
 proposition of the sophist, but he got the retort : 
 " By the gods, Socrates, you never cease talking 
 about shoemakers, cobblers, fullers, and cooks, 
 as if our discourse was about them ! " 
 
 Or the learned Hippias agrees to instruct him 
 about beauty, and shows him that " finely shaped 
 5* 
 
106 Socrates. 
 
 girls and noble horses and a well-proportioned 
 lyre and golden ornaments and precious stones 
 are beautiful." 
 
 "But suppose a hard-headed friend asks me 
 if a fine porridge-pot isn't beautiful, and if a 
 sycamore spoon for pea-soup, being more con- 
 venient and fitting, is n't more beautiful than a 
 golden one ; for he might say, too, that if you 
 stir the soup in the tureen with a gold spoon you 
 run the risk of breaking the dish and thus spoil 
 a good dinner, while a wooden spoon, if made of 
 an aromatic tree, would be safer, and would give 
 the soup a better flavor. What must I say if my 
 friend speaks thus, O Hippias ? " " But who would 
 dare use terms so coarse on a subject so noble ? " 
 replied the sophist. "Although such things are 
 fine in their place and when well proportioned, 
 yet their beauty is n't to be spoken of, compared 
 with a fine horse or handsome girl or other 
 splendid things." " Ah, a little patience, good 
 Hippias : if we compare girls with goddesses, 
 does n't the same thing happen as when we com- 
 pare porridge-pots with girls ? And must we for- 
 get what Heraclitus said, that the wisest man will 
 seem only like a monkey, when contemplated in 
 contrast with God, for wisdom, beauty, and all 
 such qualities ? " Thus does he compel the 
 dandy sophist to take off his mental kids and 
 handle rough-looking realities, at the same time 
 forcing him to widen his definition of the beauti- 
 ful, and hinting to him the Divine loveliness which 
 
Socrates. 107 
 
 infolds all other beauty as the air embosoms the 
 myriad glories of the world. 
 
 How fine was the simile of Alcibiades at an 
 Athenian feast, to express the nature of Socrates ! 
 " He is," said he, "exactly like those Silenuses that 
 sit in the sculptors' shops, and which are carved 
 holding flutes or pipes, but which, when divided 
 into two, are found to contain the images of the 
 
 gods His discourses are like them, too ; 
 
 the phrases and expressions he employs fold 
 around his exterior, as it were, the skin of a rude 
 and wanton Satyr. He is always talking about 
 great market-apes and brass-founders and leather- 
 cutters and skin-dressers, so that any dull and 
 unobservant person might easily laugh at his dis- 
 course. But if ever one should see it opened 
 and get within the sense of his words, he would 
 find that they alone, of all that enters into the 
 mind of man to utter, had a profound and per- 
 suasive meaning, presented innumerable images 
 of every excellence, and were most divine." 
 
 It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that Socrates 
 was not appreciated at his value by his fellow- 
 citizens. Many despised him because he was 
 poor, ill-dressed, and had no laudable employ- 
 ment. Some of refined taste were repelled by 
 his ludicrous ugliness. Many feared the homely 
 honesty of his talk and the precision of his probe. 
 And not a few saw with alarm that his severe 
 speculations were prying up the foundations of 
 the state polytheism, unsettling faith in the thun- 
 
io8 Socrates. 
 
 ders of Zeus and the trident of Poseidon. The 
 comedians found him rich game. In the " Clouds," 
 a comic play of Aristophanes, brought out when 
 Socrates was forty-five, his house is called the 
 "subtlety-shop," where students are taught the 
 cause of rain and thunder, and exercised in 
 measuring the leap of a flea, the furniture of 
 the house affording ample material for conduct- 
 ing the last experiment, since the couches almost 
 jump of themselves from excess of life. Socrates 
 himself is represented lying flat in meditation on 
 a high shelf, that his mind, as he expresses it, may 
 be hung up above material things, and his subtle 
 soul be mixed with liberal air. Some of the 
 scholars are disposed about the rooms, in the 
 comedy, on their hands and feet, with their noses 
 to the ground, looking like kangaroos on all fours. 
 Socrates is portrayed instructing his pupils in 
 precision of speech, and the take-off of his love 
 of accurate classification is admirable, where the 
 poet represents him as warning his pupils not to 
 confuse realities even so far as to call a male and 
 female turkey by the same name ; but by all 
 means to speak of the male as a turk^r, and the 
 female as a turkey$\r. He promises also, in the 
 play, to instruct any youth how, by proper subtle- 
 ties, to make an unjust cause triumph over the 
 right, an art in which many subtlety-shops in 
 modern times have perfected the visitants.. An 
 old gentleman oppressed with debt and a riotous 
 son, tries to learn the mysterious secret sophistries 
 
Socrates. 109 
 
 of the thinking-shop, in order to dodge his bills, 
 but finds them too abstruse for his soggy brain, and 
 at last sends the son himself to be a pupil. The 
 youth catches the art of making the worse appear 
 the better reason, but he learns too much, loses 
 his small remnant of filial reverence, and beats 
 his father, soon after he graduates, because he 
 had not good taste in poetry. The old gentleman 
 naturally demurs, but the youth catches him fairly 
 on the logic of the thing, as thus : 
 
 " Now, here 's^a mild 
 And candid question for you, 
 Pray, did you beat me when a ch^Kl ? 'V 
 " Yes, for the love 1 bore you." J / J^ t > 
 " Then ought not I, toqy toJembrace ^ 
 
 The shortest means of /provih^v / I - * C 
 
 My love for you, and beat you, as A' / > ,, 
 
 This beating 's merely loving ?' 4 / '/* \ *. 
 
 Children are thrashed j^must f2tHeflp a/ / > 
 Unthrashed and unadmonished ? f } j t \ , 
 
 You '11 say it is the law, I know, -. \ j 
 
 For children to be punished. 
 
 But I '11 reply that an old man * 
 
 Is in his second childhood, 
 And if he 's thrashed more fiercely than 
 A youth, it can 't be styled odd. 
 
 Just look how cocks chastise their dads ; 
 Yet wherein do their natures 
 Differ from us Athenian lads, 
 Save that they 're no debaters ? " 
 
 The play closes with the dismantling of Socrates' 
 house by the enraged old gentleman and his 
 slaves. 
 
 It is not strange that Socrates should have 
 been made fun of in a farce. But many critics 
 
no Socrates. 
 
 have racked their brains to explain how, if Soc- 
 rates was a lofty teacher, he could be so vilified, 
 his tenets so grossly libelled before his country- 
 men upon the stage. How should he, whose 
 morality was so stern, be scourged as a misera- 
 ble sophist, a sapper and miner of domestic order 
 and filial ties ? How should he, whose delight it 
 was to spear the loose thinkers of his time, be 
 selected as the type of the worst class of them ? 
 It is as if some modern novelist or stage poet 
 should dare to dramatize Dr. Channing inciting a 
 riot, or Deacon Grant and John Augustus entic- 
 ing young men into gambling shops and inviting 
 them to take a social glass. We must make 
 great allowances, however, for the wild license 
 of Athenian comedy. We know that the farce- 
 writers did not care at all for truth in their repre- 
 sentations. Men who could, without impunity, 
 hold up Pericles himself to ridicule, in the sum- 
 mit of his power, would not bridle their fancy 
 about a poor, pale-faced, itinerant disputer of the 
 streets. Besides, Socrates was considered an in- 
 novator on the popular faith. The poet who 
 satirized him was a rigid pagan conservative, and 
 would not have the .basis of a single altar weak- 
 ened or questioned. And who does not know 
 what strange doctrines are associated, by the un- 
 thinking, with the name of every man whose 
 intellect throws off the swaddling-clothes of tradi- 
 tion and creed ? The friends of the pagan order 
 knew that Socrates dealt with abstractions; and 
 
Socrates. in 
 
 so they called him a trifler, not inquiring into 
 the quality of the abstractions. It was enough 
 that he was 'a philosopher ; and they believed that 
 every kind of philosophy tended to poison ancient 
 morals and cripple the ancient faith. Blind con- 
 servatives never stop to make accurate classifica- 
 tions of their opponents. They make no account 
 of the various moods and spirit in which dissent 
 is made, and the frequent affirmations that accom- 
 pany denials. One man's denial is a yes he says 
 to something better which he loves ; another's is 
 merely a no to something which cramps his intel- 
 lect, and restrains his will, and which he hates. 
 But the conservatives divide mankind into two 
 parties, the friends of establishments and the 
 malcontents. There are besiegers at the gates, 
 and the garrison of the fortress call them all foes, 
 not caring to ask who are seeking to enter in 
 order to repair and enlarge the old, dilapidated 
 castle, and to distinguish them from the mob 
 who would batter down the turrets for the sake 
 of sack and murder. Consider what a motley 
 crowd are lumped together to be laughed at under 
 the title " Transcendentalists " ; men without faith 
 and men of the deepest faith, conceited shallow- 
 pates and lynx-eyed seers, nebulous poets and 
 genius with its pen of adamant and tongue of 
 gold, flaccid pantheists and those whose loyal 
 lives adorn the eternal laws, are hooped about 
 and bundled into fellowship by that elastic word. 
 Shall a Catholic bishop .stop to analyze and 
 
112 Socrates. 
 
 parcel out the various grades of minds included 
 in that category, when they can be conveniently 
 anathematized in the gross ? 
 
 Is not the term "neologist" in theology made 
 to span the space between a Fox and a Mar- 
 tineau, a De Wette and a Strauss ? Does not the 
 title " Socialist" cover with equal reproach the 
 Christian whose imagination revels in the pictured 
 fulfilment of the prayer, " Thy kingdom come," 
 and the Red Republican whose heart is fierce 
 with hate, and the sensual enthusiast, like Henri 
 Heine, who would lift from the race the restraint 
 of principle and the " incubus of worship," and 
 build the temple of license on the ruins of the 
 home? 
 
 Let a man be heard to question the literal 
 inspiration of "Chronicles," or to speak of the 
 fragmentary nature of the Gospels, or to hint of 
 any mistakes of the Apostles, and is he not 
 called infidel and a foe of Christ ? Socrates was 
 called to pay the inevitable price of dissent 
 and of a higher insight, by a total misconception 
 of his views. The ultra-conservatives of Athens 
 feared that the state would fall if the throne of 
 Zeus was undermined, and that virtue would have 
 no backer if the flames of Tartarus were treated 
 to the wet blankets of dialectics. They could 
 not see, and cared not to see, that the no of Soc- 
 rates to the traditions was a higher religious yes. 
 They would not look at the infinite sweep of 
 Providence which, in his teachings, displaced the 
 
Socrates. 113 
 
 sceptre of the thunder-god. They could not dis- 
 cern that native "beauty of holiness " which, in 
 his sight, was the only thing in the universe to be 
 desired. They could not comprehend the terrors 
 of that intrinsic spiritual retribution for sin which 
 he would substitute for the red surges of Phlege- 
 thon, and so the shortest way was to oppose and 
 satirize him as an atheist and a mental libertine. 
 
 To these causes of dissatisfaction we must add 
 the hostility of most of the demagogues, and even 
 of the statesmen, of Athens. He believed in the 
 application of science to public affairs as well as 
 to speculative questions. He believed that those 
 only had the right to govern who knew how to 
 govern. "The sceptre," said he, "cannot make a 
 king, and none are rulers who are ignorant of the 
 art of government." The whole of Mr. Carlyle's 
 famous doctrine on this point, in his " Latter-day 
 Pamphlets," is found in Socrates' conversations. 
 He was fond of picturing the qualities that are 
 essential to successful statesmanship ; and in this 
 way was holding up an ideal in the workshops 
 and before the youth of Athens, which threw too 
 much light upon politics for the comfort of the 
 politicians. 
 
 Once he did appear on the stage as a practical 
 dealer in public business. He was more than 
 sixty years old. Some victorious navy-generals 
 were on trial for their life upon the charge of 
 neglecting to save some of the sailors of their 
 own fleet whose ships had been sunk in the 
 
1 14 Socrates. 
 
 engagement. The Athenian voters were exas- 
 perated against them. A motion was made in the 
 assembly of the people, a general concourse 
 in their Faneuil Hall, to take summary action 
 upon the case of the generals without a special 
 trial. It was plainly illegal, a proceeding of 
 Judge Lynch, and the magistrates declared it so, 
 and hesitated to put the motion. Amid great 
 excitement another motion was made, " that who- 
 ever interrupted the free votes of the assembly 
 should be involved in the same sentence with the 
 commanders." A tumultuous shout greeted the 
 proposition, but the presidents still refused. A 
 demagogue arose and formally accused them, and 
 the multitude demanded with clamors that they 
 be called to account. It was no boy's play, this 
 bearding the Athenian panther when his eyes 
 were kindling, his claws starting from their cush- 
 ions, and he had begun to growl. Socrates was 
 by law the chief magistrate of the day. The 
 rest of the board faltered before the fury of the 
 populace; but the hard-headed old philosopher 
 would not budge an inch. The leading men tried 
 to terrify him, the voters threatened to impeach him, 
 there was a tempest about him ; but he said that 
 every action is open to a higher and searching 
 inspection, and he insisted that he would not do 
 an act which was contrary to law. The generals 
 were condemned, but Socrates somehow escaped 
 being mobbed, and lived to see the instigators of 
 the affair impeached, imprisoned, and despised. 
 
Socrates. 1 1 5 
 
 We cannot be certain to which law, the human 
 or the higher statute, Socrates referred, when he 
 said he would do nothing contrary to it. For, a 
 year or two afterwards, the ruling oligarchy sum- 
 moned him to the marshal's office, and ordered 
 him to go with four others and seize a man named 
 Leon, of Salamis, a fugitive. We do not know 
 the crime of Leon, and cannot positively tell 
 whether he was white or black. But Socrates 
 thought he was entitled to his liberty, and was 
 not attracted to kidnapping, for these are his 
 words : " That government, strong as it was, did 
 not so overawe me as to make me commit an 
 unjust action ; but when we came out from the 
 public office the four went to Salamis and brought 
 back Leon, but I went away home ; and perhaps 
 for this I should have been put to death, if that 
 government had not speedily been broken up." 
 
 A picture of Socrates would be very incom- 
 plete that did not include a sketch of his do- 
 mestic relations. He was a great admirer of 
 human beauty, and there are many passages of 
 his conversations that betray a noble and gen- 
 erous estimate of the nature of woman. He 
 was above the prejudices of his age, and judged 
 human beings by qualities of soul, and not by 
 sex. Perhaps if now among us his voice would 
 have been heard at the Worcester Women's Rights 
 Convention ; for he said publicly at a supper- 
 party in Athens, what was a heresy in Greece, 
 " I have long held the opinion that the female sex 
 
n6 Socrates. 
 
 are nothing inferior to ours, excepting only in 
 strength of body and perhaps steadiness of judg- 
 ment." And Xenophon, who was his devoted 
 friend, in a fictitious dialogue puts into his mouth 
 the words, which show his estimate of female 
 character, " It is far more delightful to hear the 
 virtue of a good woman described, than if the 
 famous painter Zeuxis was to show me the por- 
 trait of the fairest woman in the world." 
 
 It has been well remarked by another, as a 
 singular fact, that " the majority of those men, 
 who, from Homer downwards, have done most to 
 exalt woman into a divinity, have either been 
 bachelors or unfortunate husbands." There is no 
 disputing the fact that Xantippe, the wife of Soc- 
 rates, was a tartar, or, as Aristophanes would say, 
 a tartaress. She tried the temper of the sage in 
 every way. She railed at him and stormed against 
 him ; she disturbed his meditations with the mop ; 
 she doused him with dirty water (clean water, it 
 is said, would not always have been a misfortune) ; 
 she trampled presents that were sent to him un- 
 der her feet ; she knocked the tables over when he 
 expected a philosophical friend to a frugal supper ; 
 she tore off her husband's cloak in the middle of 
 the street, which, as it was probably his only gar- 
 ment, must have been annoying. The children 
 complained bitterly about her, and declared to 
 the old gentleman that her tongue was worse than 
 the claws of a wild beast. But the sage was 
 never ruffled. The visitations of dirty water, he 
 
Socrates. 117 
 
 said, were the rain that followed the thunder of 
 his good wife's tongue. He exercised the boys in 
 dialectics, and proved that they ought to ask par- 
 don of the gods for their impiety, and all his own 
 perils he tried to turn to moral benefit. 
 
 "If you think so highly of female nature," said 
 a captious friend to him, " how comes it you do 
 not instruct Xantippe, who is, beyond dispute, the 
 most insupportable woman that is, has been, or 
 ever will be ? " Pretty plain talk to a man's face 
 about his wife. " But, my friend," said Soc- 
 rates, " those who would learn horsemanship do 
 not choose tame horses, but the highest-mettled 
 and hardest-mouthed. I design to converse with 
 all sorts of people, and I believed I should find 
 nothing to disturb me in their conversation or 
 manners, being once accustomed to bear the un- 
 happy tongue of Xantippe." 
 
 So, in early church history, we read of a Chris- 
 tian lady who desired of St. Athanasius to pro- 
 cure for her, out of the widows fed from the 
 ecclesiastical fund, an old woman, morose, peev- 
 ish, and impatient, that she might, by the society 
 of so ungentle a person, have often occasion 
 to exercise her patience, her forgiveness, and 
 charity. 
 
 That Socrates showed great genius in selecting 
 the toughest trial possible to the soul of man, and 
 that he breasted it heroically, is beyond question ; 
 yet there is something to be said for the much 
 berated wife. What was Socrates as a husband ? 
 
1 1 8 Socrates. 
 
 He was so poor, by his own confession, that he 
 was never master of all the proper implements 
 of housekeeping. All the property under his 
 roof would not have brought forty dollars at auc- 
 tion. He would not take pay for his teachings, 
 but his teachings could not purchase fire-wood, 
 and he would not do any other work. All the 
 morning he would have a glorious philosophical 
 lounge in Simon the leather-dresser's shop, and 
 then go home to dinner, forgetting that Xantippe 
 had not been furnished with a sixpence to trade 
 with the fishman at the door. Husbands may 
 be transcendental, but wives who must cook and 
 bake have a curious way of looking upon life 
 from the point of material interests. Socrates 
 was always talking about how little a man could 
 live on, but he did not earn that little. He was 
 delighted that poor men in Athens could buy four 
 measures of flour for an obolus ; but where, O 
 Socrates, is your obolus ? His soul was revelling, 
 no doubt, in the great ideas, and pointing out the 
 everlasting distinction between the agreeable and 
 the just \ but his wife, all this while, was living 
 among the empty stewpans and rickety chairs, 
 and meditating how a good dinner would be both 
 agreeable and just, and feeling the everlasting and 
 infinite distinction between mutton and hunger, 
 penury and household comfort, dependence on 
 charity and an honest livelihood. Socrates was 
 thinking over the benefits society derives from 
 virtue and good teachers, while she mused on the 
 
Socrates. 119 
 
 greater ease with which the little Soccies could 
 be clothed if the sage would stick to chiselling 
 statues instead of sculpturing souls. Moreover, 
 if the good woman ever discovered the motive of 
 the sage in marrying her, can we blame her if she 
 determined to assist his moral development by 
 exercising her peculiar genius to the top of its 
 bent ? It was a Divine call, I know, that made 
 Socrates a bad provider for his family. He would, 
 perhaps, have violated the highest principle, and 
 been a worse provider for the world, if he had 
 fulfilled the ordinary obligations, and worked to 
 have his parlor furnished and the larder stocked. 
 But we must also remember that, to have domestic 
 tranquillity in his circumstances, he should have 
 had a female Socrates for a wife, and that only 
 supernatural grace could have kept any ordinary 
 woman from being a termagant and trial. 
 
 The family of Socrates was the circle of his 
 friends. To understand him, we must compre- 
 hend his influence over persons, persons of great 
 genius and of the most diverse temperaments, 
 tastes, and gifts. There have been few such im- 
 mense and tyrannical personalities known. The 
 men whom he confuted in debate called him a 
 cramp-fish that benumbed the wits of his oppo- 
 nents. And he attracted as powerfully as he 
 paralyzed. Among those who valued him as the 
 apple of their eye, and revered him as almost 
 more than mortal, were some of the greatest 
 names of Athens. The wealthy Crito was his 
 
1 20 Socrates. 
 
 steady adherent from boyhood till death, and 
 would have rejoiced to turn his purse upside 
 down for him, if Socrates would have permitted 
 such a profanation of attachment. The acute 
 and vigorous Antisthenes, founder of the sect of 
 Cynics, was early captivated by him, and walked 
 from his home six miles every day and back again 
 to hear him talk. He despised all luxuries and 
 show, and, though able to dress better, wore a 
 threadbare cloak and ragged clothes. Socrates 
 was the only being on earth he loved, but friend- 
 ship did not save him from the remark, " Why 
 so ostentatious ? Through your rags I see your 
 vanity." 
 
 With equal ardor the luxurious, oily-tempered, 
 polished sensualist, Aristippus, was devoted to 
 him, a man who realized perfectly the formula 
 that has been given for Goethe's nature, that "he 
 succeeded in subjecting all irregular impulses to 
 a course of disciplined self-indulgence." Mihi res, 
 non me rebus subjungere. The society of Socrates 
 was as indispensable to him as lazy leisure, wine, 
 and bodily indulgence. But the terms of the in- 
 tercourse reflect no dishonor on Socrates himself. 
 He contested inch by inch with him the theory of 
 pleasure, and forced him to confess before others 
 its nonsense and inconsistency. 
 
 The virtuous and simple-hearted Xenophon was 
 his pupil, and, as a child to him more than twenty 
 years, believed him to be inspired, and wrote out 
 his recollections of him to vindicate his char- 
 acter. 
 
Socrates. 1 2 1 
 
 Euripides, " the stage philosopher," though 
 older, was for some time his intimate compan- 
 ion. 
 
 The insolent and subtle Euclid of Megara, 
 afterwards founder of a sect, was a constant sat- 
 ellite. So necessary was the society of Socrates 
 to him, that when his native city was at war with 
 Athens, and a decree forbade any dweller in 
 Megara on pain of death to be seen in the Athe- 
 nian streets, Euclid dressed in female attire and 
 walked twenty miles by night to the house of Soc- 
 rates, to have a few hours' talk. 
 
 And a host of others Cebes and Simmias, 
 who left their native country for his sake ; Phce- 
 don of Elis, once a slave in Athens, but redeemed 
 by Socrates' influence, who repaid the favor by 
 the growth of his mind and his ardent affection ; 
 the beautiful Channides ; the young Aristides, who 
 said he gained strength by being in the room with 
 Socrates ; Aristodemus, Apollodorus, Critobulus 
 testified to the personal sway of the slouchy 
 ambassador of reason. 
 
 The two sides of Socrates' nature were repre- 
 sented in his friends. He had his Boswell always 
 near him, who consulted oracles about him, and 
 was continually in a quarrel with somebody in 
 regard to him, and who hardly dared to pronounce 
 his name aloud, the little, dark, shrivelled, dirty, 
 fussy Chaeropho, whom the comic poets delighted 
 to hit off under the nickname of " Socrates' bat." 
 
 And there was ^Eschines, son of a sausage- 
 
122 Socrates. 
 
 maker, who took a notion for the linked thought 
 rather than the linked meats, a poor and un- 
 thrifty fellow, whom Socrates once advised in his 
 distress to borrow money of himself by reducing 
 his wants. After the death of his master he 
 failed in the perfume business, and took to pub- 
 lishing Socratic dialogues for a living. 
 
 Two characters, however, appear in the circle 
 of his associates who eclipse all these. The first 
 was Alcibiades, a man v, ho in his character united 
 the distinguishing traits of Lord Peterborough, 
 King Charles II., and Voltaire. He bore the most 
 aristocratic blood of Athens. His wealth was 
 enormous, and his face the handsomest in Greece. 
 He began responsible life at eighteen, with a nat- 
 ural temper which education could scarcely tame, 
 and amid circumstance that would peril not only 
 the finest disposition but the firmest principles. 
 He was proud, chivalrous, and munificent. He 
 had a passion for all games, cock-fights, and horse- 
 races, and an equally intense delight in literature. 
 He kept the most costly stud and chariots, carried 
 pet quails in his bosom, and owned a most valu- 
 able dog, whose tail he cut off close, that Athens 
 might talk about it, and so not talk of worse things. 
 He was self-confident, lawless, and dissolute, and 
 indulged the wildest caprices of temper. The 
 people petted him as one would pet a complacent 
 lion's whelp. The women, of course, all loved 
 him. 
 
 He struck a schoolmaster who did not happen 
 
Socrates. 123 
 
 to have a copy of Homer in his house. He struck 
 one of the worthiest citizens of Athens on a wager, 
 and the next day went and stripped himself before 
 him, begging to be beaten for the insult. He 
 openly destroyed the public record of a charge 
 against one of his friends. He carried his wife by 
 force away from the magistrate to whom she was 
 applying for a divorce. He would reel drunk, 
 late in the evening, into supper-parties, where he 
 was invited, or would stand at the door while his 
 slaves went in and stole the goblets from the table, 
 which he would coolly give away as chanty to the 
 poor. He shocked all Athens by breaking the 
 sacred busts of Mercury in the streets in a night 
 scrape. The Mysteries were caricatured in his 
 house ; and a comic poet who dared to spear 
 him on the stage disappeared suddenly by mak- 
 ing, as was supposed, an unexpected midnight 
 acquaintance with the sea. 
 
 The dates of all these excesses are not known ; 
 but it is certain that at one time he was devot- 
 edly attached to Socrates, and was beloved by 
 him. They walked together, wrestled with each 
 other, occupied and slept in the same tent in the 
 camp. He went to learn the art of accurate 
 thought and speech, he learned more. The 
 philosopher talked with him on his danger and 
 duties, made him cry over his follies, and drew 
 from him the confession that such society seemed 
 to be a heavenly provision for his redemption. 
 " When I hear him," he is reported to have said, 
 
124 Socrates, 
 
 11 my heart leaps up far more than the hearts of 
 those who celebrate the Corybantic mysteries. 
 He alone inspires me with remorse and awe. I 
 stop my ears, therefore, as from the sirens, and 
 flee away as fast as possible, that I may not sit 
 down beside him and grow old listening to his 
 talk." Better for him if he had thus listened ; for 
 then he would not in his checkered fortune have 
 typified the history of all lawless ambition and 
 dissolute license \ he would not have had the 
 mortification of failing to reach what he aspired 
 after ; he would have been saved the disgrace of 
 injuring his country almost fatally; he would not 
 have died in banishment and shame, and by the 
 arrows of midnight assassins. 
 
 If we may credit a story of Apuleius, Socrates 
 once had a remarkable dream, in which he seemed 
 to see a swan fly from a sacred altar in the Acad- 
 emy to his breast, which afterwards extended its 
 wings towards the heavens and allured the ears 
 of men and gods by its harmonious voice. While 
 he was relating the dream, Aristo brought in his 
 son, a finely shaped and handsome youth, to be a 
 pupil. As soon as Socrates saw him, and knew, 
 by his outward form, what his mind was, he ex- 
 claimed, " This, O friend, was the swan I saw." 
 
 Socrates might well have had such a dream, for 
 it was the boy Plato that came to him ; and if no 
 other record remained to us of his greatness than 
 the bent he gave and the spirit he breathed into 
 the genius of Plato, his fame would be secure. 
 
Socrates. 125 
 
 Ex ungue leonem. The indication would be as 
 certain as that the discovery of an original and 
 huge footstep in one alabaster slab would give a 
 new mammoth to the lists of zoology, or that the 
 finding of a majestic and faultless statue among 
 the ruins of Etruria would furnish Phidias a mate 
 in the realm of art From twenty to thirty Plato 
 was in the society of Socrates, then passing from 
 his sixtieth to his seventieth year. He was 
 gently turned by Socrates from politics and pleas- 
 ure and a frivolous Athenian ambition to a life of 
 study and thought. What the sage could not do 
 for Alcibiades he did for Plato. Never was the 
 service of education acknowledged with more 
 ardent gratitude, never was it repaid with such 
 delicate reverence. The lapse of fifty years, which 
 made Plato the hater and bitter satirist of almost 
 every prominent man and institution of society, 
 did not weaken his memory and love of his 
 master. He clung to him in thought as the one 
 true, solid, and symmetrical man amid a crowd 
 of phantasms, traitors, and dwarfs. Plato wrote 
 no eulogy of Socrates, but wherever he has gone 
 into the palaces of the aristocracy of letters, with 
 his courtly mien and purple drapery, he has intro- 
 duced his old slouchy, unshod master, as if say- 
 ing, with elegant haughtiness, " If you would be 
 honored with my company, make him also wel- 
 come who has made me what I am." His greatest 
 works are cast in dialogues, in which the writer 
 himself never appears, but where Socrates is the 
 
126 Socrates. 
 
 chief speaker and hero, as though the highest 
 thoughts would be profaned in coming through 
 other lips ; and thus, arm in arm, the stately duke 
 and the democrat of philosophy walked down the 
 lists of fame. 
 
 That sweet and mystic swan-song, the liquid 
 fusion of poetry and science, with which the 
 genius of Plato has filled the cloisters and ora- 
 tories of the chief scholars of our race, has em- 
 broidered forever the name of the chaste and 
 monastical Silenus with the melodious chants to 
 " the first pure, first holy, and first fair." 
 
 From this point, where his greatest personal 
 influence is visible, it will perhaps be most fitting 
 to review the career and sum up the qualities of 
 Socrates. It is plain enough that he was one of 
 the men whose office it is to give a fresh intellec- 
 tual impulse by shedding the light of new methods, 
 and whose work, like that of Bacon and Des- 
 cartes, is seen in the new products of thought 
 that spring from the soil which they had ploughed. 
 Milton has finely expressed his mission thus : 
 
 " Philosophy 
 
 From heaven descended to the low-rooft house 
 Of Socrates : see there his tenement 
 Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced 
 Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued forth 
 Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools 
 Of Academics old and new, with those 
 Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect 
 Epicurean and the stoic severe." 
 
 Had we time for it, it would be pleasant and 
 profitable to follow his influence upon the fortunes 
 
Socrates. 127 
 
 of philosophy in Greece. He was the father 
 of a new method of study. ' His thoughts were 
 the seed-corn of systems. His pupils were the 
 teachers of centuries. The great works of the 
 leading names in ancient speculation were slips 
 from the mind of Socrates. Each bump of his 
 brain was the nucleus of a philosophical school. 
 He held in his large reconciling intellect princi- 
 ples which separated when less massive thinkers 
 tried to handle them, and were developed by rival 
 parties as hostile elements. For a thousand years 
 he held sway over the processes of the human 
 mind ; and ancient heathen literature, when it 
 sought an example of a noble self-sacrificing life 
 of thought, spontaneously sought an illustration 
 in some act or saying of Socrates. 
 
 His life is the dividing-point between the 
 barren and the healthy periods of Grecian phi- 
 losophy. His mind, so capacious and healthy, 
 could be split up into various schools. Hardly 
 had he left the world, than the strong and simple 
 light he shed was scattered in various hues by the 
 prismatic minds that had surrounded him or that 
 succeeded him ; but in almost every case, as 
 happens when the strands of the solar beam are 
 brilliantly dishevelled, the vivifying principle, 
 the actinic ray, was lost. 
 
 The Cynic system was an exaggeration of the 
 personal habits of Socrates, his poverty, tem- 
 perance, and contempt of wealth erected into a 
 theory, but devoid of that absorbing reverence 
 
128 Socrates. 
 
 for the right which made him forget the eccen- 
 tricity of his habits in the joy of his higher loyalty. 
 The Cynic intruded his tub and his dirt upon the 
 notice of the passer, as if to say, " See my estimate 
 of higher things by my comfortless indecency." 
 Socrates showed an adoration for the supreme 
 things that was genial, and tried to make others 
 recognize their beauty and worth; he did not boast 
 of his penury and cheerless home, but silently 
 paid that price for the privilege of leisure to 
 revel in his mission. The hair-splitting Megarian 
 school was a caricature of his merciless dialectics, 
 lacking the buttress of his Franklin-like common- 
 sense to save it from caving into the abyss of 
 abstract and fathomless foolishness. The Cyre- 
 naic theory was a Silenic parody on his principle 
 that happiness is the aim of man, and that every 
 soul should make circumstances subject to its 
 own control. It was like abusing the principle, 
 "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof/' into 
 a warrant for intemperance and a free commission 
 to live as a Sadducee. 
 
 Indeed, we are not to suppose that his poverty 
 and the contempt of so many of his fellow-citizens 
 were at all delightful to him. He felt his isola- 
 tion. Xenophon, in a fictitious dialogue, makes 
 Socrates say in reply to a man who begged him 
 to correct any errors the sage might see in him : 
 " How can I correct you when you are already 
 possessed of the character of a good and honest 
 man ? and especially when I am taken for the 
 
Socrates. 1 29 
 
 greatest trifler, who employs himself in nothing 
 but measuring the air ? or, which is a far worse 
 character, that I am a poor man, which is a token 
 of the greatest folly ? This, indeed, might have 
 been a trouble to me, if I had not met the other 
 day a horse belonging to Nicias, with a crowd of 
 people about him admiring his good qualities, 
 and talking abundance in praise of his strength 
 and spirit. This made me ask the question of 
 the master of the horse, whether his horse was 
 very rich ? But he stared upon me, and laughed 
 at me, as if I had been a madman, and only gave 
 me this short answer, How should a horse have 
 any money ? When I heard this, I went away 
 contented that it was lawful for a poor horse to 
 be good on account of his free and generous 
 spirit; and therefore I conclude it is likewise 
 possible for a poor man to be good." * 
 
 This must be derived from a real saying of 
 Socrates, for it does not seem possible that Xen- 
 ophon could have had wit enough to invent its 
 quaintness and pervade it so delicately with such 
 sweet, pathetic humor. 
 
 The Platonic methods and speculations were the 
 rigorous application of his mental principles and 
 the coloring of his more practical and homely 
 ideal faiths with the purple and gold of a gorgeous 
 fancy. Stoicism was the apotheosis of his moral 
 hardihood and self-poise, while the Aristotelian 
 ambition to scour the kingdom of nature and 
 
 * Xen. Good Husbandry, 663. 
 6* I 
 
1 30 Socrates. 
 
 label all the parcelled facts of the universe caught 
 its impulse from his delight in the homeliest details 
 which indicated or enforced a law, and his strenu- 
 ous attempts after accurate classification. Nothing 
 is more singular in the history of philosophy than 
 the fact that a man so endowed with the analytic 
 faculty should have guarded it religiously from 
 roaming and rioting in unwholesome fields, and 
 wasting itself in curious speculative exercises, or 
 grubbing in miserable researches for the sanction 
 of our primitive faiths, but should have devoted 
 it to the work of elucidating moral truth, and made 
 it steadily subservient to practical ends. 
 
 And here the singular dualism of his nature 
 attracts attention. A radical distinction between 
 men is often indicated by saying that some are 
 intuitive and others logical in their processes of 
 reaching truth. " The Arabs speak of a confer- 
 ence between a mystic and a philosopher. On 
 parting, the philosopher said, ' All that he sees I 
 know,' and the mystic said, ' All that he knows 
 I see.' " Socrates was a seer and a knower. By 
 his dreams, trances, and abstractions, his inward 
 suggestions and Divine call, he is fellow with the 
 Brahmins and Soofees, George Fox, Bcehmen, and 
 Swedenborg. By his scientific methods and pry- 
 ing scrutinies and impatience of inaccurate state- 
 ment he belongs to the thinkers and provers, and 
 stands in close affinity with the Aristotles, Bacons, 
 Hamiltons, Herschels, and Stuart Mills. He was 
 a man of faith, and he insisted on knowledge. 
 
Socrates. 131 
 
 He meditated logically. No prophet ever felt 
 more thrillingly the supreme worth of virtue and 
 the holy; but he discarded the prophet's heat 
 of utterance, and put on the missionary robes 
 to convince his fellows by earnest conversation 
 that virtue is truth, that there is no such dread- 
 ful thing as the insult men offer truth by not 
 founding their behavior on it, and that what can- 
 not be proved is certainly too dangerous to be 
 lived. 
 
 His soul was doubly furnished, for it had strong 
 wings and sturdy feet. With Plotinus he could 
 take " the flight of the alone to the alone," and he 
 could travel with any pedestrian rationalist and 
 climb with him all day the rugged steeps of in- 
 duction, and make no misstep in gaining the peak 
 where the lower landscape is comprehensively 
 surveyed. 
 
 This dualism is manifested in him at every 
 point. We cannot sufficiently admire the fine 
 proportions of his intellect, its majestic, planet- 
 like poise. Mysticism never betrayed him into 
 fanaticism, nor obscured by its luminous diffusive 
 haze the clear boundaries between demonstrative 
 and speculative truth. He would revel in volatile 
 abstractions and practical details with equal de- 
 light. Let him get pitted against some subtle 
 head from abroad, and he would never tire of lead- 
 ing or following for hours through all the intrica- 
 cies of speculation about the relations of courage, 
 temperance, knowledge, and piety ; and when his 
 
132 Socrates. 
 
 poor opponent's brain was completely fagged out, 
 Socrates would take him to the best and cheapest 
 cobbler's stall, show him the miller's establish- 
 ment where a poor man could buy a large quan- 
 tity of fine flour for a penny, walk with him to 
 the oil-man's where a chcenex of olives cost two 
 farthings, and then hasten to the slop-shop where 
 a jerkin without sleeves could be had for ten 
 drachmas ; and from these facts the foreigner, 
 who had seen him untwist the constitution of 
 knowledge, listened to a discourse on the fe- 
 licity of Athens. Socrates was a transcendental 
 Cobden. He was a cool and comic enthusiast. 
 He was a compromise of Pythagoras and Punch. 
 He trod the mother earth with bare feet, and 
 stared into the spiritual universe with his lobster 
 eyes. 
 
 Some religious men regard sin chiefly in the light 
 of God's mercy, and see it as the deepest and 
 blackest ingratitude; others conceive it in contrast 
 with Divine Sovereignty, and regard it as deliber- 
 ate rebellion ; others are absorbed with the feeling 
 of the immense wrong it does the soul, like the 
 scorching of a nerve by flame, and dwell on its 
 intrinsic evil; others, again, forecast by their imagi- 
 nation the terrible results it is storing up, and 
 tremble before the glare of the future circumstan- 
 tial hells into which it will one day slide the spirit. 
 But Socrates saw chiefly the intense and towering 
 nonsense of sin. Evil-doing of every sort is hos- 
 tile to nature, and is therefore idiocy. All hope 
 
Socrates. 133 
 
 of gaining anything by it is like the expectation 
 of bending the law of gravity from its customs 
 for private advantage, or wrestling with the electric 
 stream. No Gentile intellect has ever seen more 
 clearly the leading vital laws. And what he saw 
 he worshipped. A law once seen was as a gos- 
 pel. He asked no other sanction for a principle 
 than that it is a reality. The ordinary method 
 with men is to ask, not whether a principle is true, 
 but " What if we do not follow it ? " " What ad- 
 vantage is there in acceptance and obedience? 
 What jails, dungeons, stocks, and whipping-posts 
 lie behind the statute, and enforce it with an elo- 
 quence which our nerves and self-interest can 
 appreciate?" But Socrates did not slyly gauge 
 the police force, nor count the sheriffs, which a 
 law could muster before he concluded to be loyal. 
 If Nature indicated that a clean tongue was proper, 
 no pepper and artistic cookery went into his 
 stomach. If she said that a firm muscle lay in 
 her order, a bed of lamb's-wool would not be soft 
 to him, and luxury was despicable. If Nature 
 hinted the supremacy of justice and the good, all 
 glory, material magnificence, pomp, wealth, and 
 power were as nothing but playthings, and not to 
 be accepted if they could not follow the path of 
 entire consecration to what is best. 
 
 Virtue in his view was truth, and vice practical 
 nonsense ; and since, in his belief, the parts of 
 truth must be harmonious, he maintained that all 
 clear and correct thinking is consistent with holi- 
 
1 34 Socrates. 
 
 ness and leads to it, while every dark spot of con- 
 fusion or uncertainty in the intellect might turn 
 out to be the " apex of hell." Hence the earnest- 
 ness with which he insisted on accurate thinking ; 
 hence, too, his aversion to positive magisterial 
 instruction. All truths are kindred, and truth 
 enough he believed lay in every soul to save it, 
 qr at least to condemn its impurity, if the mind 
 could be made to appreciate it. Consistency was 
 his watchword and his sanative for the sin in the 
 world. Whatever is worth considering is worth 
 knowing thoroughly, and if any fundamental point 
 is known scientifically all needed practical knowl- 
 edge will come. " Enthrone," said he to men, " what 
 you occasionally recognize as supreme. Do not 
 make your conduct a practical falsehood. Be con- 
 sistent. Give me one fundamental element of 
 your belief, and if it is real I will get a purchase 
 on it for my lever that will wrench your false soul 
 out of joint ; if it is unreal I will show you how 
 your character is, or soon will be, as soft as mush." 
 Thus .he held up realities, preached intellectual 
 morality, and belabored every unfaithful man with 
 his own admissions. There was no invective 
 in his private sermons. The terribleness of his 
 method was its calmness and scientific coldness. 
 By his leisurely conversations he made men judge 
 themselves, brought the most hardened men up 
 by the strain of his logic to see that their careers 
 were founded on falsehood as deliberately and as 
 surely as a bull is drawn by a windlass to the 
 
Socrates. 135 
 
 slaughter-house. " If you will live stupidly, like 
 sots, it shall not be my fault I will make you 
 ashamed of it at least. You shall know that you 
 are ninnies, and if the weapon I am commissioned 
 to wield does not reach your heart it shall not be 
 because it does not spike your intellect, strike 
 down through and through your brain." It was 
 not his forte or aim to frighten people or to 
 reach their affections, but to convince and con- 
 vict ; and when, as in the case of Alcibiades, he 
 did stir the feelings, it was probably by the suc- 
 tion-pump of his logic that he moved the fountain 
 of tears. 
 
 We cannot estimate too highly the un feverish- 
 ness of soul exhibited by Socrates. It is better 
 to be fanactical in the cause of righteousness than 
 to freeze in self-love. But nothing is so grand 
 and majestic in the universe as the sustained, 
 healthy, and vigorous conviction in a strong na- 
 ture that nothing is good or worth living for but 
 what is holy. The play of Socrates' moral life, 
 though so stern and uncompromising, was not 
 forced or hard. As Montaigne finely said, " He 
 made his soul move a natural and common mo- 
 tion, and raised himself, not by starts but by com- 
 plexion, to the highest pitch of vigor." It is com- 
 paratively easy to pay the respect of being solemn 
 and sad before the Infinite Justice and Goodness, 
 but to see them steadily and be cheerful is a 
 deeper worship. It is common to acknowledge 
 them as law and adore them, but it is only by the 
 
1 36 Socrates. 
 
 rarest spirits that they are seen as life and accepted 
 as the soul's treasure and joy. Socrates did not 
 feel that a man should lie in the embrace of the 
 spiritual laws as on a bed of bull-briers, but that 
 the soul should feel secure, protected, and at home 
 in them, as if cushioned in a nest of down. 
 
 And he was able to make practical religious 
 themes subjects of easy and honest conversation. 
 We imagine that they are for set, stately, or heated 
 address, for preaching, not for talk. Generally, 
 if the purest saintly man starts such topics with a 
 friend, alone or in the house, the ledger is closed, 
 or the book is shut ; the wife stops knitting ; the 
 children sit stiff, and the soul takes a prim and 
 rigid posture. There is no communion ; the tones 
 of the speaker have no fresh inflections; the 
 dialect spoken is not that of the poem, the ex- 
 change, and the press, but the language has a 
 musty, sepulchral smell. Socrates, however, talked 
 with men about these things as a physician con- 
 verses on symptoms and prescriptions, the un- 
 healthly diet that has been indulged, and what 
 the patient must do to regain vigor. Begin to 
 talk with him on painting or housekeeping, wrest- 
 ling, rhetoric, or poetry, and soon you are on the 
 smooth and pleasant slope that slides you so 
 gracefully into the depths of moral life. The 
 tones are calm, the illustrations clear, various, and 
 lively, and the talker finds that the law of duty is 
 as entertaining a theme as the law of symmetry, 
 and needs no more take the lustre from the eye 
 
Socrates. 137 
 
 than a discourse of botany or music. The in- 
 tense earnestness of Socrates was lubricated and 
 made genial by his humor. His life was as loyal 
 as the still tidal currents of the seas, and the 
 upper waves might frolic and foam without detri- 
 ment to his health or to the spiritual landscape 
 of the world. 
 
 We might speak here, too, at some length of 
 his love of men. He worshipped truth and right, 
 and he loved men because of their capacity to 
 know and serve what is best in the universe. The 
 greatness and priceless worth of a soul was his 
 frequent theme. Never was there a sterner spir- 
 itual republican. Titles and place were dim to 
 his eye before the faculty of comprehending the 
 just and living for what is good. This faculty he 
 saw in the artisan as in the blood aristocrat, the 
 wealthy merchant, and the lordly sophist. His 
 missionary sincerity and love of men were seen 
 in this, that discussion with a cook or a slave in 
 Athens was as delightful to him, if it was honest 
 and earnest, and could lift the mind an inch above 
 its ordinary plane, as banquet disquisitions and con- 
 ference with the greatest men of Greece. Simon 
 the bridle-cutter published a set of conversa- 
 tions held by Socrates in his shop with the stray 
 visitants, of all degrees of social standing, that 
 happened in. Such is a slight sketch of the 
 mental qualities of a man who seemed to be a 
 compound of Wilkes, Franklin, Johnson, and 
 Coleridge. He had the ludicrous homeliness 
 
138 Socrates. 
 
 and entertaining wit of the first, the shrewd sense 
 and practical wisdom of the second, the burly 
 understanding, social royalty, and conversational 
 methods and resources of the third, and the ana- 
 lytic subtlety, entrancing eloquence, and mystical 
 insight of the last. 
 
 We come now to the closing experiences of his 
 career. The people began to tire of him, and to 
 fear him, towards the close of his life. During 
 the sway of the thirty tyrants the reign of ter- 
 ror in Athens a law was passed that no one 
 should talk philosophy in the city. Socrates had 
 used some striking imagery, a little while before, 
 on the unskilfulness of a cowherd who should 
 lose part of the drove every day, and see the rest 
 growing sick and weak under his management. 
 The gentlemen of the directory, who were con- 
 fiscating property and murdering their townsmen, 
 did not like such bucolic meditations, and one of 
 them, a depraved wretch, the Greek Marat, could 
 recall a conversation in which Socrates had en- 
 lightened him in company on the spiritual dignity 
 and worthiness of a pig. No sooner had Soc- 
 rates heard of the law than he waited upon the 
 rulers, to have a little conversation by which his 
 uncertainty as to the meaning of the decree might 
 be removed. "Pray tell me," said he, "whether you 
 take philosophy, as stated in the statute, to con- 
 sist in reasoning right or reasoning wrong, since, 
 if you mean the first, we must beware how we 
 reason right; if the latter, the consequence is 
 
Socrates. 139 
 
 plain we must mend our reasoning." The impu- 
 dence was sublime ; it was like a Frenchman 
 joking Tinville with the guillotine before his eyes ; 
 and one of the board, choking with rage, replied : 
 " We will give you terms easy to be understood ; 
 refrain altogether from talking with young men." 
 Here was a chance for definitions. " Suppose," 
 said Socrates, " I want to buy something of a mer- 
 chant, must n't I ask the price if the man is un- 
 der thirty ? " " We don't prohibit that ; but keep 
 a proper distance from carpenters, smiths, and 
 shoemakers, and let us have no more examples 
 from them." " Then I am not to concern myself 
 any longer with justice and piety, and the rules 
 of right and wrong ? " " By Jove, you must not ; 
 and, Socrates, don't trouble yourself any further 
 with the herdsmen, lest you occasion the loss 
 of more cattle." Those miscreants did not hold 
 power long enough after this to kill him, but, a 
 year or two following, his case was brought before 
 the tribunal of the people, three accusers appear- 
 ing against him, with an indictment that held 
 three counts, that Socrates did not believe the 
 gods whom the city held sacred ; that he designed 
 to introduce new deities ; that he corrupted the 
 youth. 
 
 It was one of the most singular and most inter- 
 esting trials recorded in history. Socrates was 
 seventy years old, and was really arraigned before 
 his five hundred judges for being a universal cen- 
 sor and intolerable bore. A crowd of his friends 
 
140 Socrates. 
 
 attended him, among them Plato. After the open- 
 ing of the case by Melitus, Socrates was permitted 
 to speak in his own behalf. Fearing that his 
 bearing would not be most conciliatory to the 
 benches, the rhetorician Lysias had been induced 
 to prepare an artistic and elaborate defence, which 
 Socrates was urged to read, with the assurance 
 that it must produce acquittal. The inward voice, 
 however, opposed the plan. "Think you," said 
 he to his friend, " I have not spent my whole life 
 in preparing for this very thing ? " Finely has 
 Montaigne said : " Should a suppliant voice have 
 been heard out of the mouth of Socrates ; that 
 lofty virtue have struck sail in the very height of 
 its glory ; and his rich and powerful nature have 
 committed its defence to Art, and in her highest 
 proof have renounced truth and simplicity, the 
 ornaments of his speaking, to adorn and deck 
 itself with the embellishments of figures and the 
 equivocations of a premeditated speech?" He 
 did not renounce truth, and simplicity. He cross- 
 questioned his chief accusers sufficiently to show 
 the falsity of the charges in their spirit, and then 
 his talk was an impeachment of Athens, not a 
 defence of his own career. " When your generals 
 at Pohdara and Delium assigned my place in the 
 battle, I remained there and faced the peril of 
 slaughter ; and strange would it be, if, when the 
 Deity has assigned my duty to pass my life in the 
 study of philosophy and the examination of others, 
 I should, through fear of death or anything else, 
 
Socrates. 141 
 
 desert my post." His serene haughtiness and 
 affectionate assertion of superiority surprised his 
 enemies, and determined the judges to put his 
 temper to the final strain. They voted, and out 
 of the immense ballot a paltry majority of six 
 condemned him. His accuser proposed the pen- 
 alty of death. The defendant had one oppor- 
 tunity remaining to conciliate the judges by an 
 humble confession, a petition for mercy, or a 
 proposition of some different penalty. " I know 
 not," said he, " whether death is an evil or no. I 
 will not choose imprisonment, for I do not like it ; 
 and why should I say exile ? A fine life, at my 
 age, to go out wandering, and driven from city to 
 city ! If I award what I think I actually deserve, 
 I should say a public maintenance in the Pryta- 
 neum. I am a poor man, and need leisure to be 
 your benefactor, and it seems to me that I deserve 
 such an honor more than one who has been vic- 
 torious at the Olympic games in a horse-race. 
 Perhaps, however, I could pay you a small fine ; 
 about fifteen dollars is the top of my means. But 
 Plato here, and Crito, offer to be surety for thirty 
 times that sum. I therefore name that as my 
 fine." Four hundred and fifty dollars was a cheap 
 valuation of him even at seventy, but he had 
 tossed his life away. The enraged judges pro- 
 nounced sentence of death by a heavy vote. His 
 friends were in great distress, but his calmness 
 rose to majesty, and his playfulness to the highest 
 eloquence. " If," said he in closing, " death is 
 
142 Socrates. 
 
 a removal from hence to another place, and if all 
 the dead are there, what greater blessing can there 
 be than this, my judges ? At what price would 
 you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and 
 Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? For me to so- 
 journ there would be admirable, when I should 
 meet with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Tela- 
 mon, and others of the ancients who died by an 
 unjust sentence. At what price would not any 
 one estimate the opportunity of questioning him 
 who led that mighty army against Troy, or Ulysses, 
 or Sysiphus, or ten thousand others whom one 
 might mention, both men and women ? " Heaven, 
 to his imagination, had always been an atmos- 
 phere of refined and vigorous talk. How 'fine 
 and fitting that the old man's fancy should even 
 then revel in the rich society and the glorious 
 discussions to which the friendly vengeance of 
 his foes would send him ! He begged his judges 
 to punish his sons as they grew up, if they cared 
 more for riches than virtue j he assured his ac- 
 cusers that he bore no resentment to them ; he 
 looked around for the last time upon the Athens 
 which he loved and the citizens it was his great 
 aim to serve, and left the agora amid his heart- 
 broken friends to sleep fettered in the prison. 
 
 The sentence could not legally take effect for 
 thirty days. During that time his rich friend, 
 Crito, through some briber)', made preparations for 
 his escape, and went to him one morning before 
 daybreak to perfect the plan. He was sleeping 
 
C V 
 
 
 .X* 
 
 quietly, and said, when awaked, " The tirhe/otynv 
 death draws near : for in my dream just now a I . 
 beautiful and majestic woman arrayed in whlte^^s?*^ 
 seemed to approach me and to say, ' Socrates, 
 three days and you will reach fertile Phthia ! ' ' 
 Crito told him he had come to save him, and take 
 him to Thessaly, where he could be secure and 
 happy. But the old prisoner calmly reasoned 
 down all his entreaties, and pictured to him how 
 the personified laws of Athens would reproach 
 him for his ingratitude if he should violate them 
 then, how droll it would seem for him to escape 
 wrapped in a disguise of cloaks and skins, and 
 how much better it was to suffer than to commit 
 injustice. " These things boom in my ears," said 
 he, "like the swelling music of flutes, and make 
 me deaf, my dear friend Crito, to all you say." 
 He stayed to meet his fate. During his confine- 
 ment he versified the fables of ^Esop, and com- 
 posed a hymn to Apollo, in order, as he said, if 
 possible, to obey and fulfil a dream which fre- 
 quently warned him in life to apply himself to 
 music. 
 
 The pages of Plato give us a full account of 
 the last day's intercourse between himself and 
 friends in prison. After taking leave of his wife, 
 the most of the day was occupied with a long and 
 thorough treatment of the question of immor- 
 tality. 
 
 His friend Crito begged him not to talk ear- 
 nestly and steadily, for the jailer had said that 
 
144 Socrates. 
 
 bodily heat would counteract the poison, and 
 make his death more painful. " Then let them 
 give it to me twice or thrice," he said, and went 
 on with the discussion. The day wore away 
 while that circle recounted the arguments, pre- 
 sentiments, and myths that justify to reason the 
 expectation of another life. As the sunset drew 
 on, and the talk must close, a friend timidly asked, 
 " How shall we bury you ? " " Just as you please," 
 said he, with a smile, " if only you can catch me 
 and I do not escape you." Here, as always, his 
 pleasantry was the cool expression of his strongest 
 faith. " Say that you bury my body, and do it as 
 is pleasing to you and most agreeable to our laws." 
 He bathed, bade farewell to his children, who were 
 brought in, and then signified that he was ready 
 to the executioner, who said, with flowing tears, 
 that he was the most noble, meek, and excellent 
 man that ever entered the prison. The sun was 
 not quite set when the hemlock juice was brought 
 to him in a cup. He inquired calmly what the 
 symptoms would be, and when he might know 
 that death was near; and, praying that his depart- 
 ure might be happy, drank it slowly, looking stead- 
 ily at the jailer, without trembling or change of 
 color. His friends till that moment had borne 
 up stoically ; but then they yielded to their emo- 
 tions, and one of them screamed wildly in his 
 agony. But Socrates, still walking, rebuked and 
 cheered them all, and at last lay down to die. 
 " Crito," said he, " we owe a cock to ^Esculapius ; 
 
Socrates. 145 
 
 pay it ; do not neglect it " ; and his spirit fled. 
 ^Esculapius was the god of medicine and health. 
 A pious Greek made offerings to him after being 
 cured of any serious disease. The last words of 
 Socrates were an enigmatical assurance to his 
 friends that by the death of his body the disease 
 of an earthly life was being cured, and his spirit 
 restored to its native health. 
 
 The judges of Socrates are forgotten ; his 
 accusers are remembered with infamy by asso- 
 ciation with his name ; his prison is one of the 
 sacred places in the memory of the race ; while 
 his career is the strength of reformers now, and 
 preaches to all men the majesty of self-sacrifice 
 and the glory of devotion ; and the loyalty of his 
 life, the firmness of his principles, and the seren- 
 ity of his bearing in his last hours fortify more 
 powerfully than his arguments our faith in immor- 
 tality. 
 
 If his friends had had insight they might have 
 gone away from that cell where the body of Soc- 
 rates lay motionless and cold, with a conviction, 
 a sense of certainty, that such a spirit was not ex- 
 tinguished. His temper and impregnable faith, 
 when death was approaching to take him by the 
 hand and lead him into the shadow, are demon- 
 stration to our moral instincts that it came as a 
 friend to bear him up to a more congenial sphere, 
 and bid him live more intensely and usefully in 
 other scenes. 
 
 Why, not a rigid bone of his lifeless body, not 
 7 J 
 
146 Socrates. 
 
 a hardening muscle or useless nerve of the stiff 
 frame that once obeyed his will, was to be annihi- 
 lated. God's economical laws took care of them, 
 dissolved them, mingled them with dust and air, 
 and turned them to new uses. They are living 
 somewhere yet. Not a particle of his frame has 
 perished in the great treasury of matter. And 
 has that mind dissolved, that robust spiritual 
 greatness, that muscular, invincible holiness, that 
 inward eye which saw the light of eternal truth as 
 the steady flame of a zenith star? Is there no 
 world of spirits to receive such realities as these ? 
 Must not such a nature have been a precious jewel 
 of God while it lived and served him here ? And is 
 the Almighty so penurious of matter, and so waste- 
 ful of the wealth of perfect virtue, that he saves 
 carefully each ounce of saintly servants' bodies, 
 and permits their souls to be extinguished forever 
 by a gill of poison, or shrivelled by a fever, or con- 
 sumed in a wreath of flame ? We had better not 
 believe that until we have emptied the universe of 
 all that is divine. The life, the moral greatness, 
 of Socrates, is an argument for immortality such 
 as his logic could not frame, nor scepticism de- 
 stroy; and thus his prison is a bright spot in 
 human history, for it is a buttress of the soul's 
 immortal hope. 
 
 The most remarkable saying, perhaps, that has 
 been reported of Socrates is this : " That in re- 
 spect to these great questions we ought to take 
 the best of human reasonings, that which is most 
 
Socrates. 147 
 
 difficult to be confuted, and embark on it as on a 
 raft, so to sail through life amid its storms, unless 
 we could be carried more safely in a surer convey- 
 ance furnished in some Divine instruction." Down 
 the River of Life, by its Athenian banks, he had 
 floated upon his raft of reason serene, in cloudy as 
 in smiling weather, for seventy years. And now 
 the night is rushing down, and he has reached the 
 mouth of the stream, and the great ocean is be- 
 fore him, dim heaving in the dusk. But he betrays 
 no fear. There is land ahead, he thought; eter- 
 nal continents there are, that rise in constant light 
 beyond the gloom. He trusted still in the raft his 
 soul had built, and with a brave farewell to the 
 few true friends who stood by him on the shore 
 he put out into the darkness, a moral Columbus, 
 trusting in his haven on the faith of an idea. 
 
 1851. 
 
IV. 
 
 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 
 
 I ASK your attention to some thoughts that 
 naturally range themselves under the for- 
 mula, Sight and Insight. 
 
 Vision is the most glorious privilege of hu- 
 manity. The eye is our royal endowment among 
 the senses. Physically, we are insignificant specks 
 on the earth's surface ; but, by reason of the mar- 
 vellous and exquisite eye, the loveliness of the 
 earth is portion of our furniture. We stand on 
 less than a square foot of soil, and the horizon 
 is the wall of our dwelling, the zenith the roof of 
 our home. One of our most marked distinctions 
 from animals is this, that their eyes are the in- 
 struments of instinct and the servants of greed, 
 while the eye of man is a general organ, related 
 to the universe as a vast, inspiring spectacle, and 
 serving as the window of the mind and soul. 
 
 There is a doctrine that all our knowledge 
 comes through the senses, and chiefly by the eye. 
 This is false. Sight of itself takes in only the 
 surface-coloring of nature. The senses supply 
 no knowledge, for they convey only impressions, 
 
Sight and Insight. 149 
 
 never ideas. We must see in the first place that 
 the senses, which seem to furnish all our knowl- 
 edge, are simply reporters. The all-important 
 question as to knowledge is, What is at the other 
 end of the sense, or nerve, to receive the report ? 
 The eagle has a stronger eye than man. But set 
 the Apollo Belvedere before it, and it sees only the 
 articulated whiteness of a piece of stone. The 
 human mind, out of the same sensations, dis- 
 cerns a glorious statue. The stag has a better ear 
 than man. But let it listen to an orchestra and 
 it reports only a mob of tones, which, when they 
 break upon the human nerve, are disposed instantly 
 into a sonata or a symphony. Put a moss-rose 
 to the nostrils of a hound and see if it will awaken, 
 through his keen scent, any emotions of poetic 
 delight. The senses of an animal report all that 
 senses themselves can catch; but their owners 
 do not have the faculties to arrange and interpret 
 the sensations, and so having eyes they see not, 
 and having ears they hear not. It is mind that 
 draws meaning out of the reports which the senses 
 make ; and so what they tell depends on the 
 grade of the faculty to which they tell. 
 
 All knowledge is, therefore, the result of in- 
 sight, and education is a process of insight. How 
 immense the scale which the human being travels 
 in the training of his vision ! The infant begins 
 by seeing everything as on the eye itself. The 
 furniture of the chamber, and the parent's face, 
 toys, trees, and sky, are a confused mass of color, 
 
150 Sight and Insight. 
 
 and seem to belong somehow to the little 
 stranger's personality. It must learn, at first, to 
 push the world off from itself by attributing dis- 
 tance and size to the objects which the senses 
 grasp ; and at last it comes to be a Herschel, 
 with the globe as the pedestal of its imperial eye, 
 measuring the awful distance of the Pleiades, 
 gazing at Orion sculptured in light on the black 
 walls of space, with his star-hilted dagger and his 
 club of knotted suns. 
 
 Let us take up the suggestion of this last state- 
 ment, and learn what has been done, almost within 
 a century, in laying out the scale of nature. 
 How narrow, in contrast with ours, was the uni- 
 verse into which an old Greek gazed through the 
 shadows of night ; or David, when, looking up 
 with nothing but eyesight as an instrument to 
 help him, he chanted to the rude music of his 
 harp the words, " The firmament showeth his 
 handiwork " ! Can anything be more amazing 
 than a simple statement of the triumph of thought 
 in laying out the scale of nature ? Think what 
 a few astronomers have done. Think of those 
 dots of creamy light, that, in connection with our 
 globe, are found to belong to our solar system. 
 Our eyes can detect no apparent difference in 
 their distance from us or from our sun. But con- 
 sider how the human intellect, represented in a 
 few students that " outwatch the Bear " in lonely 
 towers, keeping its greedy eye upon them, has 
 seen them swell into majestic orbs floating and 
 
Sight and Insight. 151 
 
 waltzing in immensity ; how it has spaced them 
 millions of miles apart, each cutting a circle 
 within the track of the other j how it has caught 
 the plane on which they move, seeing them as 
 they swing and sway, now dipping, now rising 
 in their ceaseless sweep ; how it has measured 
 mountains upon them and discovered snows that, 
 on some of them, whiten the poles and melt in 
 summer-time; how it has weighed their mass, 
 telling how many myriads of tons each of those 
 little dots includes, that we write poetry to as the 
 morning or evening star, as if it had a Titan 
 scale to put them in, with a beam poised at the 
 zenith ; how, not content with running its line out 
 hundreds of millions of miles m constructing this 
 domestic solar system, it has stood on the spin- 
 ning disk of a planet so far out in space as to be 
 invisible to the naked eye, and then cast the lasso 
 of its mathematics still beyond into the darkness 
 and reined up another globe, whose existence it 
 had guessed, and dragged it with its filial moons 
 into the light of science ; how it has leaped upon 
 the parent orb, torn open the blazing vesture of 
 the sun, looked in upon his dark substance and 
 stupendous ribs, wound its measuring line around 
 his awful surface, and told his weight ; how it has 
 followed the track of the comet fire-ships, reck- 
 oned the leagues they rush into the bleak, black 
 ether, and prophesied their return ; and how, not 
 satisfied with all these trophies, its look has 
 broken the spangled roofing of the night into an 
 
152 Sight and Insight. 
 
 airy and immeasurable arch, within which the 
 solar system is a dot and its motions but a flicker ; 
 how, after years of trial, it has found one of those 
 tremulous suns, against which it might lean its 
 ladder of spider threads and light, and then has 
 mounted on it into the gallery of our firmament, 
 probed through the ranks, five hundred deep, of 
 orbs that swing in its dome, yes, lifted itself out 
 upon the roof of this star-tiled St. Peter's of 
 space, and gazed off thence upon the milky gleam 
 of the spires of other cathedral firmaments that 
 rise in the astral city of God ! 
 
 This is the victory of the human mind over the 
 deception which the eye would practise upon it as 
 to the scale of nature. Modern astronomy is a" 
 trophy of intellectual insight. When any of us 
 are tempted to distrust propositions and princi- 
 ples simply because they seem opposed to the 
 settled material order of society, and appear con- 
 tradictory to the instincts of selfishness, let us 
 reflect that we begin to live intellectually in na- 
 ture only when we grasp a principle that pitches 
 the sun out of his path in the heavens, that dwin- 
 dles the earth to a little marble in space, and that 
 shrivels the visible wonders of the sky to motes 
 floating in a flood of luminous vitality. 
 
 All this grandeur of result has been made pos- 
 sible by the most careful and reverent scrutiny of 
 the most insignificant facts. The human intellect 
 was made to conquer nature by watching and 
 following the most delicate hints from facts which 
 everybody observes. 
 
Sight and Insight. 153 
 
 Every pebble, every stick, is an index pointing 
 a hundred ways. There is a path from it out into 
 chemistry, into statics, into the laws of heat and 
 light, into forces of gravitation and electricity, 
 into atomic and organic sympathies, into the 
 whole circle of the published wisdom of God. 
 
 The geologist can see no further into a mill- 
 stone than any boor can. But he can see a great 
 deal further into the solid world, though no more 
 facts are presented to his eye. Both of them ride 
 this globe as mere gnats on the back of a wild 
 rhinoceros. Yet the first detects the depth and 
 nature of the intestines of the creature that flies 
 with him twenty miles a second ; follows the wrin- 
 kles and untwists the plaitings of its rocky hide, 
 reads its age on its alpine warts ; writes its biog- 
 raphy from its pulpy infancy till its bones had 
 hardened, and up through the wild passions of 
 its youth to its present maturity ; and is able to 
 describe passages of its fortunes, a hundred thou- 
 sand years ago, as clearly as he discerns the color 
 of any district of its skin to-day. 
 
 The vast proportions of science are reared by 
 the interlocking of ordinary facts through the 
 allusions that invest them. And more than half 
 the distance from ignorance to science is accom- 
 plished when a man learns to observe, to concen- 
 trate his mind into his vision, so that he shall see 
 accurately and intensely what Nature has set be- 
 fore him. It is only when he sees the thing itself 
 . strongly, that he can detect the shadowy lines 
 
154 Sight and Insight. 
 
 around it of vaster and modest facts, like the 
 dusky thread that loops the space within the rim 
 of the new moon, hinting the whole orb while only 
 a segment is burnished with light. 
 
 There is an old proverb that "What is ever 
 seen is never seen." Science is now showing us 
 what undrainable meaning lurks in the minute 
 and common. Almost everything is told in any- 
 thing, if the eye that looks through the sense is 
 patient. Cuvier learned how to build up the 
 whole animal from any single bone. And the 
 microscope now enables us to tell from a flake 
 of any bone what creature and what part of the 
 creature it belonged to, and at what age of the 
 world it lived. I was conversing, not a great 
 while ago, with the most celebrated chemist of 
 Massachusetts, and learned from him that a grain 
 of corn contains material enough to lecture about 
 for a month. Its structure is so complicated, its 
 secrets so intricate, its relations to the finest and 
 broadest forces of the universe so various and 
 minute, that it is inexhaustible in ministries of 
 instruction, wonder, and delight. Just as it is 
 said of some Western roads, which begin spacious 
 and grand, that they at last dwindle to a squir- 
 rel-track and run up a tree, so we may say, 
 with sober truth, that forces which guard the 
 stateliest avenues of the universe run back, by 
 convergent lines, till they meet in the mystery of 
 a kernel of corn. 
 
 Agassiz asks only for one scale and will draw 
 
Sight and Insight. 155 
 
 you the form of the fish that wore it, tell every 
 fibre of its structure, the kind of waters it lives in, 
 and the nature of the food it takes. From a fos- 
 sil scale he sketched the shape and size of a 
 fish unlike any in the catalogues of science, and 
 has seen his sagacity verified by the discovery in 
 another country of a petrified swimmer in pre- 
 adamite seas precisely like his drawing. 
 
 To understand anything thoroughly, we must 
 understand all its relations ; and every highly 
 organized product in nature is related to the 
 universe. St. Augustine, fourteen hundred years 
 ago, ridiculed the dying polytheism of Rome, 
 which provided a separate deity for every process of 
 nature, by showing that, on such a theory, it would 
 require a hundred goddesses to weave a single 
 flower, so many energies are involved in the work. 
 
 A distinguished living geologist has published 
 a pamphlet on the geological wonders that some 
 pebbles hold. Taking his hint, suppose that we 
 follow it into other fields, asking you if you under- 
 stand a pebble. What, not understand a com- 
 mon piece of stone that weighs an ounce or two ! 
 Let us see. What is that you call its weight? 
 It is the pull of the earth upon it in your hand, 
 the relation between its mass and the earth's 
 mass. Why does the earth pull thus at it ? It 
 is the action of what we call the force of gravita- 
 tion. Why does it pull so hard ? If the average 
 substance of the earth were no denser than the 
 ground directly beneath our feet it would not pull 
 
156 Sight and Insight. 
 
 so powerfully. That ounce or two of weight is, 
 therefore, the sign and proof that the great globe 
 is heavier as we descend, more weighty as a whole, 
 than if it were all made of granite. Thus the 
 intensity of its pull on the pebble opens into its 
 relations to the mass of the sun and the mechan- 
 ical structure of the solar system. 
 
 Why, too, is the pebble solid in your hand? 
 Why is it not a mass of sand ? The force of co- 
 hesion is the answer. But why, if you pulverize 
 it, will it not unite so again ? Why will not the 
 whole pressure you can bring to bear upon it com- 
 press it as tight as before ? What are the condi- 
 tions and laws of that force ? Answer that ques- 
 tion and you know a great deal. 
 
 Break the pebble open, and you will doubtless 
 find a sparkling piece of crystal in it. Explain 
 that. A new force, not only of cohesion but of 
 crystallization, appears. Tell how those particles 
 were brought into that shining order, with angles 
 and points as regular as a mathematician's dia- 
 gram. The pebble grows more serious. 
 
 Melt it, you make it a liquid. Increase the 
 heat, you reduce it to two or three gases. It was 
 only gases knotted and clinched. How and why 
 did they combine so as to make that quality of 
 stone? The same gases appear in a thousand 
 different kinds of matter. Why do slight variations 
 in their proportions produce such widely different 
 results ? The mystery of atomic combination 
 the fundamental mystery of chemistry starts out 
 of the stone. 
 
Sight and Insight. 157 
 
 Again, the pebble is of a kind different from the 
 stone in its neighborhood. It belongs to another 
 stratum. How did it get out of that stratum upon 
 the surface of the earth ? Geology must come in 
 with its proofs of central fires, convulsions, and 
 mountain upheavals to explain it. Room for an- 
 other science must be found on the pebble. 
 
 Its shape, too, how was that determined ? There 
 are scratches on it that icebergs caused, grinding 
 over the face of the inhabited world. There are 
 water-lines in it, telling that it has lain under seas 
 which once rolled over the present land. Or there 
 are fire-stains, that report earthquake eruptions ages 
 ago. These forces must all be united into a sys- 
 tem if you would comprehend the pebble. 
 
 Crack it and you will find a little fossil in it of 
 a tribe of sea-creatures now extinct. It must have 
 sunk into it when the pebble was fluid. How 
 many ages ago? In what region of the earth? 
 How was the creature fed, and what was its office? 
 
 Then the color of the pebble, what is that ? 
 Why are not all things of the same hue? The 
 sun-ray holds several tints. How do they blend 
 into colorless light, and what is the secret by 
 which different surfaces reflect and absorb such 
 unlike rays, thus suffusing the face of nature with 
 countless tinges? You must answer this to ex- 
 plain the tint of the pebble. 
 
 The crystal beads, too, which it holds, have 
 magnetic properties, point to the mystery of 
 electric and polar currents. There are some old 
 
158 Sight and Insight. 
 
 manuscripts, called "palimpsests," from which you 
 can rub off the writing and find another under- 
 neath, and still a third and fourth under that, all 
 of which by delicate art can be restored and read 
 in turn. Thus some of Cicero's great works have 
 been discovered under other and later writings. 
 
 Is not the pebble a marvellous palimpsest, hold- 
 ing convulsions of the earth and secrets of chem- 
 istry and astronomical forces written in it ? The 
 " sermon " in a common " stone " is woven of all 
 the sciences. The man who understands it has 
 insight into the physical system of the world. 
 
 In fact, the story of science in relation to 
 nature is poetically symbolized in a story of the 
 Middle Ages, which perhaps many of you are 
 familiar with, how a lady rescued her captured 
 lover from the high tower in which he was impris- 
 oned. His case seemed hopeless ; at any rate, 
 what could she, a feeble woman, do to release 
 him ? She caught a beetle, rubbed some honey 
 on its nose, tied a long silk thread of the finest 
 texture around its body, and placed the insect on 
 the lowest round of the stony wall. Smelling the 
 honey, and thinking it just ahead, the beetle 
 climbed and climbed, trailing the delicate thread, 
 till it reached the window of the captured knight. 
 He caught the thread, pulled it in carefully, and 
 lo! on the end of it was a twine, and gathering up 
 the twine there was fastened upon that a rope, and 
 pulling up the rope he secured it to the window 
 bars and descended safely from his dungeon tower. 
 
Sight and Insight. 159 
 
 O, the wit of the women ! So the meanest fact has 
 a law fastened to it, which reason seizes by its in- 
 sight, and at the end of that law another and still 
 back of that a nobler one, till at last the central 
 force is detected and the sense-bound thought is 
 free, and walks in the broad splendors of truth. 
 
 The chief difference between a very wise man 
 in natural science and an ignorant one is, not that 
 the first is acquainted with regions invisible to the 
 second, away from common sight and interest, 
 but that he understands the common things which 
 the second only sees. 
 
 If we appreciated such facts as these we should 
 be delivered from the danger of looking outwardly 
 into large and blazing wonders of space for pecul- 
 iar revelations of the Creator. Some persons 
 dream that if they could be carried away from 
 what is so familiar around them on this planet, 
 and see the wonders of far-off skies or look at the 
 harmonies of a system of worlds, they would have 
 proofs of the Infinite One which are denied to 
 them now. But such revelry of sight would not 
 help them. It is insight they need. The Infinite 
 is not revealed in scale or splendors of space, but 
 in the wisdom that is manifest in facts whatever 
 be their scale. And nothing less than Infinite 
 Wisdom is expressed in a daisy. Whoever looks 
 beyond the life and growth of that, with an appe- 
 tite for something more startling and stupendous 
 as a proof of God's existence, is in an atheistic 
 atmosphere now. His mind has divorced nature 
 
160 Sight and Insight. 
 
 from intellect, and no sight or external logic will 
 weld them for him. If a daisy can live without 
 God a firmament can. The true process is not 
 to wring out an Infinite Mind by twisting a nebula, 
 but to look with humility and gladness into each 
 fact of nature and see Him reflected as in the face 
 of a mirror there. 
 
 The primal distinction in eyes is that some see 
 facts, others see what facts stand for, and the de- 
 grees of this difference measure the whole distance 
 between a Bushman and Newton, between igno- 
 rance and knowledge. 
 
 The difference between sight and insight, and 
 the power of insight, are illustrated also in the 
 domain of beauty. It is not the senses that dis- 
 cern the outside vesture of beauty upon the world. 
 You never surprise a dog, deer, or bear gazing 
 with satisfaction at the loveliness of the meadow, 
 the curve of a river, or the grandeur of a moun- 
 tain. They see all the facts as an inventory could 
 be taken of them, but not the charm of color, 
 grace, or motion into which the details blend. 
 
 The man is to be pitied who has no intellectual 
 insight into the truth of any district of nature ; 
 but it is a sadder thing to see a man on whom all 
 bloom is wasted, who carries an eye that shaves 
 the twinkle from every star, who disenchants 
 the light, and, wherever he moves, brushes the 
 halo from nature. One of the vices of our Amer- 
 ican intellect in this age of mechanism is its 
 essentially mechanical conception of nature, as 
 
Sight and Insight. 161 
 
 though the solar system runs by clock-work and 
 the stars are whirled by bands, belts, and drums. 
 
 It was a typical Yankee who said once to a 
 friend of mine at Niagara, before the roar of the 
 English fall, "Well, I snum, I don't understand 
 how it wallops over in that way. I 'd like to see 
 the whole consarn unscrewed for about five min- 
 utes and then put up agin." So it is that our 
 universe is becoming one of carpentry, lathed 
 and plastered together with constellations clap- 
 boarded on the sky, and not a swimming poem 
 and mystery. 
 
 As to his humanity, a man would be an un- 
 speakable loser to give up the power of enjoying 
 a landscape, if he has it in any fine degree, for a 
 legal title to all the land in New England ; for his 
 soul would give up the birthright of a perpetual 
 dividend of joy from the infinite art by which all 
 matter is moulded. 
 
 The insight that discerns beauty is of a higher 
 order than that which discerns mathematical truth. 
 I would not look through the great Cambridge 
 telescope at the present comet, if the sight thus 
 of its boiling nucleus and its more voluminous 
 trail should blunt, afterwards, the perception of 
 its exquisite curve so tenderly shaded off into the 
 gloom of the zenith, a weird scimitar of light, 
 fit for the hand of an archangel. Science is the 
 prose and beauty the poetry of the visible world. 
 
 But one of the noblest triumphs of insight is 
 gained when the truth of the world, as read by 
 
1 62 Sight and Insight. 
 
 science, is itself transmuted into beauty. One 
 great value of scientific education is, that it en- 
 larges immensely the area in which the mind 
 lives, gives a boundless horizon and an im- 
 measurable dome for our intellectual home, so 
 that we can have the sense of grandeur for a re- 
 source and as a rich undertone in the whole life. 
 And a still higher value is won, when the mind, 
 through the revelations of science, feels itself 
 surrounded and overarched by a more subtle 
 beauty and charm than the outward aspects of 
 nature supply. 
 
 Sometimes we hear lamentations of the decay 
 of poetic fascination from nature by the banish- 
 ment of all the exquisite fancies of elder igno- 
 rance and the myths of the classic theology. But 
 we are richer in material of poetry to-day by rea- 
 son of our spreading science than any age has 
 been. 
 
 What a palace of splendors our cold explorers 
 have been building with trowels of mathematics 
 and the cement of law ! What if they have 
 worked like journeymen at their tasks, lifting 
 the rough stones, item by item, without a sense 
 of beauty, and putting in the oriel windows as 
 glaziers, not as artists ? Is it any the less a 
 Cologne Cathedral they are erecting ? And when 
 their scaffoldings are knocked away, is it not 
 beauty rather than masonry they have been rear- 
 ing by their toil ? Let any one read Lieutenant 
 Maury's book on the Ocean, and ask if we have 
 
Sight and Insight. 163 
 
 lost material of poetic inspiration and expres- 
 sion by the banishment of majestic Neptune, 
 whose chariot-wheels scarce touched the glassy 
 azure, and the Tritons with their shell-fish fingers 
 and their porpoise fins. Mr. Campbell mourns 
 that, 
 
 " When Science from Creation's face 
 
 Enchantment's veil withdraws, 
 Such lovely visions yield their place 
 To cold material laws." 
 
 He said this of the rainbow, but it is Science that 
 detects the enchantment in the light. Each pulse 
 of it beats nearly two hundred thousand miles a 
 second without jostling the air. It may blow 
 never so hard, or it may be dead calm, and those 
 vibrations fall equally serene. The most spiritual 
 element in nature is the most stable. Eleven 
 millions of miles a minute from the sun without 
 any visible or conceivable chords of communica- 
 tion, every inch of the air a conductor, every ray of 
 it stranded of seven hues, and an eighth element 
 besides which slips through the prism and is the 
 soul of all, never resting and never wasting in its 
 journey of ages, it rather dims the marvel and 
 the poetry of the Atlantic cable. 
 
 And yet the relations of light and our eye are 
 more astonishing still. To get the sensation of 
 redness, our eyes are affected four hundred and 
 eighty-two millions of millions of times in a sec- 
 ond ; of yellowness, five hundred and forty-two 
 millions of millions j and of violet, seven hundred 
 
164 Sight and Insight. 
 
 i 
 
 and seven millions of millions of times. I quote 
 from the careful Sir John Herschel, who says that 
 " they are conclusions to which any one may most 
 certainly arrive who will only be at the trouble of 
 examining the chain of reasoning by which they 
 have been obtained." So that the seven-hued 
 rainbow, whose firm and subtle flame is reared 
 out of drops of water that are ever shifting, is the 
 result of a play upon the keys of the human eye 
 so astonishing that, though figures may state it, 
 the strongest mind staggers like an infant under 
 the awful revelation. 
 
 Think, too, of the marvels of vegetable growth : 
 how the oak draws almost nothing from the soil, 
 but is instituted air and rain ; how the chains of 
 mountains, as has recently been said, are made of 
 gases and rolling wind; how Nature, out of one 
 element of moisture, pours through the veins of 
 trees the juices of the peach, the pear, the apple, 
 and the plum, and conjures all the various nectar 
 of all climes out of dew, so that the mystery of 
 the miracle of Cana is repeated within the soft 
 vesture of the grape that distils wine, not, as in 
 some Boston cellars, out of vitriol and logwood, 
 but out of vapor and sunlight at the bidding of 
 God. 
 
 " Tmth is fair ; should we forego it ? 
 
 Can we sigh right for a wrong ? 
 God himself is the best poet, 
 And the real is his song." 
 
 Perhaps the most fascinating picture which the 
 Greek mythology has transmitted to us is that of 
 
Sight and Insight. 165 
 
 delicate and resplendant Aphrodite, goddess of 
 beauty, who rose out of the sea, as the fable ran, 
 and hastened, with rosy feet, to the land, where 
 grass and flowers spring up beneath her tread. 
 Yet what is this exquisite picture, as a stimulant 
 of the poetic sense, in comparison with the fulfil- 
 ment of its dim suggestion in modern discoveries ? 
 What is it in contrast with the real Aphrodite of 
 science whose substance is the misty exhalation 
 of the ocean, and who wears the rainbow for a 
 scarf? 
 
 All the verdure of nature is born from the foam 
 of the sea. If every spring-time it should rise 
 miraculously from the salt deeps, if all trees, all 
 grains, all flowers, should spring at once from the 
 brine and be wafted by magic to adorn the land, 
 it would be only a sensuous exhibition of the fact 
 which poetic insight discovers when it takes from 
 science the truth that the sunbeams coax fresh 
 vapor from the ocean's treasury ; how the winds 
 sweep them over the land, and how, dropping in 
 dew and pouring in showers, they do robe the 
 rocks with verdure interwoven with flowers, spread 
 the face of nature with nodding loveliness, and so 
 open to our conception a purer Aphrodite than 
 the ancient one, the daughter of God, her step 
 on every blossoming patch of our soil, and her 
 tunic brilliant with the representative flora of 
 the globe ! 
 
 The processes of nature, to the mind that pen- 
 etrates to the springs of truth, supply richer beauty 
 to thought than the visible bloom affords. 
 
1 66 Sight and Insight. 
 
 It may be thought that all this is very unpracti- 
 cal. But can there be any greater advantage to 
 the mind from any study than to feel that it is pa- 
 vilioned amid infinite poetry ? Can there be any- 
 thing more unpractical than to waste the opulence 
 of creative thought, in whose mystic movement we 
 are embosomed, and which the study of a few 
 books would open? 
 
 If there were some process of mental cultiva- 
 tion that should produce the magical result of 
 enlarging the house we live in, widening its 
 walls, lifting its stories higher, lining it with ex- 
 quisite pictures, thrilling the air of it with music, 
 so that the entrance into each room would awaken 
 peculiar delight, there would be little need of 
 arguing for the practicalness of it to the most tor- 
 pid miser. Insight widens, enriches, and embla- 
 zons the world, moving off the walls of the senses, 
 bringing out the traceries and colors of the inces- 
 sant imagination of the Creator. Wherever the 
 body stays, the mind that will vitalize, through a 
 few volumes that are level to an average compre- 
 hension by one winter's reading, the revelations of 
 modern science, can live ideally, as passing from 
 gallery to gallery of a magician's castle. Let a 
 fool own a park and live in it, and he sees only 
 the shell of some trees and the surface of some 
 visible ground. Let Humboldt live in a porter's 
 lodge by its gate, and he will feel that he is riding 
 on a rolling wheel among the stars. 
 
 We come to a fresh and nobler field for the 
 
Sight and Insight. 167 
 
 illustration of our subject in turning from the 
 natural to the social world, from matter to man. 
 If we could find a person that has complete in- 
 sight into a man, who could be said to know a 
 single man thoroughly, we should find a person 
 who comes as near to knowing everything as a 
 finite creature can. All the inorganic forces of 
 laws are told in the best crystal. All organic and 
 vegetable truth culminates in the best plant. All 
 wisdom of every degree, from every kingdom, 
 rushes to a focus in any single human form. 
 
 The human being is the head of the animal 
 creation. The lower orders of life, rising epoch 
 after epoch and grade by grade, flower out in the 
 proportions of his limbs and the implements of 
 his frame. Nature struggled up through a myriad 
 experiments and efforts to attain the perfected ex- 
 cellence of his eye, which commands all nature 
 and catches the hints inwoven with the light with 
 the subtlest truths of the universe. She spires 
 up through the ears of the lower ranks of crea- 
 tures to his ear, the highway of all the music 
 of nature and the exquisite melodies and harmo- 
 nies of genius. She ripens the skill that buds in 
 the fish's fin, the horse's hoof, and the lion's paw, 
 in the twenty-nine bones of the human hand, so 
 supple in their jointings, and clothed with such 
 delicate sensibility, that all industry and cunning 
 and art are prophesied in their mechanism. 
 
 In the Garden of Plants in Paris there is a build- 
 ing devoted to the progressive arrangement of the 
 
1 68 Sight and Insight. 
 
 bones of all creatures, living and fossil, that have 
 bones. The mind runs up the scale of vertebrae 
 till it comes to the human spine and its appen- 
 dages. The spine sits on the throne of matter. It 
 is not without subtile scientific propriety, therefore, 
 that we talk in the political world now about the 
 dignity and necessity of backbone. Life climbs 
 by spines. The skull and jaw we find now are 
 simply continuations and developments of the 
 back-bone. A man without backbone has no sci- 
 entific right to skull or jaw. And if some men 
 should be obliged to take the shape that corre- 
 sponds to the dignity and stamina of their con- 
 victions, we should see them in Congress as 
 talking jelly-Ashes or huge mollusks, rather soft 
 shelled than hard. 
 
 The physical man stands at the apex of the 
 pyramid of matter, all the juices, flavors, and 
 fatness of the world converging to enrich his 
 blood and renew his flesh, and incarnate them- 
 selves in his organism ; all the forces of nature^ 
 light, heat, atmosphere, electricities, chemical af- 
 finities, magnetisms, circulating around him and 
 refreshing his strength ; all the subtile arts of 
 matter playing in the secretions and the mysteries 
 of his moving laboratory of life. Your spirit steps 
 into your body to ride and wield the harnessed 
 forces of the world. 
 
 And now within the material home is the in- 
 tellectual structure of a man, which mental phi- 
 losophies for ages have been trying to measure 
 
Sight and Insight. 169 
 
 and report in its large and graceful proportions of 
 reason, sentiment, passion, will. And interpene- 
 trating and towering over this is the beauty that 
 belongs to the human being ; not the mere phys- 
 ical beauty which hides and yet shines in the 
 fashioning of the limbs, and which glows in the 
 glorious marble of the Apollo, but the splendor 
 of intellectual strength that showers from the eye, 
 the calm that sleeps mysteriously upon a brow, 
 the majesty that enthrones itself over an eyebrow, 
 and lowers from the bony circle an inch or two 
 in sweep, built for an eye like Webster's, a 
 majesty which, when Nature tries to intimate with 
 physical material, she splits a notch in the New 
 Hampshire mountains, and bars the awful walls 
 with a bare precipice of granite, a pride of 
 power like that shed from the chest of Goethe, 
 a commanding, all-potent presence that swathed 
 the form of Washington. 
 
 And above all these insignia of meaning and 
 mystery are the spiritual forces that live and work 
 deeper and deeper in a human being, playing 
 even through his flesh as visibly as chemical pro- 
 cesses leave their traces there. For, at the same 
 moment that the powers of the stomach are send- 
 ing the flush of physical health to the cheek, a force 
 of Heaven is writing there, with delicate pencil 
 more subtle than a sunbeam, and more enduring 
 than a graver's steel, a line of expression, telling 
 of reward for some good deed or noble sacrifice. 
 And while the brandy a man takes immoderately 
 
170 Sight and Insight. 
 
 is publishing itself in the hue of his countenance, 
 a brush from the pit is reaching up to leave the 
 stain of a passion, or the coarse turn of a habit 
 and a sin. Every power of this universe is at 
 work upon every man, all the science, all the 
 beauty, all the forces of the realm of intellect, all 
 the pencils of the regions of heaven and hell. 
 Every sphere surrounds each human frame. Our 
 feet are in the dust, but we rise through all cli- 
 mates, zones, kingdoms, and there is no one of us 
 whose base is not in the world of darkness, and 
 the summit of whose being does not pierce at 
 times to the secret heavens. 
 
 The compact of his spirit and his body, his 
 presence everywhere in it and invisible, the har- 
 monies of his frame, the laws of its health and the 
 laws of its disease, the services of its interdepend- 
 ent members, the balance of voluntary and involun- 
 tary forces, the climbing grade of implements and 
 energies, bone, muscle, vein, blood, and nerve, 
 the equal need in it of gross and airy aliment, the 
 control in it of the chemical over the mineral pro- 
 cesses, the vital over the chemical, the moral and 
 spiritual over the vital and intellectual, lifting him 
 as a series of kingdoms, with his feet in the dust 
 and his soul in the heavens, these facts and rela- 
 tions of a human being tell you the manner in 
 which. God pervades the universe; tell you the 
 deepest laws of society, which is built on the pat- 
 tern of the human form ; tell you about the unity 
 in the great ranks of service in a state ; tell you the 
 
Sight and Insight. 171 
 
 methods of public disease and the conditions of 
 health ; tell you the spirit that should be supreme 
 in all government, collecting the finest forces of 
 the skies to run invisibly into every limb and organ 
 of the body politic. 
 
 You remember the old story how Menenius 
 Agrippa quelled the insurrection of the Roman 
 populace by his allegory of the belly and the 
 members. They knocked under at once to that 
 ventriloquism. The Apostle Paul set forth the 
 propriety of different ranks of office in the church, 
 and the equal need of all, in the argument, "If the 
 whole body were an eye where were the hearing?" 
 etc. He shows that its life is bound up into one 
 stream by the assurance, " If one member suffer 
 all the members suffer with it, and if one member 
 rejoice all the members rejoice with it." This we 
 feel to be not simply rhetoric, but reasoning from 
 types. It was the same kind of logic that an old 
 fellow used against the opposition to the protec- 
 tion of manufactures and other branches of Ameri- 
 can industry, on the ground that it was wrong to 
 grant special privileges. " Don't you see," said 
 he, " you can't fat your finger ? Try to fat your 
 middle finger, and you have to put flesh on your 
 ribs and arms to do it." Society is yet a body 
 diseased. We could draw its picture as a man 
 staggering under maladies. Every vice and dis- 
 order in it answers to some cough, cramp, or 
 canker of the human frame, from the fever-and- 
 ague of our traffic to the squint in our politics 
 
172 Sight and Insight. 
 
 which prevents the eyes of the government from 
 looking North. Whoever could bring a theory of 
 social organization that would take up and fill out 
 the analogies and orders of the human frame, would 
 need no other logic to demonstrate its truth. 
 
 Shrewd Rochefoucauld said that " it is easier to 
 know men in general than any man in particular." 
 Complete insight into a man discloses not only 
 these grand and subtile relations that hold in hier- 
 oglyphic the divine laws of society, but detects 
 the personal structure and quality of character. 
 
 A physician can educate his eye so as to see in 
 the hue of the skin the tone of the system and 
 the amount of a man's abuse of the laws of 
 health. Clairvoyant mediums have been known 
 to tell from a hair sent them in a letter the disease 
 the person is suffering. Each part of the body 
 has the character of the whole body in it. There 
 is no miracle in the most wonderful instance of 
 these somnambulic readings, because the fact 
 of every man's physical condition is in every flake 
 of his skin, and a heightened power of perception 
 catches it naturally. 
 
 So some persons have the faculty of insight into 
 character. They see a man in a moment ; read 
 him, feel him, in an instant. Great noise has 
 been made about phrenology, whether, by labo- 
 rious fingering in the valleys and over heights of 
 the skull, one may concoct the character of the 
 subject. But we ought to see that a man is 
 scrawled all over with "ologies." Every nerve, 
 
Sight and Insight. 173 
 
 every hair, every motion, every nail, is steeped in 
 the essence of the person, and radiates it. We are 
 published not only geographically in the skull, but 
 by the whole configuration, and by effluence back 
 of configuration and streaming through it. There 
 is a tone-science ; showing how character breathes 
 in voice ; there is a tooth science, there is nose- 
 ology, eye-ology, as well as phrenology. Each limb, 
 organ, act, is a battery of the soul. Lavater, the 
 great physiognomist, said that he could tell by the 
 different ways in which fingers dropped money into 
 the contribution-box of the church what their tem- 
 peraments and controlling dispositions were. I 
 suppose that the way a man's fingers don't drop 
 it tells just as clearly. 
 
 Zschokke, a Swiss clergyman and novelist, had 
 the singular power at times of seeing the history 
 of persons that came into his presence. How, he 
 knew not, but facts in a man's career would some- 
 times stand just as clearly before his mind as the 
 outward man before his eye. He was a moral 
 clairvoyant. The veil dropped from his vision that 
 hides to most of us the substance of character. 
 
 All a man's experience is funded in him. We 
 go about printing off proof-impressions of our- 
 selves every minute in the spiritual air. And the 
 finger-power which some natures have of detect- 
 ing by subtle feeling the quality of others the 
 mesmeric power which feels from a letter tbe state 
 of soul in which it was written is perhaps only 
 an intimation of the kind of world we are to live 
 
174 Sight and Insight. 
 
 in when the body drops away, and there can be 
 " nothing secret that shall not be made manifest, 
 neither anything hid that shall not be known and 
 come abroad." 
 
 The highest range of study in which the distance 
 between sight and insight is measured, and where 
 the triumphs of insight are more vivid, is that of 
 history. No man knows the science of nature 
 who simply catalogues all the facts that are patent 
 to his eye ; and so a man may commit to memory 
 every incident of mortal experience, the date of 
 every occurrence, the birth and death of every great 
 man of every kingdom, yes, of every inhabitant of 
 the globe, the arithmetic and fortunes of every bat- 
 tle that has been fought, and still not have advanced 
 an inch towards an acquaintance with the story 
 of humanity. It is when he begins to see the 
 ideal relations and harmonies and lessons of these 
 facts that insight into history begins. 
 
 Think what it is to know Europe as it exists 
 to-day ! There is the gazetteer's knowledge, so 
 many acres, so many people, so many languages, 
 so many houses, offices, art-rooms, temples, ruins. 
 There is the politician's knowledge, estimating 
 the power, the material forces, the passions, the 
 attitudes, the purposes, of the states that checker 
 its surface. But higher than these, and including 
 them, the only real knowledge of Europe is that 
 of the philosopher, who knows how it came to be 
 what it is ; who knows the classic, barbaric, and 
 Christian elements that have interplayed and over- 
 
Sight and Insight. 175 
 
 shot each other in the web of its life ; what stocks 
 have intermixed to produce each people and de- 
 termine its character ; how the art arose that gems 
 it ; from what deeps of sentiment its cathedral 
 spires have risen ; when the creative seasons of 
 its literature have dawned ; from wtiat boiling 
 anarchies its now heavy and hoary despotisms 
 were cast up ; what cheering and disastrous forces 
 are at work in its life to-day ; and so what ten- 
 dencies, according to the infallible laws of public 
 growth, are pointing to and fashioning its future. 
 
 All this knowledge streams out of Europe. It 
 is a perpetual exhalation from the visible facts to 
 the mind that has insight, or can feel the impal- 
 pable. Without it a man knows only the corpse 
 of the continent, not its life, its soul. 
 
 And thus it is that a man must study the 
 registers of ancient time. Niebuhr, Bunsen, Car- 
 lyle, Grote, have few other sources of knowledge 
 than old Rollin had. They cannot manufacture 
 a new fact. It is the sharper eye, the profounder 
 mind, the flaming moral sense, which makes the 
 difference between dates and facts as they lie 
 loose, and the same particulars as they knit them- 
 selves, upon their pages, into the anatomy, the 
 physiology, the expression, and the character of a 
 kingdom or an age. 
 
 The science of history has been making im- 
 mense advances, of late, by the disclosure of new 
 material. The grave has been disgorging some 
 of its dead empires for our instruction. We have 
 
176 Sight and Insight. 
 
 heard the buried bones of old Nineveh rattle 
 under their desolate mound, and have seen its 
 cracked and half- calcined skeleton lift itself, at 
 the incantation of an English traveller, to glare 
 with blank eye-sockets upon the changes of three 
 thousand years. But battered Sphinx and Aztec 
 masonry and unhearsed Babylon have not sup- 
 plied such vivid and far-reaching knowledge of 
 the past as the keen scrutiny of the wrecks of 
 language has disclosed. Little things in the frag- 
 ments of literature and tradition tell great things, 
 as the scale of Agassiz conjures the spectre of 
 the fish that once wore it in the flesh. Literature 
 is so steeped in the vitality of a nation that it 
 sheds the composite aroma of the national for- 
 tunes, as it has been said by a great critic that 
 out of any one of Shakespeare's plays, the 
 most imaginative, the least historic, the essential 
 history and civilization of England, up to Shake- 
 speare's time, could be unravelled. Languages 
 tell more than ruins and external annals. They 
 tell the story of migrations, relationships, col- 
 lisions, and interfusions of race. A word or two 
 in a vocabulary, the structure and inflections of a 
 verb, report the cousinship of widely sundered 
 peoples, their original nearness in space and 
 kin. 
 
 Thus continually new and more important in- 
 struction is opening to us from the past. As we 
 are carried further away from past generations 
 and the ancient world, we come closer to them 
 
Sight and Insight. 177 
 
 intellectually, and penetrate more deeply the truth 
 their experience incarnated. 
 
 Many of you recall the little pamphlet, entitled 
 " The Stars and the Earth," published a few years 
 since, which contained some entertaining fancies 
 founded on the laws of light. If one could be 
 present now in some orb of the firmament to 
 which the light from our globe would be a hun- 
 dred years in travelling, he would, if he could by 
 a miraculous vision gaze upon our earth, see what 
 was going on here a hundred years ago. Let him 
 remove still back in space to a point which light 
 needs more than two thousand years to reach, 
 and its beams would carry to him the picture of 
 Socrates and his contemporaries ; and the farther 
 back he should be removed the more ancient 
 would be the people and the kingdoms that would 
 be given, fresh and living, to his eye. 
 
 The historic glass does work this magic for us 
 as we move off from the ancient world and time. 
 We have men among us who know Greece to-day 
 better than the average intellectual Greeks did. 
 We can study now each great state of antiquity 
 as a whole. We can perceive the working of law 
 in organizing the state as one body in time, and 
 study the secret, slow, and sublime play of provi- 
 dential forces in compacting its organism, and 
 then unnerving its strength and paralyzing it for 
 evil. Our insight seizes perspective, and detects 
 symmetry, and puts each movement into relation 
 with a persistent force or law. 
 
 8* L 
 
1 78 Sight and Insight. 
 
 And the lesson which the mind that has insight 
 sees inwrought with history, striking through the 
 story of every nation, and making every promi- 
 nent page transparent for its rays, is that every 
 nation is under the moral laws, veined by them 
 and electric with them. The Infinite Justice gazes 
 out of every historic chapter as out of paragraphs 
 of Exodus and Jeremiah. All " Books of the 
 Kings " are serious and sacred. 
 
 Milton gives us the picture of Michael the 
 archangel showing to Father Adam, from a high 
 mountain, the flow of human fortunes. He 
 purged with euphrasy and rue the visual nerve 
 which pierced even to the inmost seat of mental 
 sight, and unveiled to him the procession of 
 empires and the long, sad lineage of sufferings 
 and wrongs. The historic student looks back 
 from such a height and with such a purged vision, 
 and he sees that nothing is stable but justice. 
 Empires shrivel and waste like ghosts because 
 they import too little of the eternal substance to 
 be adjusted to the tremendous forces of Provi- 
 dence. Isaiah's insight is gained at once by 
 cool-blooded science on that meditative height. 
 Nations do not die from foreign blows, or from 
 old age, or from too great weight of possessions, 
 but from their meagre organization, their failure 
 to distribute their classes by the principle of fra- 
 ternity, their opposition, through ignorance or 
 insolence, to that righteousness which is the 
 inmost truth of things. They break the law of 
 
Sight and Insight. 1 79 
 
 God, as they suppose, for their convenience and 
 aggrandizement, and find instead that it has 
 broken them. 
 
 Thus learn, insight into history is insight into 
 to-day. All great problems are here. Just as 
 Diomedes saw the gods in the battle, according 
 to the Iliad, when Pallas Athene blew the mist 
 from his eyes, every man who has had clear in- 
 sight into history sees the antagonist gods, the 
 powers divine and infernal, struggling amid the 
 confusions and roar of our national experience, as 
 clearly as in the days of Ahab and Elijah, Herod 
 and the Baptist, Nero and Paul. In fact, if he 
 has not been able to see them thus pitted against 
 each other on the prairies of Kansas or in the 
 literature of the Dred Scott decision, it is of no 
 consequence what he sees in the story of Ahab 
 or in his mummy New Testament. 
 
 The practical reading of this fact is that states- 
 manship is pre-eminently the science demanding 
 insight. It is the highest trust, and asks the 
 deepest wisdom. The grades of statesmanship 
 are always determined by what the men see work- 
 ing in the nation. And that only is real states- 
 manship which guides itself by what history 
 shows to be the enduring omnipotent forces, 
 just as that is the only seamanship which guides 
 by the eternal lights and the tested charts. 
 
 A demagogue would guide a state, not by in- 
 sight or sight either. He sails in a fog and steers 
 by the ear. An executive politician, the man 
 
i8o Sight and Insight. 
 
 whom we delight to call practical, shapes his 
 course by a conception, perhaps, of the com- 
 mercial and material greatness of his country. 
 He counts himself one of the managers of a great 
 business firm ; and his conceptions of the func- 
 tions and duties of government would be filled 
 out by putting over the National Capitol a huge 
 sign : " South Carolina, New England, Ohio, & 
 Co., dealers in negroes, cotton, hams, and hay." 
 So long as he can keep the partners from quarrel- 
 ling, and make the firm pay ten per cent under 
 the parchment constitution, he considers his office 
 discharged. 
 
 But the statesman knows, as clearly as he sees 
 the sun in heaven, that the real constitution of 
 every kingdom is an unwritten one. He knows 
 that, according to forces that no pen can create 
 and no votes can bar, forces that play around 
 and bend and magnetize all others, forces of 
 character which after a while steal into the arith- 
 metic of the nation's ledgers, ooze up from the 
 soil and affect the harvests, travel with the colo- 
 nists that seek the new land, distil through the 
 breath of court-rooms, and so rot or rivet the 
 invisible bolts of social union, the nation is 
 doomed to expansion and vigor or to barbarism 
 and ruin. He knows how nations ought to live, 
 because he sees how nations have died. 
 
 See how the imperial Roman oak of history 
 died. Its religion perished first; its hardihood 
 sunk into effeminacy, so that it had no living con- 
 
Sight and Insight. 181 
 
 nection with the treasury of spiritual forces in the 
 soil and the air. And then the sap in its huge 
 veins began to dry ; the fibrous muscles which 
 centuries had toughened shrank; the leaves shriv- 
 elled from juiceless stems ; the bark softened ; 
 caterpillars and worms and bugs from all the 
 Eastern sinks made their home in it ; and, finally, 
 a howling storm of barbarism set it from the 
 Northeast, amid which, in its vigorous days, the 
 forest monarch would have stood erect, with hardly 
 the loss of a filial leaf, but which now whirled 
 branches and boughs before its gusts and left the 
 crippled trunk, a show of its greatness, to crumble 
 and rot into the soil of time. Trajan's Column, 
 jthe battered arch of Constantine the Great, the 
 ivied segment of the Colosseum walls, the crum- 
 bling colonnades of the Acropolis, are the letters 
 in cipher before a statesman's eye, rising over the 
 imperial cemeteries of history, hinting an impor- 
 tant fact or two as to the constitution that knits 
 and governs a people really. 
 
 What sight so frightful, therefore, as to see a 
 great nation with a mighty future, guided, in its 
 critical season, by men who have no social in- 
 sight, no moral enthusiasm warming their wisdom, 
 no faith in the superior permanence of moral over 
 commercial forces, men who, it should seem, 
 must have read history with cataracts over their 
 eyes. 
 
 Goethe had a fancy that some men are edu- 
 cated into such large proportioned minds on this 
 
1 82 Sight and Insight. 
 
 globe that they become, when they die, the spirits 
 of planets, diffusing their energy through the sub- 
 stance of a world. This is a good definition of 
 the capacities a great public man should have. 
 Very often the reverse is the case. Pygmies con- 
 trive to perch themselves on Alps. As a shrewd 
 farmer once said of one of our Presidents : " We 
 thought he was something of a man when we had 
 him in our State ; but come to spread him out 
 over the whole Union, he does average dreadful 
 thin." 
 
 The position given to some men on this earth, 
 with regard to a nation, is scarcely less sublime 
 than if we could see a mortal leap on a star to 
 steer through space. If an astronomer should 
 follow such a voyager with his glass, he might ad- 
 mire the energy with which he should kindle furi- 
 ous fires beneath its granite boilers, whip it like a 
 top, and make it whirl swifter and swifter on its 
 axis ; but would he think that it showed any 
 celestial statesmanship to guide it contrary to the 
 law of gravitation ? Whoever should be at the 
 helm, would he not prophesy, with some surety, 
 that, by the constitution of the solar system, it 
 was whizzing towards a smash-up, to be beached 
 on chaos ? 
 
 Historical, political, and social insight discerns 
 the one deepest law which rules under the votes 
 of parliaments and senates just as surely as the 
 law of gravity upholds the Capitols they sit in ; 
 and it bows to them with a reverence that would 
 
Sight and Insight. 183 
 
 seek to twist the certainties of the multiplication- 
 table for private benefit as soon as to doubt their 
 despotism. 
 
 Behind the facts of nature which the sunlight 
 kindles up is the order in which they play, and 
 which the studious intellect explores. Around the 
 facts, and diffused, also, through the order, is the 
 beauty which tempts and feeds another eye. And 
 now, deeper than order and beauty together, play- 
 ing through both and using both, is the spiritual 
 meaning, the symbolism, of the facts which lie 
 before the senses. A finer insight, a more search- 
 ing eye, is needed for this sphere, and richer 
 results reward it. Each thing in nature is a hiero- 
 glyphic. It has a structure which science draws, a 
 color which taste appreciates, a use of which skill 
 avails, and it stands for something, it holds and 
 hides a message which spiritual insight catches. 
 The world was not whittled into Shape. God 
 could not create anything other than vitally, so 
 that it should be magnetized with all his attri- 
 butes and exhale them to faculties fine enough to 
 receive the effluence. 
 
 This is the reason every great writer utters his 
 thought in imagery. The world is his dictionary. 
 The processes of life all around him hurry to his 
 pen, eager to be the rhetoric of his ideas. No 
 sooner is a new science perfected and clinched 
 to the intellect by the calculus, than it dissolves 
 into a finer fluid for the inkstand of the poet and 
 the seer. It offers new and glowing symbols of 
 human life and the highest moral truth. 
 
184 Sight and Insight. 
 
 Set a golden statue by Phidias before a child, 
 and it sees a mass of brilliant color ; before an 
 avaricious eye, and it gloats over the stately embod- 
 iment of so much cash ; before a devotee of anat- 
 omy, and he finds a revelation of so much bodily 
 proportion ; before a mineralogist, and he per- 
 ceives so much chemical and mineral truth ; before 
 an artist, and he gazes upon so much skill and 
 beauty; before a man of moral insight, and he 
 discerns the grandeur of a God transfusing its sub- 
 stance, pouring over the brightness of its limbs, 
 controlling its symmetry, breathing in undrainable 
 suggestiveness from its face. Each eye lights 
 upon a truth, but the last one pierces to the finest, 
 highest, all-penetrating, all-dominating truth. So 
 it is in the world. The senses simply stare at 
 nature ; the mind looks, and finds law ; the taste 
 combines, and enjoys art ; the soul reads, and 
 gains the permeating wisdom. 
 
 Take a spear of growing wheat, and, after its 
 chemical secrets and its beauty of structure are 
 detected and appreciated, it turns to language, as 
 when a religious writer illustrates humility by it 
 in the figure. The mind that knows most is the 
 most reverent, just as the ear of grain that is full- 
 est bends over beneath the sky. A wisp of wheat 
 has been carried to the noblest mill when a Chris- 
 tian poet extracts that flour from its grains. So 
 the whole universe turns into a dictionary for the 
 uses of the inseeing mind. 
 
 Christianity uses most freely the broad rich 
 
Sight and Insight. 185 
 
 facts of nature, in parables and allegories, to 
 state its doctrines, putting its light within the 
 ordinary facts that we see, and making them glow 
 as transparencies of celestial truth. 
 
 The universe was created so as to serve the 
 prophet's purposes, and be a sermon. All the 
 dark facts in it dissolve into ink to write the folly 
 and doom of evil ; all the winning and cheering 
 facts in it melt into light to commend and eulogize 
 what is good. When you have demonstrated the 
 law of gravitation and have hidden its force in 
 the dark substance of the sun, and shown it 
 grasping thence the farthest planet that ploughs 
 the chilly ether and balancing a family of worlds, 
 have you not also shown how the justice of the 
 Infinite Mind impalpably grapples all the spirits 
 of the globe, however far they wander from him, 
 and holds nations, as well as men, by the fine, 
 awful tendrils of his law. And when you untwist 
 the rays that leap unstinted and forever from the 
 vesture of the sun, and find in each wave of them 
 light and heat and all colors and vitality, and find 
 them flooding the air of every planet as easily as 
 they visit one, and present to every eye, kind- 
 ling all nature for it, with no more labor than in 
 doing it for one ; inflicting pain upon the dis- 
 eased retina by the same beneficence that blesses 
 the well one, and illumining a different world for 
 each mind it visits according to its culture or its 
 purity, have you not found a finer, vaster solar 
 astronomy by your analysis and research ? found 
 
1 86 Sight and Insight. 
 
 a pictured statement of the interblending of 
 .Infinite Mercy and Truth in the rays that stream 
 continually in upon the soul's world, how they 
 bless us and color us according to our faculty of 
 reception, and how they visit and rule every heart 
 and will as easily as they fall upon one ? 
 
 In every department of nature "like a finer 
 light in light," the last word of any discovery, 
 the soul of the fact, is moral. 
 
 The earth 
 
 " Is but the shadow of heaven and things therein 
 Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought." 
 
 There may be a meadow farm among the moun- 
 tains. The heir to it gets a cabbage and a corn- 
 crop from it, suspecting no other latent fertility 
 and produce. A man of science buys it, gets no 
 less cabbages and hay, but reaps a geology-crop 
 as well. An artist buys it, and lo ! a harvest of 
 beauty and delight, budding even when the grain 
 is garnered, dropping sweet into his eyes even 
 from arctic dawns and blazing snows. A man 
 of deepest insight lives on it, and the laws of his 
 farm open to him the prudence and prodigality of 
 Providence. In the way the grain grows, the 
 enemies it has, the friendships of all good forces 
 to its advance, in the chemistry of his farming, in 
 the peace that sleeps on the hills, in the gathering 
 and retreat of storms, in the soft approach of 
 spring, and the melancholy death he reads lessons 
 that become inmost wisdom. He has a faculty 
 that is the sickle of more subtle crop-sheaves of 
 spiritual truth. 
 
Sight and Insight. 187 
 
 The different ways in which different tempera- 
 ments and states of heart regard nature is very 
 simply and sweetly stated in a little German poem 
 of which I saw a translation yesterday. Two 
 men had gone up from the city to visit the sum- 
 mit of one of the Alps. They returned, and their 
 kindred pressed about them to know what visions 
 they had enjoyed. 
 
 " 'T was a buzz of questions on every side. 
 ' And what have you seen ? Do tell ! ' they cried. 
 
 " The one with yawning made reply, 
 ' What have we seen ? Not much have I ! 
 Trees, mountains, meadows, groves, and streams, 
 Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.' 
 
 " The other, smiling, said the same ; 
 But with face transfigured, and eye of flame : 
 ' Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams, 
 Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.' " 
 
 Just as there are spelling-classes for the young- 
 est scholars in our schools, in which the separate 
 letters are the chief things they see, where the 
 great problem is to combine them into words, 
 and where the mental organs are not capable of 
 configuring words into propositions, so very 
 few of us on the planet ever get able to handle 
 the letters of nature easily, ever get beyond the 
 power of spelling them into single words. Some 
 are able to read off the aspects of creation into 
 science. They can put the stars together into 
 paragraphs that state laws and harmonies and 
 grandeurs. Some go farther, and rhyme the 
 mighty vocabulary of science into beauty; but 
 
1 88 Sight and Insight. 
 
 few get such command of the language that they 
 see and rejoice in the highest, glorious truth 
 which the volume holds. 
 
 " What ! " says friend Purblind Horneye, " do I 
 not see all there is around me ? Are not my senses 
 as good as yours ? What stuff to talk of more 
 realities right about me than the sunshine and 
 fields and streets and my office, my ledgers, my 
 bank-books, my horses, and my house!" "But how- 
 is it, Brother Purblind, about studying the Iliad ? 
 If you know all the Greek letters on all the pages, 
 do you master it? Are not the words to be* 
 looked out? Is not their sense to be detected? 
 Are not the style and rhythm to be appreciated and 
 enjoyed? the characters delineated there to be 
 known and discriminated? the connections and 
 unities and poetic and moral laws to be felt and 
 comprehended ? After your senses have seen all 
 that there is to be seen, have you done anything 
 more than reach the threshold of what there is 
 to see ? What now, O materialistic Brother Horn- 
 eye, if the universe, right about thee, is a sort 
 of Iliad .of the Infinite Mind? What if each 
 fact in it, which thy superficial sense beholds, is 
 a letter of a Divine word or an adjective of a 
 mystic verse ? And what if thy flippant estimate 
 of the meaning of nature is the child's slow 
 and stuttering spelling-out of Homer's syllables, 
 while the saint's vision of a life and glory all 
 around is the manly reading of the mighty poem 
 of the world?'' 
 
Sight and Insight. 189 
 
 Insight, therefore, opens the intellectual world 
 of law and harmony beneath the world of physi- 
 cal shows ; within that, the world of beauty ; 
 within that again, the realm of spiritual language. 
 In the human world it shows, deep behind deep, 
 law working in society, controlling politics and 
 shaping the destiny of nations; while, in the 
 individual sphere, it unveils man as the epitome 
 of the universe, clad continually in the electric 
 vesture of his character. 
 
 Every man, as every animal, has sight; but 
 just according to the scale of his insight is the 
 world he lives in a deep one, an awful one, a 
 mystic and glorious world. We see what is, only 
 as we see into what appears. 
 
 Out of three roots grows the great tree of nature, 
 truth, beauty, good. The man of science fol- 
 lows up its mighty stem, measures it, and sees its 
 branches in the silver-leaved boughs of the firma- 
 ment. The poet delights in the symmetry of its 
 strength, the grace of its arches, the flush of its 
 fruit. Only to the man with finer eye than both 
 is the secret glory of it unveiled ; for his vision 
 discerns how it is fed and in what air it thrives. 
 To him it is only an expansion of the burning 
 bush on Horeb, seen by the solemn prophet, 
 glowing continually with the presence of Infinite 
 Law and Love, yet standing forever unconsumed. 
 
V. 
 
 HILDEBEAND, 
 
 THE career of the man who will engage our 
 attention admits us to the heart of the 
 eleventh century ; for his influence was felt pow- 
 erfully in Europe from the year 1040 to 1085. 
 The proper background, therefore, for a knowledge 
 of his life is a conception of the state of civiliza- 
 tion in the early part of the eleventh century, and 
 the relations of that period in the Middle Ages to 
 the centuries before. The " Dark Ages," as we call 
 them, commenced with the sixth century, when 
 Europe was completely disorganized by the settle- 
 ment of the barbarians over the domain of the 
 Roman Empire. There were more than four 
 hundred years of night. The darkness was deep- 
 est at the close of the tenth century, after the 
 empire of Charlemagne had dissolved. Indeed, 
 humanity seemed then in a hopeless condition. 
 A writer of the Middle Ages describes that time 
 as an age that ought to be called " iron," from its 
 fierceness, and " leaden," for its gross wickedness. 
 To understand the condition of Europe, as the 
 year 1000 of our era dawned upon it, you must 
 
Hildebrand. 191 
 
 form a picture of society destitute of every fea- 
 ture, and seemingly of every force, that belongs 
 to what we consider civilization, that can be 
 thought to make life a privilege, or even tolerable. 
 There was no such thing as education, for there 
 was no literature, no press, no books. There was 
 no science even for the highest classes. For 
 many centuries it had been rare for a layman of 
 whatever rank to know how to sign his name. It 
 was a striking exception when an emperor could 
 read. The Latin language, which held all the 
 treasures of learning, had died out of common use. 
 The ravages of pirates during the previous cen- 
 tury had destroyed many of the libraries of the 
 church. All books were written then, on parch- 
 ments, and they were so costly that only the most 
 princely fortunes could purchase them. And 
 most of therr^ contained nothing more valuable 
 than legends of saints, or homilies, or works of 
 Jerome or Augustine, perhaps written over the 
 noblest treatises of Cicero or Plato. We read 
 that a certain princess in the tenth century, the 
 Countess of Anjou, gave two hundred sheep, a 
 load of wheat, a load of rye, and a load of millet, 
 with several skins of costly fur, for a copy of the 
 sermons of a German monk. 
 
 Nothing that we generally associate with the 
 Middle Ages as the glory of that period had ap- 
 peared then in Europe. There were no grand 
 cathedrals, for ^Gothic architecture had not yet 
 germinated. There was no scholastic philosophy, 
 
192 Hildebrand. 
 
 for Abelard was yet a hundred years in futurity. 
 There was no painting, no poetry, and no promise 
 of the Crusades. There were no methods of quick 
 travel ; few good roads from state to state, and 
 such as there were infested by robbers ; of course, 
 therefore, there could be no great commerce ; in 
 fact, there was scarcely any trade. What we un- 
 derstand by government had no existence. Feu- 
 dal fortresses were rising as the prominent features 
 in every landscape, where nobles, who could not 
 spell their names and did not know a letter of the 
 alphabet, revelled in a brutal power, and looked 
 out over the dependent serfs in their miserable 
 huts ; and these barons were somehow aggregated 
 into what was called a kingdom, or an empire. 
 But there was no country then that was organized 
 socially, even so well as any district of Russia is 
 to-day ; and there is no mechanic's family in this 
 city that is not far more richly provided with what 
 we all esteem the comforts of life than the average 
 noblemen of Europe and their households were at 
 the close of the tenth century. Europe, in the 
 earlier portions of the Dark Ages, was morally, to 
 use a geological figure, in the Silurian Epoch, 
 everything insular and irregular, chaotic patches 
 of the future continent swelling out of the sea of 
 barbarous passion, bearing only the lowest types 
 of life. 
 
 In the Middle Ages it had changed into the ter- 
 tiary period, showing larger organizations, enriched 
 with higher forms, and plainly promising the states, 
 
Hildebran<t\J l 
 
 / /: ^ '' 
 
 the culture and the civilisation <f modern Europe. 
 
 The eleventh century saw the transition to thfs 
 latter epoch. And yet when it dawned ' there 
 seemed to be no symptoms of any latent bene'fi-f 
 cent forces at work for the race. There s 
 to be no reason why the wide-spread superstition 
 might not be realized, that the year 1000 would 
 wind up human affairs on the planet, introduce 
 the day of judgment, and inaugurate the mil- 
 lennium by vindictive and cleansing fire. The 
 church, from which the only possible help, it 
 should seem, could spring, appeared more deeply 
 tainted than society itself. 
 
 We must not forget that both the doctrines and 
 polity of the Roman Catholic Church were of slow 
 growth. With the very commencement of the Dark 
 Ages, we find the germ of a pretension sprouting 
 in Rome, which found congenial soil for its roots 
 in the decaying ancient civilization, and the pre- 
 cise nutriment it needed in the heavy air of bar- 
 barism. Century by century, while society and 
 states dissolved, it stretched underground its 
 fibres, and strengthened its stalk, and shot out 
 leaf after leaf of doctrine, discipline, and ritual, 
 putting forth now its canon of the mass, and in 
 another season its sanction for the worship of the 
 Virgin and of images ; budding next with its 
 forged decretals and claim of the title of " sover- 
 eign pontiff" for its bishop ; then with the doc- 
 trine of transubstantiation, and soon with its law 
 for the canonization of saints and the system of 
 9 M 
 
IQ4 Hildebrand. 
 
 auricular confession ; letting no century slip by 
 without some large leafy sign of its slow and 
 secret energy, till we shall see it, when the Dark 
 Ages culminate, like a huge night-blooming cereus 
 ripen with its " consummate flower," the preten- 
 sion to universal authority over conscience and to 
 supremacy over kings. 
 
 It was in the middle of the eleventh century 
 that a vigorous attempt was made to purify the 
 ecclesiastical spirit and to complete and confirm 
 the ecclesiastical system of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, That century, remarkable for so many 
 signs promising a greater future for the world, 
 streaked on its horizon with the gray pulsations 
 of a dawn, is chiefly distinguished by the move- 
 ment within the church. The introduction of cot- 
 ton paper made from rags, which it inaugurated; 
 the commencement of the Gothic style of archi- 
 tecture, which it witnessed ; the Norman conquest 
 of England, changing the destiny of that island, 
 which belongs to its annals ; the invention of the 
 musical scale, which is one of its trophies ; the 
 birth of the scholastic philosophy, which dignifies 
 its records ; the building in England of Westmin- 
 ster Hall, which is one of its monuments, none 
 of these, nor even the cheers of the Crusaders un- 
 der Godfrey of Bouillon, pouring through the bat- 
 tered walls of Jerusalem in the year 1099, which 
 is its last and jubilant memorial, presents so strik- 
 ing a claim upon our notice and our study as the 
 efforts made for the cleansing of the morals, and 
 
Hildebrand. 195 
 
 the widening of the power, of the Catholic Church 
 through the genius of Hildebrand. 
 
 Hildebrand was born about the year 1013, in a 
 Tuscan village in Italy, and was the son of a car- 
 penter. He was educated in Rome, in one of 
 its forty monasteries, in an institution of which 
 his uncle was abbot Faithful in the stern disci- 
 pline of the cloisters, he zealously sought by all 
 its helps to chastise and subdue his passions ; 
 and he felt his own pride in a monastic purity 
 stimulated and justified by what he saw of the 
 disorders and corruptions of Rome and even 
 of the Church of Rome. Entering manhood, 
 he betook himself to the monastery of Cluny, 
 in France, celebrated then as the severest of 
 all the ascetic schools. There he labored dili- 
 gently for some years in the double work of per- 
 fecting his conquest over the flesh and of master- 
 ing the knowledge that was possible in that age. 
 He was soon distinguished among the brethren 
 for the severity of his mortification and the breadth 
 of his learning, while for the power of his preach- 
 ing he stood unrivalled, it was said, among the 
 orators of the church. He studied and prayed to 
 the Virgin, he flogged himself and starved him- 
 self, till he drove the passions which nature had 
 lodged in his blood into the arteries of his mind. 
 His frame was diminutive, but his person seemed 
 of intellect all compact. He moved among his 
 fellow-monks, who cared chiefly for shelter from 
 the ferocious world without and for personal purity, 
 
Hildebrand. 
 
 electric with the majesty of great ideas, too broad 
 to be held within the walls of the abbot's rule. 
 
 His enemies in later years affirmed that he was 
 a sorcerer, and had perfected himself in the un- 
 holy arts through which a mortal has commerce 
 with Beelzebub. The foundation of this charge 
 was, possibly, some interest by Hildebrand in nat- 
 ural science, and a curiosity in a mind so strong 
 to track, by such experiments as could be made 
 in that rude age, some of the laws of nature. But 
 he was charged with owning a book of divination, 
 which would conjure the most frightful demons 
 for his service, and it was generally believed 
 that he always possessed the power of shaking 
 his sleeves, and sprinkling sparks of fire from 
 them to awe people with the signs of his superior 
 sanctity. We shall see what sparks he shook from 
 his cowl, when the time came for the full play of 
 the ideas with which he had stored himself in his 
 monastic retreat. But the power of his genius 
 was most manifest in his terrible eye, which, it is 
 said, no enemy of Hildebrand, or traitor to the 
 church, could feel upon him without quailing and 
 submitting. Those who conversed with him said 
 that they felt that his eye read their secret 
 thoughts. 
 
 Among his brother-monks in Cluny, he medi- 
 tated upon the future of the church he had sworn 
 to serve. He believed that it was the represent- 
 ative of Christ's authority upon the earth, and its 
 condition, as it lay beneath his gaze, appalled 
 
Hildebrand. 197 
 
 him. The ecclesiastical world was more corrupt, 
 if possible, in the first half of the eleventh century, 
 than the civil world. The clergy were mostly 
 illiterate. In the year 1000 there was scarcely a 
 single person to be found in Rome who knew the 
 first elements of letters. The great majority of 
 the priests in Italy were habitual drunkards. A 
 Catholic writer himself confesses that their func- 
 tion in those years " had contracted to the chant- 
 ing of psalms which they could not understand, 
 and to the mechanical performance of outward 
 ceremonies." An Italian bishop complains that 
 he could not prevail upon his clergy even to learn 
 the creeds, and that even his own flock were so 
 degraded as to be unable to conceive how God 
 could exist without a head. And one of Hilde- 
 brand's own friends, Peter Damiani, published a 
 book, showing up the awful depravity of the 
 priesthood, of which the title was " Gomorrhiana." 
 The records of the church during the hundred 
 years before his time were under Hildebrand's eye 
 in his monastery, and they offered a dreary com- 
 mentary on the lordly high-church principles he 
 had espoused and matured. He believed that no 
 one had the right to hold an office in the ecclesi- 
 astical economy except by the call and consider- 
 ation of its highest ministers ; and he saw how, 
 for generations, lords of the castle had bee.n 
 giving away benefices of the church to their re- 
 lations, or selling them to the highest bidders. 
 He read how a child five years old had been made 
 
198 Hildebrand. 
 
 an archbishop, and how abbots were accounted 
 worthy, who did nothing worse than feast and 
 hunt to fill out their time. He believed that the 
 incumbent of the papacy was really supreme over 
 kings ; and he saw that, not for a hundred and 
 fifty years, had any proud claim of spiritual 
 autocracy been made in Rome. Nay, he read 
 the long and desolate story how the strength of 
 the church had been wasted in external and civil 
 quarrels, as well as drained by inward vice. Ger- 
 man emperors had set up popes to serve their 
 ends, and Italian counts, or the Roman rabble, 
 had pulled them down again. Popes had been 
 exiled, as Germany or Italy conquered in the con- 
 tinual and vacillating strife. Popes had been 
 strangled in Roman dungeons. Popes had been 
 starved. Laymen had openly bought the awful 
 office from brigands. Popes had stolen the treas- 
 ures of St. Peter, and run off to Constantinople. 
 Popes had ruled so outrageously that their bodies 
 were seized after death by an infuriated populace, 
 dragged through the streets, and transfixed with 
 lances. " More than twenty in a century had illus- 
 trated thus the anthology of crime, misery, and 
 degradation; and at last, in Hildebrand's own 
 time, while he was studying those annals in 
 Cluny, a boy pope twelve years old was mas- 
 ter of the spiritual sceptre, and was beginning 
 to lead a life so shameful, foul, and execrable, that 
 a subsequent pope has said he "shuddered to 
 describe it." 
 
Hildebrand. 199 
 
 But the wider the darkness and the more fright- 
 ful the degradation, the more intensely does the 
 conviction possess the soul of Hildebrand that 
 the church must be reformed. The evils of the 
 times must be smitten at their root. The practice 
 of the feudal lofds, who were laymen, of selling 
 the offices of the church, or of nominating to 
 them at their own pleasure, must be prohibited. 
 This evil was called "simony," from Simon 
 Magus, who, the book of Acts tells us, tried to buy 
 of St. Peter the power of working miracles, 
 supposing that the Holy Ghost was a purchasable 
 commodity. 
 
 And second, the marriage of the clergy must 
 be annulled, and their wives instantly put away. 
 The laws of the church before the eleventh cen- 
 tury had decreed that the clergy must be unmarried 
 men. But they wefe not heeded. Throughout 
 Europe, at the commencement of the eleventh 
 century, the priests who had not wives and fam- 
 ilies were the exceptions. To strike with energy 
 at two such customs, interwoven so variously and 
 so minutely with the passions of the world, must 
 task the stoutest statesmanship, and must wrench 
 the framework of the whole Catholic organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 But how shall Hildebrand be able to attempt 
 it ? In the year 1048, thirty-five years old, he is 
 still a monk in Cluny. He had been concerned 
 with one movement of reform in Rome, but it 
 had fallen through, and he has returned to be 
 
20O Hildebrand. 
 
 prior of the monastery. Filled with passion for 
 the purity and power of the church, what can he 
 do with his genius, his learning, his power as a 
 preacher, his terrible eye in his fleshless frame, 
 against the ruthless villanies and the chronic 
 vices that are disgracing and devastating Christen- 
 dom ? 
 
 The opportunity for his service offered itself in 
 an unsuspected way. In the year 1048 a new 
 pope had been appointed by the German em- 
 peror, who was to take the title of Leo the Ninth, 
 a model of priestly purity and excellence. On 
 his way to Rome, travelling with great pomp, as 
 some of the records run, he stopped for rest at 
 the monastery of Cluny. He met Hildebrand. 
 Their short interviews were long enough for the 
 mind of the monk to work its spell over the im- 
 pressible and feebler nature of Leo, and the Pope 
 invited him to join his retinue, and live with him 
 in Rome. Hildebrand refused to go, unless the 
 pope would lay aside his pomp, travel as a pil- 
 grim, and count himself unconfirmed in his great 
 office until the clergy and people of Rome should 
 have assented to the nomination of the emperor. 
 To consider himself as pope merely by virtue 
 of an imperial nomination, Hildebrand assured 
 the bishop, was to go to Rome as an apostate, 
 and not as an apostle. Leo yielded to his terms. 
 The whole retinue left Cluny as pilgrim-travellers. 
 Hildebrand shut the door of that French mon- 
 astery a second time behind him, turned his face, 
 
Hildebrand. 201 
 
 in company with that cowled and barefoot band, 
 toward the Eternal City, and becomes the central 
 figure of the passions and polity of Europe in the 
 eleventh century, the master-spirit in the his- 
 tory of the Holy Catholic Church. The legends 
 assure us that celestial music floated over that 
 party as they journeyed to Rome, and that mir- 
 acles waited upon their steps, attesting the joy of 
 heaven and earth over the new era that had 
 dawned upon the church. 
 
 During the six years of Leo's pontificate, Hil- 
 debrand held complete sway over his policy and 
 mind. When Leo died, it was by the masterly 
 art of Hildebrand, foiling the emperor's wishes, 
 that a successor was chosen, best fitted of all liv- 
 ing bishops to carry out his high-church views. 
 And when he died, another, and, beyond the 
 third, a fourth, was clothed with the papal office, 
 in accordance with his own wishes, till we come 
 to Alexander I., the fifth pope nominated through 
 the influence of Hildebrand, and pledged to his 
 principles of reform. Swiftly he rises from office 
 to office ; he is cardinal-deacon, cardinal-arch- 
 deacon, legate to France, imperial legate, and, at 
 last, chancellor of the Holy See, an office next 
 in rank to the papacy itself. There is continual 
 evidence through these years of a masterly, per- 
 sistent, organizing mind in Rome, pledging the 
 power of the short-lived popes to a great con- 
 structive work. His messengers are flying from 
 kingdom to kingdom, spinning the web of his 
 9* 
 
2O2 Hildebrand. 
 
 polity over every state. Edict after edict appears 
 against the marriage of the clergy ; the sale of the 
 church offices by laymen, and the purchase of 
 place by the clergy, are visited with the anathema 
 of Rome ; and, more important, perhaps, for the 
 moment, than both, the power of appointing to 
 the papacy is wrested from the emperor and 
 lodged with the college of cardinals, a revolu- 
 tion whose effects are visible in the order of papal 
 elections now. He worked so fast that the ene- 
 mies of his policy were confounded. One who 
 felt his power, and who had no love for him, said : 
 " The small sinewy tiger distances all arrows by 
 his speed." 
 
 Hildebrand, however, during those years, is sel- 
 dom prominent in the annals of the active stage, 
 although we do see him, for once, as legate in 
 France, presiding over a council to inquire into 
 charges against bishops for purchasing their of- 
 fices ; one scene of which is dramatic and strik- 
 ing. A bishop who was on trial before him, 
 arid who was known to have bought his dignitf, 
 had bribed his accusers over night, and then the 
 next day proudly challenged in the court-room 
 any evidence to his damage. There was silence. 
 Hildebrand was confident of his guilt, and said 
 to him, with an expression of sorrow, " Do you 
 believe that the Holy Spirit is of the same sub- 
 stance as the Father and the Son 1" " I do," was 
 the response. " Then," Hildebrand continued, 
 fixing his eye upon him, " say the Gloria Patri." 
 
Hildebrand. 203 
 
 The bishop commenced, but could not speak the 
 words "the Holy Spirit, v while that wintry eye 
 was piercing him, though he tried three times. 
 Then he cast himself at the feet of Hildebrand, 
 confessed his crime, was degraded from his office, 
 and immediately found the power to pronounce 
 the words that had fettered his tongue. 
 
 But this personal magnetism of Hildebrand was, 
 for the most part, used in Rome to control the 
 nominal rulers of Christendom, and to dictate 
 through them the policy of the church. For 
 twenty-five years he was thus the power behind 
 the throne, greater than the throne. Popes were 
 his speaking-trumpets. The anathemas of coun- 
 cils were the language of his passion, and revolu- 
 tionary decrees the wings of his ideas. He was 
 called the " lord of the lord pope." While Alex- 
 ander II. was in power one of Hildebrand's 
 friends wrote to him, " You made him pope ; he 
 made you a god." In these twenty-five years 
 more had been done to detach the church, as an 
 institution, from the state, and to knit its fibres 
 as a permanent and progressive organization, than 
 in the two preceding centuries. 
 
 In 1073 Alexander II., an easy, pleasure-loving, 
 pompous man, the last of six popes who had been 
 under the influence of Hildebrand, died. The 
 monk of Cluny, who was thirty-five years old 
 when he left the monastery, was now sixty. He 
 was conducting the funeral service over the de- 
 parted pontiff, in the Lateran church, when the 
 
204 Hildebrand. 
 
 solemnities were interrupted by the shouts of the 
 people, shouts which- his enemies say he had 
 paid for with gold, " St. Peter chooses the 
 archdeacon Hildebrand for pope." A cardinal 
 sprang forward and exclaimed, " Ye know well, 
 brethren, that since the days of Leo this tried 
 and prudent archdeacon has exalted the Roman 
 See, and delivered this city from many perils. 
 Wherefore we the bishops and cardinals elect him 
 now, with one mind, as the pastor and bishop of 
 your souls." The speaker's voice was lost amid 
 wild cries from the crowd, " It is the will of St. 
 Peter ; Hildebrand is pope." The scarlet robe 
 and the papal crown were brought out ; and the 
 son of a Tuscan carpenter, the bowed and shriv- 
 elled monk of Cluny, the man whose head held 
 a more audacious scheme of ecclesiastical author- 
 ity than any pope had ever dreamed before, was 
 led, as the story runs, reluctant and in tears, to 
 St. Peter's chair, with the title " Gregory the 
 Seventh." 
 
 We may well believe that he was reluctant to 
 assume that mitre. His very consciousness of 
 superior fitness for it, the breadth, austerity, and 
 splendor of his conception of what the pope and 
 the church should be, must have made him recoil 
 from the obligations and labors which that robe 
 and that crown would impose upon his mind. 
 How, out of an ignorant clergy, a debased, cor- 
 rupted, licentious clergy, how, out of bishops, 
 the majority of whom were tainted by having pur- 
 
Hildebrand. 205 
 
 chased their positions with gold, how, against 
 princes, kings, and emperors who denied the 
 supremacy of the papacy over their thrones, and 
 were held to spiritual allegiance to the church 
 only by their fears, should he, bowed with labors 
 and beginning to bend with years, be able to 
 build up the great edifice of a church whose 
 walls should enclose every kingdom of Europe, 
 and before whose altar kings should kneel in rev- 
 erence, to hear their disputes adjusted by author- 
 ity, to be condemned for disobedience, and to 
 receive their crowns ? This was his vision ; and 
 if he steps into the papacy, he must turn, day 
 after day, from his communion with this dazzling 
 and august conception, to look at the barbarous 
 and unjointed Europe, and the ignorant, lazy, and 
 sensual church, which offer to him the only ma- 
 terial for shaping out and perpetuating the dream ! 
 No wonder that he preferred to be the whispering 
 counsellor in the ears of popes, doing something 
 slowly thus for the great cause, rather than to feel 
 the whole responsibility upon his shoulders, by 
 taking in his own person the office of vicegerent 
 of God ! 
 
 He commended himself with great fervor to the 
 help of St. Peter and the Virgin ; spent a few 
 months, with wily Italian caution, in intrenching 
 his power ; and then struck with frightful energy 
 at the evils within the church that stood in his 
 way. 
 
 First, at the marriage of the clergy. It had 
 
206 Hildebrand. 
 
 been denounced before by the popes whom he 
 controlled ; but now it was as if for the first time 
 the wrestle of a papal idea with a myriad-handed 
 passion had really commenced. He determined 
 to outroot the evil of a married ministry, and to 
 lay the corner-stone of his great structure on a 
 celibate priesthood. He forbade the people to 
 attend mass where his edict was not obeyed, or 
 to receive any service from any married priest. 
 " Their prayer is sin," he said ; " their blessing 
 will be to you a curse." He allowed no time for 
 dallying with the law. Men that were devoted to 
 their families must instantly give them up. Mar- 
 riages sanctified by the tenderest love and the 
 sweetest domestic happiness were placed under 
 the same ban with connections looser and impure. 
 In Italy, France, and Germany the bishops and 
 priests were stirred almost to madness. Councils 
 broke up in mobs, and the lives of legates were 
 scarcely saved. The clergy quoted Scripture 
 against the infallible head of the church. In 
 many cases, doubtless, it was all the Scripture 
 they were familiar with ; just as now we find a 
 very general acquaintance with the injunction to 
 take a little wine for the stomach's sake among 
 men who would be puzzled to know where to look 
 for it, or to tell whether it was said by Moses, Job, 
 .or Judas. Peter, they said, was married; Paul 
 did not forbid it to the clergy ; Jesus left it op- 
 tional. They howled in councils the charge to 
 Timothy, " The bishop must be sober, the husband 
 
Hildebrand. 207 
 
 of one wife." They insisted that they would re- 
 nounce their priesthood sooner than their mar- 
 riage vow. "If the pope is not satisfied with men 
 to serve the churches, let him turn us out," they 
 said, "and then find angels for his purposes." 
 
 His missionaries were frightened, and pressed 
 him to abate his rigor. But no expostulations 
 availed with the steel-handed prelate who ruled in 
 Rome. The miseries of the poor women, wives 
 of the priests, who were condemned by his de- 
 crees as infamous and abandoned, the tidings of 
 how they killed themselves as their homes were 
 invaded and broken up, did not move him. He 
 played for an idea, a system, a future. He knew 
 that he had a party in the church, though in the 
 minority, which was devoted to him as the hand 
 to the brain ; he believed that he could rely upon 
 the help of the people, by exciting them to spir- 
 itual rebellion against disobedient priests ; and he 
 determined to carry the measure through, though 
 Europe was in an uproar, and the church was 
 rocking. He was cruel, as a revolutionary intel- 
 lect, when at work, is always cruel ; because its 
 ideas are not framed with any regard to the way 
 in which human affections are inwoven with an 
 imperfect social organization. 
 
 We will not ask the reader to consider the wis- 
 dom or the righteousness of this movement. We 
 have only to say, seeing how cold and how fierce 
 Christian theology has been "thus far in history, 
 Heaven save us from such theology as we should 
 
208 Hildebrand. 
 
 have if all the teachers of it were to be forever 
 strangers to the duties and sanctities of home ; 
 if the doctrine of God the Father were to be 
 perpetually intrusted to the interpretation of men 
 who know nothing of parental yearnings, sacri- 
 fices, and joys; if the hands of little children were 
 never laid upon the grim features of a monkish 
 creed ! 
 
 More self-denial has been exhibited in the 
 Protestant order of a married clergy than the 
 Catholic system nourishes or admits. The mili- 
 tary hardships and fidelity of the Jesuits in their 
 missionary enterprises look more dramatic; but 
 the life-long, uncomplaining wrestle with poverty 
 by the hearthstone, which is the general law with 
 the Protestant ministry of our country now, and 
 the bloom of the sternest virtues and the gentlest 
 graces in such ungenial circumstances, are a more 
 precious contribution to the glory of the Gospel 
 than the average character of a drilled celibate 
 priesthood can ever show. Had Hildebrand's 
 idea been the law for all Christendom, the church 
 would have lost from the army of her martyrs the 
 wives of the poor modern Protestant clergy, who 
 will largely swell the number of those who are 
 made perfect through suffering, and go through 
 much tribulation into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Turn the eye for a moment from the righteous- 
 ness of Hildebrand's movement, and raise the 
 question of its success. Look at the Catholic 
 priesthood and hierarchy to-day. So far as the 
 
Hildebrand, 209 
 
 strength of a church, such as he dreamed of, is 
 concerned, the policy of his terrible decree is in- 
 terpreted at once, when we ask ourselves how 
 much weaker the Romish system and hierarchy 
 would be if their priesthood were not, as now, an 
 01 der in the world and yet not of it ; if they were 
 bound by domestic and social ties with the life 
 and passions of the communities which they serve; 
 if the whole energies of their nature were not, as 
 by the present system they are compelled to be, 
 pledged to the power and glory of the church, 
 and trained along those subtle trellises that lead 
 from every hamlet and every city directly to St. 
 Peter's and the Vatican ! It may be of interest 
 to many of those who are devoted to the cause of 
 women's rights to learn that two women, prin- 
 cesses of Italy, were invited, by a letter from 
 Hildebrand, to preside over the deliberations of 
 that council that did so much to dishonor woman- 
 hood by making the acceptance of the family bond 
 and order a sin in every official servant of Him 
 whose first miracle was wrought at a marriage 
 feast. 
 
 While Europe was in turmoil from the effects 
 of that decree, Hildebrand struck a blow, still 
 more startling, at simony in the church, and at 
 the temporal power over spiritual officers. He 
 not only denounced all who had paid money for 
 their places, and deposed them, but he astonished 
 the world with the edict that " if any person ac- 
 cepts any bishopric, or office of abbot, or any 
 
2 1 o Hildebrand. 
 
 lower spiritual rank, from the hands of a layman, 
 he shall not be regarded as a bishop, or an abbot," 
 or a clergyman ; while every individual of the laity, 
 be he king or emperor, who bestows investiture 
 in connection with such office, shall be excluded 
 from church communion." Remember that the 
 abbots and bishops in the Middle Ages were not 
 only officers of the church, but were also tem- 
 poral princes. They held lands, forests, castles, 
 and serfs. They were prominent supporters of 
 the civil and royal order of society. The claim 
 of Gregory, therefore, that they should be nomi- 
 nated in every country only from Rome, and 
 should receive their badges of power from the 
 sovereign pontiff, was nothing less than a social 
 revolution. It made every bishop and priest de- 
 pendent at once upon the papacy. It struck from 
 the monarchy of every country its wealthiest and 
 most learned adherents. It put half the land, 
 and more than half the wealth, of Europe at once 
 in the control of the pope. Carry out this plan, 
 and the sacerdotal power is instantly a kingdom 
 within all other kingdoms, as distinct from the 
 body politic as a cancer is distinct from the frame 
 in which it runs, and perhaps as deadly, by its 
 steady absorption, to the forces of the body's life. 
 Gregory put all his passion and firmness into 
 this movement, as he did into the edicts against 
 concubinage. And here again, if we wish to 
 know the permanent influence of Hildebrand, we 
 may ask the question, Who appoints Cardinal 
 
Hildebrand. 211 
 
 Wiseman to England, nominates the head of the 
 church in France, invests the Archbishop of New 
 York, or designates the Metropolitan at Balti- 
 more ? The arm of that crooked monk of Cluny 
 reaches down eight hundred years, affecting our 
 society, and keeping alive an interest in his 
 schemes in our politics. With that decree began 
 a long and strenuous wrestle between the papacy 
 and the temporal power, such as the world had 
 not seen before, and has never witnessed since. 
 The Emperor of Germany, Henry the Fourth, 
 was a very young man. He had been badly 
 educated ; was passionate, wilful, and vacillat- 
 ing; and was surrounded by intriguing bishops 
 who slyly encouraged his vices, and by quarrelling 
 nobles who fretted under his authority. Gregory, 
 no doubt, wanted to test and to establish his own 
 principles in Europe by a rupture with the strip- 
 ling monarch. A better opportunity he could 
 not hope for. He had outwitted the father, 
 Henry the Third, a very able ruler, by his diplo- 
 macy ; and he felt, probably, that he could easily 
 overbear the feebler son by the prestige of his 
 office and the energy of his mind. The young 
 emperor showed no zeal in carrying out the new 
 papal decrees against marriage and simony ; and 
 his life was dissolute. Hildebrand wrote to him 
 admonishing him for his crimes, and then, after a 
 while, summoned him to Rome to answer there, 
 before his tribunal, for various and undefined 
 offences. It was a bold step even for a bold pope. 
 
212 Hildebrand. 
 
 Henry instantly replied by a still bolder one. 
 Hildebrand's policy was getting to be intolerable ; 
 it perilled the liberty of priests and prelates as 
 well as kings ; and bishops enough were suddenly 
 collected from Henry's dominions to depose Hil- 
 debrand, by vote of a council, as a licentious 
 priest, a false pope, a cruel tyrant, and a sorcerer. 
 Such was the answer the young ruler sent by a 
 messenger, who delivered it roughly to Gregory's 
 face, as he was presiding over a council, in the 
 year 1076. Hildebrand, we may believe, rejoiced 
 at the insult and the insurrection. It offered him 
 the most splendid temptation to stretch his claims 
 of power to the utmost, to clothe one of the 
 most audacious of his assumptions in a decree. 
 In full council he excommunicated Henry the 
 Emperor, interdicted him from the government 
 of Germany and Italy, and pronounced him de- 
 throned. " I absolve all Christians from the 
 oaths they have sworn or may swear to him ; and 
 forbid all obedience to him as king. I bind him 
 in the bonds of thy anathema ; that all the nations 
 may know and acknowledge that thou art Peter, 
 that upon thy rock the Son of the living God has 
 built his church, and that the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail against it." It was the first time in 
 the history of Christendom that such a sentence 
 had been uttered against a sovereign, the first 
 time that a pope had presumed to strike beyond 
 the soul of a monarch at his temporal crown. 
 Some chroniclers hostile to Gregory relate, in the 
 
Hildebrand, 213 
 
 very spirit of the literature of the Dark Ages, that 
 when the pope took his seat after this awful 
 decree, the chair of St. Peter cracked asunder, 
 though the wood was new and strong, as a type 
 of the social distractions that were to follow that 
 curse. 
 
 On all the bishops, also, who had aided Henry, 
 the terrible edict fell. The Vatican blazed with 
 wrath like Vesuvius, and maledictions spouted in 
 showers from its crater through the sulphurous 
 air. Hildebrand had no soldiers to support his 
 startling pretension. The monks were pledged 
 to him. He was making the first trial of the 
 new machinery of Rome, traditions in place 
 of truth ; priests inviolable ; the recently estab- 
 lished doctrine of transubstantiation ; bishops and 
 abbots proclaimed as independent of secular au- 
 thority ; and through these the mystic sanctity 
 and despotism of the Holy See. His party were 
 in the minority even in the church itself; but he 
 wasted no thought upon the seeming inequality 
 of the struggle. He trusted to the moral effect 
 which a papal decree would carry with it, and to 
 the vigor with which his arm had hurled the 
 doom against the most powerful monarch of 
 Europe. 
 
 Henry affected to despise the judgment of 
 the Vatican ; but he soon found that Hildebrand's 
 anathema was abroad in all the air of Germany, 
 and was slowly corroding the sinews of his 
 strength. It was read in churches ; it crept along 
 
214 Hildtbrand. 
 
 from castle" to castle, from village to village, from 
 house to house, disturbing bishops, making barons 
 uneasy, frightening priests, appalling the people 
 with subtle superstitious dread. Henry might be 
 ruler of the earth ; but Gregory was " prince of 
 the powers of the air." The overarching region 
 of sentiment, the impalpable mental element, 
 obeyed the electric pulses of his mitred genius. 
 One of the prominent princely agents in that 
 insult to the pope died suddenly and mysteri- 
 ously. The cathedral in which the partisans of 
 Henry had excommunicated the pope was struck 
 by lightning. Slowly the combination that had 
 promised to support the monarch crumbled. Prov- 
 inces revolted; bishops stole away to Rome to 
 make their peace with the terrible Hildebrand, 
 and, on their return, would have no intercourse 
 with the emperor. Henry began to feel like a 
 leprous man in his own dominions. In a few 
 months he was almost deserted. 
 
 Gregory had threatened that, unless he made 
 his peace with the church within a year from his 
 sentence, orders should be given to elect a new 
 emperor. The year was fast rolling away. It 
 would close in February of 1077. Midwinter 
 came, and Henry found that there was no hope 
 but in bending before the proud priest who had 
 laid such a spell upon his realm. He must turn 
 his steps towards Italy. He must cross the Alps 
 through winter snows and storms. But even 
 nature was against him, for so bitter a winter had 
 
Hildebrand. 2 1 5 
 
 not been known for years. With his wife and 
 infant son and one attendant, he set out on his 
 journey, and attempted the pass of Mont Cenis. 
 
 Is there any other scene so impressive in the 
 secular history of the world ? The Emperor of 
 Germany toiling up the white and slippery preci- 
 pices of Switzerland, clinging to the shoulders of 
 the guide, creeping down the sides of icy ravines 
 on his hands and knees, or rolling along the 
 steeper declivities at the peril of his life, and 
 seeing his queen and infant drawn up and let 
 down by the mountaineers in great bags made 
 of the skins of oxen, in order that, by personal 
 humiliation and penance, the deadly spell might 
 be revoked, which the words of a monk, sitting 
 in St. Peter's chair, had breathed upon his power, 
 his hopes, and his heart ! Look steadily at that 
 figure of the emperor among the Alpine snows 
 toiling towards Lombardy, for it shows you in 
 one scene the climax of the papal power in the 
 Middle Ages. Rome has no such other monu- 
 ment in its annals as that chilled emperor on the 
 summit of Mont Cenis, drawn from his palace in 
 midwinter by the power of an 'idea! And yet 
 pause, one moment more, to admire something in 
 that scene more lasting and more noble than the 
 power of the Vatican, the love, the patient, 
 forgetful, forgiving love of a woman and a wife ! 
 Henry the Emperor had ill treated the princess 
 who was his companion in that winter journey ; 
 he had neglected her, had been faithless to her, 
 
216 Hildebrand. 
 
 and had striven to be divorced from her. But 
 she was always gentle and faithful amid her 
 wrongs ; and now she clings to him in spite of 
 papal ban and general desertion, yes, though 
 his own mother had forsaken him, and braves 
 the savage Alps with her delicate frame, to show 
 us that there are affections in our nature that will 
 jet out in unselfish heroism, as sublime as any 
 stimulated by ambition or provoked by spiritual 
 fear. 
 
 Hildebrand was at the castle of a faithful friend 
 in Canosa. The emperor arrived at its gate, sup- 
 posing that he should be instantly admitted to the 
 papal presence, that his winter journey would 
 be accepted as a sufficient penance and abase- 
 ment. But the end was not yet ; Hildebrand re- 
 fused to see him. " Let him submit his cause," he 
 said, " to a council in Germany over which I will 
 preside." Eager to make his peace with Gregory, 
 the emperor clothed himself in a thin white linen 
 dress, and, passing through the two outer gates of 
 the castle, stood bareheaded in the snow, on a 
 bleak morning in January, before the inner wall. 
 A second day found him in the same position. 
 The third day he was still there, cold and hun- 
 gry ; for the inner gate, like Hildebrand's heart, 
 was still closed against him. At last he was ad- 
 mitted to the pope, a noble-looking youth, tall 
 and commanding in form, wearing an imperial 
 grace, representing well the kingly idea, before 
 the bent, diminutive, implacable Hildebrand ! The 
 
Hildebmnd. 217 
 
 terms of reconciliation were cautious and severe. 
 The earthly power must be utterly broken before 
 the majesty of the church. Henry yielded to all, 
 in order that the terrible excommunication might 
 be revoked ; and then attended church with the 
 pope, to have his humiliation complete. Having 
 granted him absolution at the altar, Hildebrand 
 took the consecrated wafer, lifted his hands in 
 presence of the crowd, and called on God to 
 strike him at once with his judgment, as he par- 
 took of the Lord's body, if he were guilty of the 
 charges his enemies had made, if his motives 
 were not pure. He ate the wafer, and stood 
 unharmed while the congregation burst forth in 
 cheers. He then offered the same ordeal to the 
 emperor, to test whether his motives had been 
 as clear ; but Henry trembled, and declined the 
 awful test. Hildebrand's victory was thus com- 
 plete, but he had overshot the mark. The young 
 emperor left his presence outwardly humble, in- 
 wardly enraged. 
 
 Instead of peace, therefore, this dramatic tri- 
 umph of Gregory conjured a storm that desolated 
 his later years. Henry broke all the terms of his 
 compact, one by one. The tyranny of Gregory, 
 in that personal interview, was like the point of 
 Ithuriel's spear ; a manly spirit leaped out from 
 Henry's degraded breast which astonished his 
 subjects. He organized, with more energy than 
 he had ever shown before, an- opposition to the 
 man who had trodden upon him so ruthlessly ; 
 10 
 
2 1 8 Hildebrand. 
 
 and even went so far as to depose him once 
 more, and elect another pope in Germany, whom 
 he determined to place by his sword in St. Peter's 
 chair in Rome. Hildebrand consecrated another 
 emperor, who was chosen by a portion of the Ger- 
 mans, in Henry's place ; and so, for several years, 
 the powers of church and state grappled each 
 other in the wrestle for supremacy. 
 
 But Hildebrand's pretensions and schemes were 
 not at all affected by the temporary fortunes of 
 this strife, and went far beyond all that a favor- 
 able issue in the contest with Henry could have 
 secured to him. He styled the council that 
 elected another pope "an assembly of Satan, 
 whose lives are detestable, and whose ordination 
 heretical." Our contempt for them, he says, is 
 in proportion to their seeming elevation. He 
 excommunicates them all. His passions, and the 
 weapons of his adherents, were engaged with one 
 emperor ; his mind was busy with plans of au- 
 thority over all countries and all ages. No vol- 
 umes in literature are so remarkable as his letters, 
 so amazing in the contrast of their pretension 
 to authority with the power to execute it. Time 
 after time, and in the boldest terms, he made the 
 claims that the church must not only be inde- 
 pendent of the civil power, but dominant over it ; 
 that kingdoms were only districts of the papal 
 possessions, and that monarchs were his vassals. 
 Claims that it should seem could be put forth 
 only by a hot brained fanatic in feverish diction, 
 
Hildebrand. 219 
 
 he uttered in cool, square sentences, fortified by 
 logic, and sometimes by historic evidence. He 
 gloated over his title-deeds to nations, and un- 
 rolled them now and then in the face of Europe. 
 The great empire of the West, he contended, it 
 was his to give with the imperial crown ; and so 
 he would never date his letters, as former popes 
 had done, according to the years of the emperor's 
 reign, but by a chronology of his own. Saxony 
 in particular, he pretended, had been given to St. 
 Peter by Charlemagne, who conquered it. Den- 
 mark he claimed, in a letter to its king, and 
 offered, for a consideration, to give him a province 
 occupied by heretics, as an independent domain 
 for one of his children. Twice he made, in form, 
 a claim that Spain belonged to St. Peter before 
 the invasion of the Saracens ; and expressed his 
 preference that it should remain under infidels, 
 rather than under Christian monarchs who would 
 rot submit to his authority. He informed rulers 
 of Sardinia that St. Peter owned their country, and 
 threatened to give it away if they were not more 
 obedient, especially if the archbishop and his 
 clergy did not shave their beards, according to 
 the general Western custom. He informed the 
 King of Hungary that that country belonged to 
 the Roman Church, because the first conqueror 
 of it had sent a lance and a crown to the body 
 of St. Peter. He made the same pretensions to 
 Dalmatia, in a formal letter, and even to Russia, 
 in a missive to King Demetrius. The monarch 
 
22O Hildebrand. 
 
 of France, also, is treated to similar epistles, and 
 Africa he claims as part of his domain. With- 
 out an acre of ground which he could govern by 
 unquestioned personal authority, he looked upon 
 the world as his chess-board, with kings, queens, 
 bishops, and castles as the subordinate instru- 
 ments of his play. The insane man who gave 
 the word of command, " Attention the universe ! 
 By kingdoms, wheel ! " is a feeble symbol of the 
 claims soberly put into literature in the epistles 
 of Gregory VII. 
 
 Even to William the Conqueror of England he 
 held a tone equally high. W 7 hen William was about 
 to start on his invading expedition, Hildebrand, 
 not then nominally pope, supported his cause in the 
 college of cardinals, sent him a consecrated ban- 
 ner, and also a ring containing, as he pretended, 
 one of the hairs of St. Peter set under a diamond 
 of great price. He commissioned William to 
 bring back that kingdom to obedience to the Holy 
 See, and re-establish forever there the tax of 
 Peter's pence. Only from William the Conqueror 
 in England, however, did he find determined re- 
 sistance to his pretensions, in language as reso- 
 lute as any he used. " I will pay tribute to the 
 church," says the Norman king ; " but I will 
 never swear allegiance. And if any monk of my 
 dominions dares to carry tales to Rome, I will 
 hang him on the highest tree of the forest." 
 
 We cannot but stand in admiration before a 
 scheme of society in which empires become coun- 
 
Hildebrand. 221 
 
 ties of a vast spiritual monarchy ; which shows us 
 a living chain of priests running in rising links 
 from every land till they touch and encircle St. 
 Peter's chair, each of them wearing a sanctity 
 inviolable in every latitude by any ruler ; which 
 abases kings as the lieutenants of the great spirit- 
 ual Caliph ; which promises to do away with war, 
 in providing that all disputes between countries 
 and rulers shall be settled by a word from the 
 man whose blessing is the only virtue of a crown. 
 Futile as such a dream must be, we cannot but 
 admire the proportions of its vision ; we cannot 
 but revere the intellect that could feel it as its 
 inspiration ; could pour the life of logic and im- 
 agination into it ; could calmly collect its almost 
 superhuman energies to intrench it on the earth ; 
 and, above all, that could retreat within the ma- 
 jestic symmetry of it as a solace in time of 
 trouble ! 
 
 Hildebrand was serene amid his greatest diffi- 
 culties ; his calmness was unshaken ; his hopes 
 never flickered ; his confidence in his mission and 
 the majesty of his office never failed. When 
 Henry turned against him the second time, 
 when civil war was waging around him, he says in 
 one of his prayers to Jesus, "if you had imposed 
 such burdens as mine upon Moses or Peter, I 
 believe they would have been overwhelmed." 
 But then he says again, " When the good Jesus 
 stretches out his hand towards me I am filled with 
 joy." His enemies said he was in constant inter- 
 
222 Hildebrand. 
 
 course with demons, and that his power was from 
 them ; but he supported himself, he affirmed, by 
 the help which the Virgin mother vouchsafed to 
 him, and by his confidence in the righteousness 
 and triumph of his cause. 
 
 As difficulties increased around him his spirit 
 mounted, and the rhetoric grows more intense in 
 which he vindicates his scheme. When affairs 
 went against his party in Germany, as they did at 
 last, and Henry passed the Alps, not, as before, 
 a suppliant for his pardon, but with an army to 
 inaugurate another pope in his stead, so far 
 from listening to any terms, he writes to the 
 bishops who deny his power to absolve subjects 
 from their duty to a monarch, " What are kings 
 and princes if they do not live as Christians ? 
 They are slaves of demons. Every exorcist has 
 power over demons, and so over them. And if 
 exorcists have this power, how much more the 
 great bishops of the church ? Can a king baptize ? 
 Can a king make the body and blood of Christ 
 by a word ? Does not a king on his death-bed 
 implore a priest to save him from the eternal 
 dungeon of hell ? Nay, kingship itself is only an 
 invasion of the natural equality of man, ordained 
 by Providence on account of human wickedness. 
 It has no inherent, eternal sanctity. Good Chris- 
 tians, of the lowest rank, deserve to be esteemed 
 as kings more than bad princes. The first are 
 members of Jesus Christ ; the second are limbs 
 of the Devil." Well may a church historian ask, 
 
Hildebrand. 223 
 
 concerning these sentences, "Are we reading a 
 journalist of Paris in 1791?" 
 
 Such was the spirit of all Gregory's answers to 
 the suggestion of compromise with his foes. Even 
 when Henry held part of Rome, and Gregory 
 was shut up in the castle of Angelo, his only 
 terms were, " Let the emperor yield, and acknowl- 
 edge my authority as the lord of princes, and I 
 will pardon him even now ! " But he was forced 
 to see from his castle a procession pass to the 
 great church in the Eternal City, headed by Henry 
 the Fourth, to inaugurate the antipope. Yes, 
 another scene, alas ! more terrible, was to pass 
 before his eye. Some Norman troops came to 
 his relief; drove the soldiers of Henry from the 
 city ; delivered the pope from his imprisonment ; 
 but pillaged, sacked, and burned the city. Thou- 
 sands of the Romans were sold publicly as slaves. 
 He calmly celebrated mass and performed mir- 
 acles as was said in the Lateran church 
 while the city was in flames, and the blood of the 
 innocent population was flowing in brooks around 
 him. Neither Goth nor Vandal, it has been said, 
 neither Greek nor German, brought such desola- 
 tion upon Rome as this capture by the Normans, 
 who rescued the pope. Hildebrand began his 
 career as a thinker in the quiet of the monastery 
 of Cluny, looking out upon its peaceful and cul- 
 tivated grounds ; he closed his course by flying 
 from the city which he thought to make the spirit- 
 ual capital of the world, ravaged and stained with 
 
224 Hildebrand. 
 
 fire, as the witness of what those principles had 
 done in his lifetime which he dreamed over in 
 his early years. 
 
 From Rome he hastened to Salerno in Italy, 
 to breathe a quiet air before he passed away. He 
 published edicts forbidding laymen to touch con- 
 secrated vessels, ordering an unequal number of 
 signs to be made to indicate the mystery of the 
 Trinity, and wrote again to William the Con- 
 queror, urging him to set his imprisoned brother 
 at liberty, because he had respected priests, who, 
 said Gregory in his missive, are " the pupil of the 
 eye of Jesus Christ!" In 1085, when he was 
 seventy-two years old, he sank to rest. On his 
 death-bed he was asked if he wished to pardon any 
 who were under his condemnation. He breathed 
 his character in the reply : " I absolve and 
 bless all those who believe that I have the power 
 to do it, except Henry the emperor, the antipope, 
 and their adherents." Against them his fearful 
 excommunication must stand. His last words 
 were : " I have loved justice and hated iniquity ; 
 therefore I die in exile." The Catholic writers 
 tell of miracles that have frequently been wrought 
 at his tomb. In 1577 his entire remains, with 
 the pontifical ornaments, were found in Salerno ; 
 but it was not till 1609 that his name was entered 
 as a saint, and allowed to be honored by a public 
 office in the church he served. 
 
 The dying curse of Gregory upon Henry pre- 
 served its vitality more than twenty years. His 
 
Hildebmnd. 225 
 
 death was a tragic one ; for his son rebelled 
 against him, that son whom his wife had carried 
 in her arms over the Alpine ice : and in the midst 
 of civil war he died of a broken heart. But his 
 body was refused honorable burial. Under the 
 condemnation of the church in life, bishops re- 
 fused to let him sleep in consecrated ground ; and 
 it was only after five years of contention that he 
 was laid away in the vaults of his ancestors. 
 
 Hildebrand belongs in the list of the world's 
 great men. He had a mind competent to con- 
 ceive a vast constructive scheme of society, the 
 first movements to establish which must be revo- 
 lutions ; and he had the courage to start the 
 revolutions, not from any love of discord, but as 
 believing that the world would gain by the higher 
 order and peace that would be permanently in- 
 stituted. His ambition seems to have had little 
 personal appetite for power in it. He lived in his 
 ideas ; and his ambition was for the sway of the 
 principle of which he happened to be the supreme 
 servant. Among all the great men that have 
 pledged their thought and power to the polity of 
 the Catholic Church, he is undoubtedly the impe- 
 rial intellect ; he saw in largest outline and most 
 sublime proportions the majesty of that invisible 
 kingdom which, for centuries, the genius of Ca- 
 tholicism has toiled with uncomplaining, wily, and 
 persistent energy to establish in the earth. He 
 stands out the ablest man of the eleventh century, 
 indeed of several successive centuries, without a 
 10* o 
 
226 Hildebmnd. 
 
 second to divide with him the claim for breadth 
 of mind and mental courage. 
 
 He stands, also, above his age by his superi- 
 ority to many of the superstitions and to the fanati- 
 cism of his period. He was widely accused of 
 sorcery ; and yet, in a letter to the King of Den- 
 mark, he urged him to put a stop to the abuse 
 of persecuting innocent women as witches. He 
 believed in the absolute power of the church over 
 souls; and he protested against the abuse of 
 pardoning a single sin for mere outward penance, 
 or on any other conditions than heartfelt sorrow 
 and reform. He was educated a monk \ and he 
 lamented bitterly over the unfaithfulness of 
 Christendom, as seen in the crowds that sought 
 the quiet life of the monasteries, contrasted with 
 the few who were willing to take up the harder 
 and nobler task of fidelity to truth in the duties 
 of the world. He reproved the Abbot of Cluny 
 for receiving a duke within its shades, who wished 
 to lead a pious life, instead of urging him to 
 continue at his post ; " for thus," he says, " my 
 brother, you have left a hundred thousand Chris- 
 tians without their natural protector, and have 
 gained only a single monk." He believed in 
 loyalty to the church ; and yet he could write 
 these words : " To aid the unfortunate and op- 
 pressed, from love of God, I consider more than 
 fasting, prayer, vigils, and other good works, be 
 they ever so many ; for true love is more than 
 the other virtues." There is reason to believe 
 
Hildebrand. 227 
 
 also that he was not wholly sound on the Catholic 
 dogma of transubstantiation, that his powerful 
 intellect saw through the grossness of that su- 
 perstition which had hardened in a barbarous 
 age. 
 
 As to the success of his labors. We must re- 
 member that he played for the future, and for an 
 institution. No great institution rises in history 
 except out of a soul which is the acorn of it. No 
 speculation ever germinates of itself into a fact. 
 Plato's fancied republic has been fruitless and 
 harmless. It is an idea incarnate in a man, 
 heated by his passions, swelling in all the veins 
 of his personality, that strikes root in history; 
 and that " corn is not quickened, except it die." 
 Hildebrand was planted, and the Catholic polity 
 rose out of his grave. His first victory over 
 Henry was premature, and his subsequent defeat 
 was not fatal. His mitre worked miracles, the 
 legends say, after he died. He began to live after 
 he died. The great contest raged after his eyes 
 were closed. The marriage of the clergy was 
 dishonored in the Catholic Church in all after- 
 time by his uncompromising denunciation ; and, in 
 another generation, the emperor yielded the right 
 of investing any churchman with the symbols of 
 office, and granted freedom of election. A little 
 moie than a century later beheld Pope Innocent 
 III. practically as supreme in Europe as Hilde- 
 brand's policy would have asked. He left the 
 church in the gristle ; it hardened into bone. 
 
228 Hildebrand. 
 
 As to the good this man accomplished, we must 
 give a divided judgment. So far as he has helped 
 to suppress liberty of thought, through the 
 strength and skill of the pressure which the Cath- 
 olic hierarchy lays upon it now, he has proved an 
 enemy to his race. But so far as he helped to 
 confirm, in the Middle Ages, the power of the 
 papacy, and build up the unity of Latin Christen- 
 dom, he did an immense service ; for only thus 
 were the bonds of order knit through a society 
 that would otherwise have dissolved : only thus 
 was learning preserved through the Latin tongue, 
 that was kept alive as the language of religion ; 
 only thus was " a bridge thrown over the chaos 
 between ancient and modern civilization." 
 
 The central error of Hildebrand's system and 
 life was that of confounding Christianity with any 
 visible institution of the earth. Men are insensibly 
 seduced into methods as worldly as his, betrayed 
 into passions as violent, and tempted to schemes 
 as bloody, by starting with the idea that Chris- 
 tianity must wear a visible body on the earth, 
 and be served with outward implements. If we 
 lodge our hopes of the Gospel in the success of 
 any one proud institution, we shall find all the 
 impurities, all the vices, and essentially all the 
 crimes, that belong to the earthly man, vitiating 
 the stream that flows from it, just as we have 
 found it in the Catholic Church ; because an 
 institution having rank, honors, and wealth at its 
 disposal will be managed by the earthly side, the 
 
Hildebrand. 229 
 
 unregenerate forces, of human nature. The king- 
 dom of God cometh not with observation. 
 
 There is such a thing possible as a universal 
 church. It exists now upon the earth. It is the 
 salt, it is the life-blood, of civilization. Its fibres 
 run across the boundaries of kingdoms ; it holds 
 the Christian world in unity. It has its outward 
 institutions, though they are not such as the monk 
 of Cluny dreamed of; it has its laws and min- 
 isters, though there is no order, such as he pre- 
 scribed, in their coming and their rank. It is not 
 a Catholic polity, nor an Episcopal one, nor a 
 Presbyterian one, no, nor all systems and hier- 
 archies combined. Its buildings and trophies rise 
 out of the silent pressures, through public senti- 
 ment and private hearts, of the spirit of the Gospel. 
 Hospitals, asylums, and schools of reform are 
 dots in the landscape of its power, though no 
 papal voice, or decree of council, called them 
 into being. Every church built out of the desire 
 of worship is a symbol of its sway. Every work 
 of art, showing how religion has refined and in- 
 spired the taste for beauty, is a graceful proof of 
 its dominion. Every school that springs from a 
 conviction of the worth of man and his right to 
 education is a witness of its vitality. Every law 
 that ordains justice over the clamorous interests 
 of a class is a confession of its majesty. The 
 affections that elevate and sweeten and hallow 
 home, and the charities that flow out of mellow 
 hearts to the needy, are streams of its life and 
 
230 Hildebrand. 
 
 promises of its triumph. Try to organize Chris- 
 tianity within one line of agencies, under the 
 patronage of earthly power, and you kill it, or 
 corrupt it. Unharness it, let it work free as 
 an elemental force the spirit that bloweth 
 where it listeth, and you have the leaven in the 
 meal, with its prophecy of quickening for the 
 whole lump. And when, at last, by its secret 
 agency through invisible veins, and in impalpable 
 ways, when, far on in a century whose distance 
 we cannot calculate as yet, the spirit of the Gospel 
 shall have poured itself through the trunk and in 
 all the boughs of humanity, sending justice as 
 the organic fibre, and charity as the sweet juice, 
 from the lowest root to the topmost leaf of society, 
 then will the hope of the world be fulfilled ; then 
 will the scheme over which Hildebrand of Cluny 
 mused and prayed be realized in a form higher 
 than he or his stormy age could have conceived ; 
 for then shall the promise and prophecy of Hil- 
 debrand's Master, the true Lord of the church, be 
 completed in history, and the mustard-seed appear 
 in the developed tree, where the birds come to 
 lodge and sing with joy. 
 
VI. 
 
 MUSIC, 
 
 I HAVE thought, ladies and gentlemen, that I 
 could not more fitly discharge the duty with 
 which your committee have honored me, than by 
 bringing to you a brief address upon music. 
 
 I must throw myself at once upon your indul- 
 gence as critics, by confessing that, in the great 
 temple of harmony, my worship is offered in the 
 court of the Gentiles. Yet it is not without the 
 profoundest reverence towards the inner enclosures 
 that guard the Holy of Holies, nor without the 
 most burning desire to be a " Hebrew of the He- 
 brews," in order to gain the privilege of penetrat- 
 ing to the central recess, and bowing at the most 
 sacred shrine. 
 
 If I should acknowledge to you in advance that 
 I do not practically know a note of music, it will 
 not be the first time, perhaps you will think, that 
 a clergyman has ventured dogmatically upon top- 
 ics which he has not mastered, though perhaps 
 you may be inclined to give me credit for an hon- 
 esty in confession that is somewhat rare. 
 
 A friend of mine is fond of telling the story of a 
 
232 Music. 
 
 minister who preached a thrilling discourse under 
 three heads, which he had thus arranged : " Un- 
 der the first head, I shall speak of matters, breth- 
 ren, with which we are all acquainted ; under the 
 second head, of those parts of the subject of which 
 I know something, and you are ignorant ; under 
 the third head, of matters about which we none 
 of us know anything at all." And they say that 
 he was most interesting and eloquent under the 
 third head. 
 
 And yet it seems to me that there is room for 
 a man, who comes under the third head so far as 
 the science of harmony is concerned, to speak 
 without arrogance and assumption, in a literary 
 way, of music as a force, an advantage, a privilege, 
 and a joy, just as a man may describe his de- 
 light in landscape, and enlarge upon the pleasures 
 of a refined and sensitive taste for natural beauty, 
 who knows nothing of the science of the sun-ray, 
 or the chemistry of grass, or the subtle magic by 
 which the evening symphony of color is executed 
 upon the hills. 
 
 There are two prominent channels of commu- 
 nication with the outward world, the eye and the 
 ear. Their mysteries of structure, action, and 
 office are about equally marvellous. 
 
 They are both made to respond to vibrations. 
 The first catches and measures the pulses of that 
 wondrous ether, immeasurably more delicate than 
 our atmosphere, whose shaking it is that produces 
 light. The other detects and interprets the vibra- 
 
Music. 233 
 
 tions that travel to the mind as sound. The founda- 
 tion of all art lies in the fact that the two eyes are a 
 stereoscope. So far as the senses are concerned, 
 things are shown to us double and upside down ; 
 the mind sees them single and right side up. So 
 two waves of vibration break through our ears 
 upon the brain ; yet they fall in perfect time 
 and are reported as one sound to the spirit that 
 rides thus its double set of senses through the 
 marvels of the world. 
 
 One of the striking wonders connected with the 
 science of vision is the power which the eye has 
 of seeing several colors in the landscape or a pic- 
 ture and receiving one impression of symmetry and 
 beauty. Each hue is caused by a certain fixed 
 number of vibrations upon the eye, of inconceivable 
 swiftness. To get the sensation of redness the 
 retina must be affected a certain number of mil- 
 lions of times in a second. A violet ray, or a yel- 
 low one, affects the retina a different number of 
 millions of times in a second. And therefore to en- 
 joy a glorious view in nature, or a triumph of art on 
 canvas, where blue and gold and purple are mi- 
 gled, the eye must be played upon incessantly by 
 different sets of vibrations , and yet be quick 
 enough in its reports to hold the colors distinct 
 for the inspection and enjoyment of the mind. 
 
 A kindred marvel is connected with the ear. 
 Each object in nature is endowed with a peculiar 
 power of influencing the air by vibrations. The 
 ear is delicate enough in its sensibility to distin- 
 
234 Music. 
 
 guish this whole gamut of the voices of things ; 
 and when fifty different instruments, or several 
 stops in a leviathan organ, are pouring sheets of 
 braided vibrations through its narrow tunnel upon 
 its drum, it is not overpowered, but analyzes them, 
 trembles to the most subtile pulsations that thrill 
 through the surges of tone, detects whether the 
 instruments or pipes are properly balanced and 
 combined, and enables the mind to discern the 
 grade of the sentiment and the degrees of genius 
 that dispose and vitalize all. We are sometimes 
 asked to admire the power of Caesar, who could 
 dictate to six scribes at once. In the cultured 
 musical ear listening to a symphony, we have the 
 phenomenon of some threescore reporters talk- 
 ing at once to an inward Caesar, who yet rapidly 
 combines their incessant speech into orderly in- 
 formation, and is free to respond also with his 
 imagination and heart to the quality inspiring, 
 pathetic, or amusing of the news they bring. 
 
 The eye is the channel of more direct intro- 
 duction to the intellect; the ear- is the broad 
 highway to the heart of man. It is a suggestive 
 fact in the pathology of afflictions, that total 
 blindness tends rather to refine the character 
 and make the life more spiritual. It sharpens 
 the other senses, and makes them atone in some 
 degree for the loss of light. Total deafness tends, 
 on the contrary, to harden the nature, to make it 
 suspicious, and rather to impair than increase the 
 energy of the sister senses. This is the tendency, 
 
Music. 235 
 
 not always the result, for inward sweetness and 
 nobleness will often counteract and conquer the 
 drift of obstacles and infirmities. 
 
 But in this tendency do we not find a striking 
 testimony to the value of music ? We can spare the 
 eye better than the ear in education. Sound is 
 closer to the soul as a stimulating influence than 
 light and color. The eye is the gateway to the intel- 
 lect ; the ear is the avenue to the sentiments that 
 are the glory of our nature. There could be a 
 heaven without light, but not without song, not 
 without love and praise. The cherubim may have 
 the keener eyes ; but the seraphim, no doubt, have 
 the sweeter voices and the more delicate ear. 
 
 In an article contributed several years ago to 
 an English review by a living essayist, Reason 
 and Faith were represented in a charming alle- 
 gory as two sisters who had each been visited 
 with a sad affliction from birth. Reason was 
 deaf, Faith was blind. So they joined hands for 
 their perpetual journeyings over the globe, where 
 day and night fall alternate. By day the eyes of 
 Reason were the guide of Faith ; by night the 
 ear of Faith was the guide of Reason. 
 
 The holiest influences from the eternal world 
 are always figured to us as voices, not as visions. 
 Whispers come, but spirits are not shown. When 
 Paul speaks of having been caught up to the 
 third heaven he does not allude to any sights, but 
 to " unspeakable words " which he heard, that " it 
 is not lawful for a man to utter." And in the 
 
236 Music. 
 
 Scripture the Holy Spirit is figured as the wind, 
 parent of music. What statement of music, 
 either, of its mystery and spirituality, is more 
 suggestive than the words of the New Testament, 
 which were first applied half to the Divine Spirit, 
 and half to the moving air which is its symbol : 
 " Thou nearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
 tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth " ! 
 
 One of the richest chapters of natural religion, 
 showing how the outward world has been created 
 to be the servant of man and express his quality, 
 might be drawn from the power of musical ex- 
 pression hidden in things and ready to be com- 
 bined by genius. The alphabet of the musician 
 is far richer than the alphabet of literature ; for 
 the notes which he writes have different qualities 
 and meanings, as they are struck from or uttered 
 through the different substances which he im- 
 presses into his service to speak them. And the 
 progress of musical science has been immensely 
 aided by the enlargement of the vocabulary of 
 things, in finding out, as one has said, how 
 " every known substance, wood, shell, horn, glass, 
 copper, iron, steel, brass, silver, strings, skins, 
 pasteboard, and even india-rubber, wait to be 
 voices of feeling, and sing the passions of the 
 human spirit." 
 
 You know how charmingly the Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast-table has written about the ripening of 
 a violin. " There are no less than fifty-eight dif- 
 ferent pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers 
 
Music. 237 
 
 to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, 
 to make them thoroughly acquainted. At last 
 they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instru- 
 ment becomes an organic whole as if it were a 
 great seed-capsule, that had grown from a garden 
 bed in Cremona or elsewhere. The wood is 
 juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at 
 the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably 
 dry and comparatively resonant." Now these 
 fifty-eight pieces that thus combine to form the 
 most princely instrument are types or suggestions 
 of how all matter is toned and tempered to start 
 vibrations with various qualities in order to en- 
 large the compass of expression for genius, and 
 the resources of social instruction and joy. 
 
 And, still further, the delicacy with which mat- 
 ter is attuned to respond to and express the nicest 
 touch or impulse of genius in the playing of 
 music, deserves prominent place in any treatise 
 of natural religion that would show how things 
 have been created to express Infinite genius, and 
 for the service and training of man. Sound 
 travels eleven hundred and thirty feet a second ; 
 and the vibrations from any instrument a per- 
 former is playing will convey, not only the loud- 
 ness or softness, the precision and swell of the 
 tones, but also how much the inmost quality of 
 the man as well as his fingers, or his breath, is 
 involved in his work ; whether his intellect is 
 chiefly engaged, and how much he has and what 
 is the grade of it ; or whether his sentiments are 
 
238 Music. 
 
 uppermost, and what is their level fineness and 
 intensity. 
 
 If we were to attempt an appraisal and alloca- 
 tion of music in the hierarchy of Arts, we must 
 give it the credit of being the greatest in the line 
 of pure creativeness. Other arts are in a large 
 degree copies or selections. 
 
 A great landscape is a transcript from an actual 
 picture by the Almighty, and a man here comes 
 into direct competition with the Infinite genius. 
 Noble sculptures are either reproduced, or culled 
 from living symmetries. There have been faces 
 in flesh and blood as noble as the Apollo, the 
 Clytie, or the Venus of Milo. Grand historic 
 paintings are drawn from described scenes. 
 Some of the richest conceptions of architecture 
 have been borrowed from the arching boughs of 
 elms ; from snow scrolls ; from the interblended 
 spring verdure of pine groves far up above their 
 stately trunks; from vine-embroideries, from rock- 
 spires and cones, and buttresses of mountains, and 
 from the oversweeping dome of the sky. 
 
 But music is a pure creation. It is not a thing, 
 and it is not a copy. There are no hymns, no 
 choruses, no symphonies in nature. What we 
 call the music of nature is in the rough. It is not 
 organized ; it is thrown out in masses. In the 
 voluble melody of birds, in the voice of cataracts, 
 in the sweep of storms, and the wrestle of winds 
 with the leaves of a wilderness, there are only 
 notes, or simple chords to suggest harmonies that 
 
Music. 239 
 
 are not realized. Mere imitative music is of a 
 low rank, and always wears a charlatan character. 
 
 Perhaps there is a music of the spheres, but we 
 can only imagine it, we know nothing of it. I 
 have sometimes thought that if a blind spirit 
 could be supported in space so as to hear, as this 
 globe rolled by him, the notes that are borne on 
 it, the myriad-voiced melody of birds, the sweep- 
 ing of winds over all the zones, and the sheets of 
 sound, now sombre, now cheerful, they waken 
 from the forests which they stir, the low, lisping 
 penitence of the peaceful sea, and, through all, 
 the thunderous mellow bass of the stirred ocean, 
 beating on a thousand leagues of rock, that spirit 
 might imagine it was a mighty organ rolling by, 
 touched on every key, alive in every stop, and 
 aroused by every pedal to the praise of God. 
 
 But we can only conjecture what the blended 
 voices of this planet may be when heard as a 
 whole. In the music of nature, so far as we hear 
 it in detail, no idea is worked into and struggles 
 through even its vast vibrations. And it is only 
 when a mighty thought or sentiment rolls through 
 waves of sound, combining them so that they co- 
 operate on our heart and mind, that pure sublimity 
 begins. All else that we call sublimity is only a 
 surprise of the senses. ! 
 
 Not a great many weeks ago I stood on the 
 summit of the White Mountain ridge that over- 
 looks New England, and heard the north-wind 
 scream and roar. And I thought, what if this 
 
240 Music. 
 
 power could be made articulate, what if it could 
 be poured as a musical force through some colos- 
 sal organ that a master genius might utter with it 
 his sentiment of the night and mountain glory, 
 and God the ruler of infinite space ! What if it 
 could roll over New England thus, instead of its 
 fierce monotone, an accompaniment, such as a 
 religious master would conceive, to the seventy- 
 seventh Psalm : " The voice of thy thunder is in 
 the heaven : thy lightnings lightened the world ; 
 the earth trembled and shook. Thy way is in 
 the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy 
 footsteps are not known ! " 
 
 Nature in her music seems to strive simply to 
 set us the example of pure tone, smooth swell in 
 volume, and delicate cadence and vanish. Lis- 
 ten to the elocution of the sea as it talks with the 
 shore, and find how mellow, how utterly purged 
 of all coarseness the serried thunder of its ground 
 swell is, and how gentle the lisp of its last ripple 
 that runs up a mile, perhaps, in length, like an 
 army of little white mice nibbling the sand as they 
 advance. No wonder that Demosthenes spent so 
 much time by the sea-shore, " filling his mouth," 
 as Mrs. Parti ngton said, " with paving-stones, that 
 he might learn to be an oratorio." He was try- 
 ing possibly to catch the secret of volume and 
 tenderness in sound. Hear the melancholy cres- 
 cendo of a gust through a brotherhood of pines, and 
 with what exquisite art of gradation it sighs away 
 into calm ! Hark, in the summer to the sweet 
 
Music. 241 
 
 dactyls of the Peabody-bird, the Canada sweet- 
 whistler in the mountain valleys, and admire the 
 smoothness of that high soprano, and how it slides 
 and tapers into silence like the polished sting of 
 the bee, in which the microscope can find no rag- 
 gedness or flaw ! 
 
 The most valuable lessons in the management 
 of sound we learn from Nature. And as to purity 
 of tone, we must stand reverent, in the religious 
 sense, before what she teaches us. For in this, 
 as in the clearness of clouds and the transpar- 
 ency of air and the blaze of the sea-foam and the 
 sparkle of moving rivers, she suggests to us the 
 purity and holiness of God. 
 
 A great religious writer of our country, now liv- 
 ing, has said, in a passage which I think stands 
 on the higher level of American literature : " In 
 the lofty passes of the Alps I heard a music over- 
 head from God's cloudy orchestra, the giant peaks 
 of rock and ice, curtained in by the driving mist, 
 and only dimly visible, athwart the sky, through 
 its folds, such as mocks all sounds our lower 
 worlds "of art can ever hope to raise. I stood (ex- 
 cuse the simplicity), calling to them in the loudest 
 shouts I could raise, even till my power was spent, 
 and listening in compulsory trance to their reply. 
 I heard them roll it up through their cloudy worlds 
 of snow, sifting out the harsh qualities that were 
 tearing in it as demon screams of sin, holding on 
 upon it as if it were a hymn they were singing to 
 the ear of the great Creator, and* sending it round 
 ii p 
 
242 Music. 
 
 and round in long reduplications of sweetness, 
 minute after minute, till finally receding and ris- 
 ing, it trembled, as it were, among the quick grat- 
 ulations of angels, and fell into the silence of 
 the pure empyrean. I had never any conception 
 before of what is meant by quality in sound. 
 There was more power upon the soul in one of 
 those simple notes than I ever expect to feel from 
 anything called music below, or ever can feel till 
 I hear them again in the choirs of the angelic 
 world ! I had never such a sense of purity, or of 
 what a simple sound may tell of purity, by its own 
 pure quality. And I can truly affirm that the 
 experience of that hour has consciously made me 
 better able to think of God ever since, better 
 able to worship," 
 
 When we say that music is a pure and uncopied 
 creation, we mean that in nature there is no com- 
 bination of great sentiment and the developing 
 of an idea or emotion in sound. Man is the organ 
 through which the Infinite Spirit creates this ad- 
 dition to the treasury of beauty and the resources 
 of life. 
 
 And it seems to me that the method of a musical 
 composer of the first rank in producing his work 
 is the most subtile of all the processes of genius, 
 and nearest in kindred with the movements of the 
 Creative Intelligence. A sculptor slowly moulds 
 from his thoughts into clay that is not perfectly 
 ductile, and then translates from clay into more 
 stubborn stone. - The painter finds it often impos- 
 
Music- 243 
 
 sible to clothe in color the idea which his sketch 
 recalls. The poet often finds that he cannot 
 report in language the fire and melody that flash 
 through his imagination. But with the musical 
 artist, the thought and the arrest of it are instan- 
 taneous. The grandest inspirations of great com- 
 posers are caught for all generations, without dis- 
 tortion or deflection from their first majesty and 
 grace. The sign that entraps them, the bars that 
 hold them, show them to us just as they swept into 
 the atmosphere of their genius from the breath of 
 God! 
 
 So far as dignity and subtlety of genius are 
 concerned I should rather have been Mozart than 
 Shakespeare. I know not how the conception of 
 Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello dawned and swelled 
 on the great dramatist's vision until it was wrought 
 out in rhythmic and stately fact. But the process 
 could hardly have been so mystical, so supernat- 
 ural, so akin to the Divine calling of the world 
 from nothing in a moment, as Mozart's creation, 
 according to his own account, of a grand pas- 
 sage in a symphony or an opera. It did not 
 come to him in a thin stream of melody, or in a 
 theme which he expanded by a conscious mental 
 effort, arranging it for various instruments and 
 composing it in harmony ; but it burst full-voiced, 
 as it were, from an ideal orchestra or a celestial 
 chorus into his imagination, from which it was 
 only copied into a mortal score. It was as if a 
 whole act of "Hamlet " or "King John," with all 
 
244 Music. 
 
 its characters, interplay of passions, words and 
 rhythm, should have streamed in one condensed 
 flash into Shakespeare's mind, ready to be clothed 
 in type, and to remain forever in the uppermost 
 range of the creations of the human intellect. 
 
 It is only from instances like this, which the 
 sphere of music furnishes more than any other 
 region of art, that we can catch a hint of the 
 movements of Infinite thoughts from which the 
 whole order of nature has issued, and is sustained 
 every moment as a starry anthem in space. 
 
 Whenever it is possible, I go to the Music 
 Hall, in Boston, to enjoy the feasts of instrumental 
 harmony, or the oratorios that ennoble many of 
 our winter evenings. 
 
 On the platform, towering over the singers or 
 musicians, is the bronze statue of Beethoven, a 
 noble monument of the genius of Crawford, rep- 
 resenting the master with his head bent, and a 
 music sheet in one hand, upon which the other 
 had just written the first notes of his choral hymn 
 of joy. Sometimes I find myself led off from the 
 harmony in thinking of the last appearance of 
 that great man at a German festival in his honor, 
 when the Ninth Symphony, closing with that sub- 
 lime chorus, was performed. He was almost as 
 deaf amid its grandeurs as his bronze statue in 
 Boston is to the surges of sound that swell around 
 it. He could not hear the tumultuous applause 
 of the crowded theatre at its close. 
 
 A friend touched him as he stood on the stage 
 
Music. 245 
 
 with his back to the audience, and made signs that 
 he should turn round and see the enthusiasm of 
 the thousands whom his music had thrilled. He 
 turned with a listless face, which at once struck 
 the multitude with a fresh consciousness of his 
 affliction. And then we are told that as the flood- 
 gates of pleasure, compassion, and sympathy were 
 opened, there followed a volcanic explosion of 
 applause, which seemed as if it would never end, 
 and which the master could not fail to hear as 
 well as see. 
 
 And recalling that scene the miracle of genius 
 seems the more fathomless. This man's most 
 original and wonderful creations were produced 
 when his earthly ear had been almost paralyzed, 
 and it was painful to hear him attempt to play 
 the piano. It was in this state that, out of pulsa- 
 tions borne to the ear of his soul, he wrought out 
 the architecture of harmony. And I can scarcely 
 ever look at that statue without recalling those 
 words which were first addressed to it when it 
 was received into that hall, words that seem to 
 me most vividly to describe Beethoven's music : 
 
 " What a vast, majestic structure thou hast builded out of sound, 
 With its high peak piercing heaven, and its base deep under 
 
 ground : 
 
 Vague as air, yet firm and real to the spiritual eye, 
 Seamed with fire its cloudy bastions far away uplifted lie, 
 Like those sullen shapes of thunder we behold at close of day, 
 Piled upon the far horizon where the jagged lightnings play. 
 Awful voices, as from Hades, thrill us, growling from its heart ; 
 Sudden splendors blaze from out it, cleaving its black walls 
 apart ; 
 
246 Music. 
 
 White-winged birds dart forth and vanish, singing as they pass 
 
 from sight, 
 
 Till at last it lifts, and 'neath it shows a field of amber light, 
 Where some single star is shining, throbbing like a new-born thing, 
 And the earth, all drenched in splendor, lets its happy voices 
 
 sing." 
 
 And reflecting thus upon the endowment which 
 Beethoven's genius has left to civilization, and the 
 sad privations of his own nature here, I love to 
 think that the scene in that German theatre is a 
 feeble symbol of the thrill which his spirit feels 
 in surveying the vast and purifying joy that sweeps 
 through tens of thousands of souls on this planet 
 every year in response to those creations which, 
 I believe, give the heart that appreciates them a 
 fore- feeling of the intellectual rapture of heaven. 
 
 The greatest privilege of a city life seems to me 
 to be its musical opportunities. In the cultivated 
 or mountainous country a banquet is provided for 
 the eye. And there, too, we can have intellectual 
 pleasures, communion through books with the 
 best minds, thoughts, and experiences of our own 
 age and of history. The city alone can give us 
 a chorus, a sublime organ, and an orchestra. In 
 these some of the rich and manifest advances of 
 modern over ancient civilization are summed up. 
 
 If an old Greek should return to us, we could 
 show him no statuary equal to that with which 
 Athens and Corinth were crowded. We could 
 point out to him no architecture of a grade up to 
 the average of the temples that crowned the hills, 
 or shadowed the squares in which Sophocles or 
 
Music. 247 
 
 Plato once walked. But take him into an opera- 
 house or into a great concert-hall to hear the work 
 of a modern master, and we could introduce him 
 into an advance over everything that the age of 
 Plato or of Augustus knew as music, no less 
 remarkable than the progress of our practical 
 science beyond the attainments of the classic 
 times. 
 
 The name of Handel carries us on to another 
 state. The highest music is religious. And 
 in speaking of orchestra, organ, and chorus as 
 supplying the supreme civilized privilege of the 
 city, let me go further and express my belief that 
 the greatest fortune which can befall a person in 
 the line of art is more than seeing Rubens's pic- 
 ture of the Descent from the Cross, or Titian's 
 Assumption, or Da Vinci's Last Supper, or Raf- 
 faelle's Transfiguration, or the Dresden Madonna 
 to hear Handel's Messiah, when it is given with 
 a competent combination of power and gifts. 
 
 We have the profoundest and most laden elo- 
 quence of the Bible trembling of itself with the 
 most solemn emotions which God's law and grace 
 can arouse. We have the feeling which these 
 words, and the immeasurable facts Jhey stand for, 
 wakened in a great soul who entered by sympathy 
 into the deepest evangelical sentiment of Christen- 
 dom, and was competent to enshrine it in music. 
 We have the instruments organ, and orchestra, 
 the endowment of an advanced civilization to 
 give the body and shading of the master's idea. 
 
248 Music. 
 
 We have the accomplished singers to render air 
 or trio or quartette, and the fourfold volume of 
 the chorus to give the ground-swell, swing, and 
 majesty to the gathering hallelujahs. 
 
 I always wonder when I hear that oratorio that 
 in every city a grand cathedral service is not made 
 out of it, or out of selections from it, once a month, 
 certainly every Christmas, that the promise 
 of Christ, and the blessedness of his grace, and 
 the beneficence of his reign, and the glory of his 
 triumph may have fit interpretation in words and 
 in ways that oversweep the petty divisions of cate- 
 chisms and creeds. 
 
 It might, perhaps, be profitable and pleasant, if 
 we had time for it, to speak of music as a method 
 of expression, and of the manifest differences of 
 style among the great masters. It may be ques- 
 tioned whether a very critical ear, sensitive to the 
 slightest faults of execution, is a blessing. I have 
 one or two friends who suffer so much exquisite 
 misery in the course of a year from this cause, that 
 I have sometimes been tempted to adopt the phi- 
 losophy of the friends of Job, and believe that 
 they are great sinners in their hearts, and are vis- 
 ited in this way by the whip of the Almighty, a 
 jangling cat-o'-nine-tail of sound. It would be, 
 perhaps, better, so far as happiness is concerned, 
 instead of suffering from this gout of the auditory 
 nerve, to take the ear of the man who was asked 
 if he was a judge of music, and confessed that he 
 
Music. 249 
 
 knew two tunes from all others, Yankee Doodle 
 and Old Hundred, but could never be entirely 
 sure which was which. There is no art in which 
 there is such a range of capacity of appreciation 
 among intelligent persons. A Chinaman of con- 
 siderable culture delights in a gong. A Turkish 
 plenipotentiary, invited to an instrumental concert 
 in Europe, where noble music was played, being 
 asked which piece he preferred, said that he 
 thought the first one was by far the most inter- 
 esting. It happened that what he referred to was 
 the introductory tuning and scraping of the in- 
 struments. 
 
 The sensitive ear for mere niceties of execution 
 in detail may not be worth desiring, but there is 
 no worthier exercise of mind and culture of taste 
 than the study of the general style, flavor, atmos- 
 phere, and level of genius in a prominent com- 
 poser and master. The pleasure of feeling the 
 central effluence from the soul of a great musical 
 genius streaming out of a work as a whole of 
 being borne by it, as it were, into the climate 
 of his spirit is granted to, or may be gained by 
 those who are strangers to the technicalities and 
 the science of music itself. 
 
 The difference in effect between a perfect poem 
 by Tennyson and a faultless passage from Words- 
 worth is not the difference merely of the senti- 
 ments which the lines may interpret, or the pic- 
 tures they may draw. Their rhythms are different ; 
 their melodies are unlike ; the landscapes of their 
 
250 Music. 
 
 natures are as diverse as the Bay of Naples and 
 a Scottish frith. A mind sensitive to the radia- 
 tion of genius feels that there is scarcely a verse 
 in a volume by one, which the other could have 
 written. It is so when we turn from Carlyle to 
 Emerson. No writers are so frequently compared 
 with each other, as though one had borrowed from 
 the other. Yet there is hardly a sprig or bunch 
 of words in any production of one which could 
 have grown on the mental stock of the other any 
 more than a pine cone on an ash. They are as 
 unlike as the scenery and breath of a clear winter 
 night, and a thunderous, savage summer noon. 
 
 There is the same difference, as decisively and 
 more delicately revealed, among musical masters, 
 in the aroma and color, the breadth, dignity, and 
 elevation, of their works. It is rare to hear a 
 passage from Mendelssohn that seems to have 
 stayed long enough on the tree and in the sun. 
 It seems to have been plucked a little hard, and 
 scarcely ripe ; while every creative movement of 
 Mozart's mind shook off melodies, juicy, mellow, 
 sweet, and blooming as peaches, fit for the palate 
 of an angel. And one of the richest pleasures 
 flowing from an educated taste and continuous 
 interest in music comes from the feeling of the 
 predominant quality of each master through every 
 work. We learn how substantial music is, though 
 its kingdom is that of the air, when we find the 
 innermost quality of the man permeating every 
 chord and cadence which he does not steal ; the 
 
Music. 251 
 
 sense of sublimity before the simple forces of 
 nature and the holiness of God veined with a 
 tenderness as if the Book of Ruth were set in the 
 substance of the Pentateuch that belonged to 
 Handel ; the wild waywardness of Beethoven's 
 genius, sea-like and stormy, heaving up from 
 troughs o'f sullen shadow crests of melody to 
 flash in the fitful sun ; and we see a distinct 
 quality imparted to every air, duet, and chorus 
 by the honeyed Bellini, the weird Weber, the rhe- 
 torical, florid Donizetti, the sparkling, superficial 
 Auber, the luscious Rossini, the sunny and joyous 
 Haydn, or the half-spectral, wholly delightful gen- 
 ius of Schubert, whose soul seems to have been 
 compacted of the most poetic, warm, and genial 
 moonlight that ever turned an earthly landscape 
 into a fairy scene.* 
 
 But, ladies and gentlemen, it is time to relieve 
 your overstrained and failing patience. Such as- 
 sociations as yours, diffusing, feeding, instituting 
 
 * The time fails us to speak of patriotic music. The singers 
 of our great struggle as yet are the poets. No new and command- 
 ing melody or chorus has been created to enshrine the faith of the 
 loyal States and the beneficence to humanity of our immense war. 
 When victory and peace come, perhaps the fitting ode, with the fit 
 wings of music, will burst from the genius of the nation. Perhaps 
 it is well that, when the emblem of our nationality shall be uplifted 
 above the cities and countries of rebellion, there shall be no new 
 strains to salute the ears of the recovered aliens, but the old rhythm 
 of Yankee Doodle, and the Star-Spangled Banner, and Hail Colum- 
 bia, with one tune a little strange, perhaps, of which, when they 
 ask the name as it shall be played by Union bands in Charleston 
 and Savannah, they shall be told it is the John Brown Chorus 
 over the downfall of slavery, u Glory, Hallelujah ! " (1861.) 
 
252 Music. 
 
 the taste for music in the community, organizing 
 singers by acquaintance, sympathy, common prac- 
 tice, emulation, and charity, " which is the bond 
 of perfectness," enrich our civilization, and supply 
 one of the crying needs in the character of our 
 country. 
 
 "Topmost crown of ancient Athens towered the Phidian Par- 
 thenon, 
 
 Upon freedom's youthful forehead, Art the starry jewel shone. 
 Never is a nation finished while it wants the grace of Art, 
 Use must borrow robes from beauty, life must rise above the mart, 
 Faith and love are all ideal, speaking with a music tone, 
 And without their touch of magic, labor is the devil's own." 
 
 There are two universal languages that spread 
 civilization and ennoble society. The first is 
 mathematics, the sign-speech of the intellect. 
 There is no Celt or Saxon, no Jew or Greek, in 
 that tongue. Whoever makes a statement or 
 clinches a discovery in it helps the race. His 
 page can be read by the mathematician in Arabia 
 and Russia, though it was written in Paris or Cin- 
 cinnati. Yes, the laws of form and light and mo- 
 tion are the same through all space, and Newton's 
 demonstration of the law of gravity, and Laplace's 
 " Mecanique Celeste," and Young's " Treatise on 
 Light " could no doubt be understood by an in- 
 tellect in Sirius or the outer edge of the Milky 
 Way. Music is the universal language of the 
 innermost spiritual nature. It can be understood 
 in its signs and its voices, by races and by grades 
 of spirits that cannot understand each other's 
 speech, and that are alienated in all other ways. 
 
Music. 253 
 
 " Underneath its world-wide Banyan, friends the gathering nations 
 
 sit, 
 Red Sioux and dreamy German dance and feast and fight to it." 
 
 Yes, and all that we cultivate of its highest 
 spirit in its great religious expressions here will 
 go with us as preparation for eternity. We shall 
 not talk German probably in the future world ; 
 but I do not know why the Andante of the Fifth 
 Symphony of Beethoven may not be played in 
 heaven. The angelic masters must be inspired 
 beyond our present capacity of appreciation if 
 they can produce anything that will make that 
 seem meagre. We shall slough off, probably, our 
 English vocabulary and tongue in the grave ; but 
 even in the final gathering of the redeemed out 
 of every nation, tongue, and clime one strophe of 
 the consummate Anthem to the Lamb and through 
 him to the Infinite who shall put all things under 
 his feet, may be the Hallelujah Chorus of the 
 Messiah, contributed from this earth to form part 
 of the everlasting language of the skies. 
 
 1858. 
 
VII. 
 
 EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 
 
 I SHALL have the privilege of addressing you 
 on the subject of Existence and Life. 
 The great object which the Creator seeks to 
 produce and sustain by the economy of nature 
 is conscious life. The globe is the bulb of which 
 life is to be the flower. The calendar of the 
 globe is not dotted by years nor by ages, but by 
 advancing steps of life. The great strata, whose 
 formation we study with a bewildering sense of 
 duration, are simply the dull dial-plate on which 
 the celestial time is marked by the creative energy 
 moving from worm to mollusk, from mollusk to 
 fish, and thence to reptile, and on to mammal, 
 and at last to man. God does not publish him- 
 self by ages, but by creations. When a new ten- 
 dril is produced, or a new sense appears, or a 
 higher type is introduced, or the skeleton flowers 
 out from a wing into a forearm, or from a paw 
 into a hand, so that wider control is gained of 
 nature, then a new minute is noted on the chro- 
 nometer that keeps the time of the Divine plan. 
 It is evident that the world is provided as the 
 
Existence and Life. 255 
 
 basis for human life ; and man is broadly related 
 to nature by his faculties, is put to pasture, we 
 may say, in the universe, that its harvests may 
 pass up and be transmuted into his experience. 
 
 Have you ever thought how the human frame 
 represents all nature? It is a singular fact that 
 even the proportions of sea and land on the 
 surface of the globe are repeated in the human 
 body, of which three fourths are liquid and one 
 fourth dry. The bones of the human body rep- 
 resent the rocky skeleton of the globe ; the flesh 
 and skin, the soil ; the teeth, the minerals ; the 
 arteries and veins, the river systems ; the hair, 
 the vegetation ; the nervous life, the galvanic and 
 magnetic currents ; while the food, which is 
 drawn from all nature air, ocean, land, forest, 
 and lake, tropic heats and polar cold, for the 
 support of the civilized constitution, pictures the 
 fact that civilized life should be a reproduction 
 into thought and feeling of all the elements or- 
 ganized into nature. 
 
 It is, therefore, life considered in its sources, 
 the breadth and variety of the supplies of it, 
 life on the side of reception, leaving out of view 
 the expression and expenditure of it in action, 
 that I purpose to treat and that I invite you to 
 survey. 
 
 We must begin by thoroughly comprehending 
 the distinction between existence and life. It is a 
 great mistake to suppose that people live to the 
 same extent, or that they are equally alive, be- 
 
256 Existence and Life. 
 
 cause they equally exist. The idea of more or 
 less of dignity or meanness, breadth and power, 
 cannot be connected with the word " existence." 
 Physical animation, the feeling that one is a con- 
 scious fact in the universe, determines that. Life 
 is a higher matter. Life consists in the putting 
 forth of faculties that are sheathed in our exist- 
 ence. We live by communion with the substances 
 of the universe, and the fulness of any life is 
 determined by the number of objects from which 
 a person draws nutriment. 
 
 For instance, you may hold in your hand a 
 dozen seeds, and you must say of them that they 
 equally exist. But you cannot decide", as you 
 look at them, even though they may be of the 
 same size, the amount of life of which they are 
 capable. They are tiny possibilities. Drop them 
 in the ground and their life begins. Each pellet 
 then shoots out the latent forces of its bosom. 
 Its delicate threads fasten on the clods for foot- 
 hold, and it pushes its way upwards, climbs to 
 feed on the sun, the sky, and the clouds. But if 
 one of those seeds is that of a fragile herb, and 
 the other of an elm, the amount of life they will 
 gain will be immensely unequal, because one has 
 vastly more capacity than the other to draw in 
 from the treasuries of nature and reorganize it 
 into itself. 
 
 So any hundred infants are human germs of 
 which the word " existence " is equally applicable ; 
 but the life they are to experience and exhibit 
 
Existence and Life. 257 
 
 will depend on the number and vigor of the fac- 
 ulties that will strike down, reach wide, and tower 
 up into the universe to import nourishment from 
 the stores of things. 
 
 Our physical life, which is the basis and type of 
 all other vitality, consists in incorporating the phys- 
 ical elements. The amount of physical life is sim- 
 ply the amount of power we imbibe from air, elec- 
 tric force, food. Each man is a divinely chartered 
 corporation to trade in the elements and products 
 of the universe, and transform them incessantly 
 into bone, blood, muscle, and strength. When 
 this process of commerce with the riches of na- 
 ture, of suction from its substance, ceases, when 
 the ability to gain or- renew power stops, the body 
 ceases to live. It may maintain its existence a 
 while longer till its old fund is used up ; but it 
 has begun to die. 
 
 The relation of the body, thus endowed by all 
 space, to the real life of a human being, is that 
 of the flower-pot to the plant ; it is to give the 
 spirit room and shelter in the physical universe, 
 that it may branch into the finer world to bud 
 and bloom. To live for the body, instead of by 
 and through it, is therefore to abdicate the privi- 
 lege of our colonization in the material world at 
 the start. 
 
 Is it not, therefore, a dreadful satire on the 
 highest form of civilization that it is continually 
 generating from its deeps thousands of beings 
 whose labor and wit must all be expended, not 
 
 Q 
 
258 Existence and Life. 
 
 in living, but in continuing to exist ? Think of 
 the armies of men and women that must pledge 
 all their time, breath, and genius, if they have 
 any, in " keeping body and soul together," whom 
 it costs the whole play of their faculties simply 
 " to fetch breath," and then think how wealthy 
 and bountiful this universe is ! The lungs of a 
 human being are fed for nothing. If there were 
 a thousand times as many on the earth they 
 could be supported as freely as they are now. 
 It costs nothing to store their nerves with electric 
 power. There is light enough for as many eyes 
 as can be crowded on the globe ; splendor, truth, 
 and beauty enough for as many minds as can be 
 gathered here ; mystery and inspiration enough for 
 as many souls as can find foothold on the planet. 
 God provides inexhaustible stores directly for 
 every faculty of man but the stomach. And the 
 earth is opulent enough to feed myriads more 
 than are supported on it now. But the arrange- 
 ments for the digestive system are left to human 
 skill and organization ; and is it any wonder that 
 schools of socialism are springing up among us, 
 when this is the only department of human sus- 
 tenance that is so miserably mismanaged as to 
 fail ; when human wisdom has proved unable to 
 distribute labor over the soil so as to tap suffi- 
 ciently the exuberant bounty of the globe, or 
 even to organize the transfer of what the earth 
 produces to the mouths of men, so that food 
 shall be cheap enough to keep every human crea- 
 
Existence and Life. 259 
 
 ture in existence easily; when we have books 
 in our advance countries talking about an over- 
 stock of human beings ; and when the awful 
 pyramid of poverty, broad-based with the pariahs 
 of heathenism, shows in its sloping layers the 
 beggars of Italy, the half-blind miners of England 
 and her starving operatives, the rag-pickers and 
 outcasts of republican America, coming to its 
 apex in the miseries of needlewomen and the* 
 "Song of the Shirt"? 
 
 Schemes of socialism are started by the press- 
 ure on the intellect of this problem, whether the 
 land does not belong to the race, just as the at- 
 mosphere belongs to the race, whether man 
 does not own it, and not men ; and whether any 
 system of property for the soil which prevents a 
 large mass of the world from getting a living, or 
 which forces them to pawn all the noble possi- 
 bilities of their existence for a mere living, is 
 not as transparently. wrong as pre-emption-rights 
 and squatter-sovereignty in the air would be, 
 were it possible, so that it should be let out to 
 the majority at so much per cubic foot, or as the 
 getting rich in acres of sunshine would be, which 
 a man should hold in his own right and suffer to 
 leak out here and there upon a house or field, 
 at a fixed price per quart ! It is well to pene- 
 trate to the intellectual roots of startling theories. 
 If it is an open, debatable question whether the 
 land is not an element like atmosphere, light, and 
 heat, the title to which is vested in the human 
 
260 Existence and Life. 
 
 stomach, we must expect to see project after 
 project of social organization, till some one is 
 found that will distribute labor by perfect sci- 
 ence, and so multiply the products of the globe 
 that food will be insured to every descendant of 
 Adam, and life, as something higher than exist- 
 ence, be offered to the lowest member of the 
 race. 
 
 When we think that the impeachment of soci- 
 ety has been moved by the modern intellect be- 
 cause it forces crowds of minds, hearts, and souls 
 to be mere satellites of the stomach, it is interest- 
 ing to turn for a moment, in passing, to the Epi- 
 cureans who prefer that scheme of existence, and 
 who deliberately live to eat, instead of eating to 
 live. If a human creature, lifted above all com- 
 pulsion to do so, chooses to live for the sake of 
 sensations and physical delights, it is an interest- 
 ing question whether he would experience any 
 conscious irreparable loss if he were turned into 
 a plant that should have the capacity of feeling 
 diffused through it, that could taste the earth 
 by its roots, and drink mountain-dew every night 
 with its leaves ! What vacancy would the strik- 
 ing out of brain and of sensibilities to the exquisite 
 world produce in natures of that class? Their 
 life is really an underground one, like that of 
 potatoes, turnips, and beets, where the upper 
 faculties are simply the appendage to the lower, 
 and valuable for the juices they carry down ; not 
 like the tree, where what is underneath is impor- 
 
Existence and Life. 261 
 
 tant for what it sends up to faculties that revel in 
 the light. 
 
 Think of laying open the sources of a human 
 being's life and finding that he is built up the 
 interests and delights of his mind as well as his 
 body out of venison and turtle, so that his 
 epochs are Burgundy and salads, French pastry 
 and Moselle ! The Psyche in him, that should 
 burst into the butterfly, confined wholly to the 
 grub ! What should we say of an engine which, 
 if the power of taste could be imparted to it, 
 should spend its existence in munching wood, 
 becoming very critical in the flavors of birch, 
 hackmatack, maple, and pine, filling its boilers 
 with alcohol, feeling the fire as a subtle pleasure 
 over its steely nerves, and puffing away the steam 
 without doing any work, or running its wheels for 
 any purpose but to generate an appetite for the 
 coming meal ! Such a machine, as a curiosity, 
 would rebuild Mr. Barnum's fortunes ; yet a little 
 insight shows us human types of such, plentifully 
 scattered over society as the marvellous results of 
 civilization ! 
 
 The distinctively human life begins when we 
 rise into higher spheres than the physical, and ap- 
 propriate into our own substance material which 
 they offer. And so the first thing to do in order 
 to understand the comprehensiveness of life, com- 
 pared with mere existence, is to widen our con- 
 ception of the realities in this universe from 
 which it is fed. The mind has a digestive sys- 
 
262 Existence and Life. 
 
 tern for truth, and appropriates it, assimilates it, 
 just as the body assimilates meal. The law of 
 cohesion is a thing for the mind, just as much 
 as a brick that is ruled by it is for the hand. 
 The law of attraction is a thing for the intellect 
 just as much as a piece of steel and a loadstone. 
 And a man who perceives them, and enriches his 
 reason with them, broadens his life vastly beyond 
 that of the man who deals in houses and estates 
 as matters of property alone. He gets vitally 
 into communion with wide substances of nature, 
 while the other man uses them only mechanically 
 to extend the scale of his existence. 
 
 A man, also, who understands bread-making, 
 why yeast makes it rise, and how it nourishes the 
 body, deals with the realities just as much as the 
 man who mixes and kneads the dough, and de- 
 rives substance from it as truly as by eating the 
 loaf. Or, further, the man who discerns the rela- 
 tions of gold to geology, in what age it was cast 
 up, how it was washed into stream-beds or mixed 
 with the quartz, and how it is purified and coined, 
 owns money as an intellectual being, whether 
 he has physical control over it or not, because 
 his life receives nutriment from the truth which 
 invests it, and by which it is stamped ideally as 
 a precious metal by the wisdom of the Creator. 
 
 Thus every sense is an avenue or duct for 
 transmitting material of life to the mind as well 
 as to the body. Strike the eye from the human 
 race, and human life would thenceforth be palsied 
 
Existence and Life. 263 
 
 to the whole extent of the truth that knocks for 
 entrance into the spirit at the optic nerve. De- 
 stroy the ear, and life is robbed of the nutrition 
 offered by the truth that rides towards us on 
 waves of sound, in conversation, debate, elo- 
 quence, music. We live just to the extent of our 
 reception into the deeper nature from the rational 
 vesture and effluence of things. 
 
 And beauty is as real a thing as a flower. The 
 exquisiteness of a landscape is as substantial as 
 the land. Where a man's spirit is stimulated and 
 refreshed by such aspects of nature, his life is 
 increased as really as it is sustained by the prod- 
 ucts of the soil. 
 
 How many artists are fed by the White Moun- 
 tains ! The corn and parsnips which the Saco 
 meadows bear find their way to the cellars of 
 New England, every winter, as provision for the 
 body ; but these men carry the slopes, ridges, 
 rocky tendons and imperial dome of Mt. Wash- 
 ington itself with them. They unravel the lines 
 of its beauty and strength, and turn them into 
 instincts for the creation of beauty. They wind 
 their powers around it like an anaconda around 
 a goat, and crush it into pulp, breathe in its 
 mists, lap its sunshine, drink the aerial wine of 
 its morning and evening hues, and feel it dissolve 
 into their being, like the juices which the bee 
 absorbs from a flower, to exude upon canvas in 
 the spiritual honey of art. 
 
 Again, going up still higher, we find that the 
 
264 Existence and Life. 
 
 meaning of things is no less substantial than 
 things themselves. The man who finds the ex- 
 istence, laws, and wisdom of the Infinite hinted 
 to him continually in the colors of the earth and 
 the mystic order of the firmament deals with real- 
 ities as much as the man who sees the science 
 of the earth and the systems of the sky ; and 
 both of them are in contact with the substances 
 of things as really as the man who owns land and 
 eats the products of it. 
 
 When you look at a great picture, what do you 
 call the essential fact before you? the canvas 
 which the fingers can feel, the pigments which 
 possibly can be scraped off in a murky paste and 
 weighed, or the proportions of a human form 
 which glow on the cloth, and back of this, the 
 saintly expression that steals through the hues, as 
 though the soul of an angel had condescended 
 to be imprisoned perpetually there in color? So 
 the nature that has only material relations to the 
 universe, and acts as though physical things are 
 the chief fountains of life, simply crumbles in its 
 gross fingers the web on which divine splendors 
 and mysteries are outlined and tinted for the cul- 
 ture of the intellect, the charm of taste, and the 
 feeding of the life of the soul ! 
 
 The great question, therefore, concerning a 
 man's life is, What tendrils has he out? from how 
 many grades of divine substance is he drawing 
 sustenance and power? We are put here to se- 
 crete something everlasting out of nature. The 
 
Existence and Life. 265 
 
 opportunities are rich, but it is the capacity, the 
 fibre, that determines whether we shall do it; for 
 nature contributes to our life, not primarily ac- 
 cording to its bounty, but according to the fila- 
 ments in us that will solicit and incorporate its 
 bounty. One man absorbs mathematical truth 
 out of the heavens, while side by side with him 
 a mortal exists that organizes nothing grand or 
 stately into his constitution, just as the mush- 
 room can do no more than hoist its pleated parasol 
 out of the same ground and in the same sunlight 
 from which the oak-seed imbibed slowly its tre- 
 mendous strength. Another man draws to him- 
 self the wisdom printed in the granite leaves 
 beneath us, which earthquakes have turned for 
 our benefit, and shows that he has ennobled his 
 life by it, and represents it wherever he moves. 
 A third wins the divine thought hinted in the old 
 bones which the globe entombs ; while a fourth 
 fastens on history, and compels the laws of it to 
 filter through facts and ooze into his reason. 
 
 Isaac Newton shoots out mental fibres that 
 twine around every planet of the solar system. 
 He not only expends his energies on the alge- 
 braic problems they offer, but absorbs the secret 
 of their harmony, and builds up the sinewy sym- 
 me^ry of his intellect out of the juices of the 
 divine thought they hold. He squeezed the moon 
 and wrung the nectar of universal law out of it, as 
 a school-boy sucks an orange dry. 
 
 Goethe has told us how much each of his 
 12 
 
266 Existence and Life. 
 
 paragraphs and bon-mots cost him in gold. But 
 really his education and the healthy vigor of 
 matured genius cost all history and all art. It 
 cost Italy and the East It cost the. calm laws 
 that thread and sway the fever of modern civiliza- 
 tion. For these were the sources out of which 
 that serene, cold scholarship and wisdom were 
 slowly secreted by the branching faculties that 
 seemed to Jet no sphere lie ungrasped by their 
 tough ligaments. 
 
 Think what it cost to cultivate and perfect the 
 genius of Turner, the English painter ! Search 
 for the treasuries of his life, and you find him 
 twisted in vitally with the Alps and the sea, 
 with the grace suffused in trees that makes their 
 limbs bend in Gothic arches, that flushes the 
 west with sunset-pomp, and flings the unsubstan- 
 tial gold of evening over the meadow-grass ! 
 
 Lieutenant Maury drags the sea, yes, distils out 
 of it the complex and subtile forces that pene- 
 trate its deeps, hem and hurry its currents, and 
 rein in its bounding strength at the pleasure of 
 Him who said, " Thus far shalt thou go and no 
 farther." He carries the essence of the ocean 
 with him, as a power, a trophy, and a resource 
 of his intellectual life. 
 
 See how Carlyle feeds his shaggy intellect out 
 of the French Revolution, the storms of the 
 Middle Ages, and the commotions in England, 
 rioting in the bitter wisdom which he crushes 
 out of the laws of retribution that run through 
 
Existence and Life. 267 
 
 all history, and, Scandinavian Titan that he is, 
 drinking the aqua-fortis of the Divine justice 
 from the skulls of empires, like savory wine. 
 
 Think how Dickens, instead of being accident- 
 ally related, like most of us, to the men and 
 women of our neighborhoods, shaking hands 
 with them, and entertaining a few by outward 
 hospitality, stretches the antennae of his sensibili- 
 ties, sympathy, and imagination far and wide into 
 our modern civilization, and is capable of drain- 
 ing the moral substance of London, striking 
 some tap-root of his intellect, affection, or humor 
 into every alley, parlor, and counting-house of it, 
 to refresh and enlarge his genius. 
 
 Or look up from the poor surface-existence of 
 the senses, in which we are so apt to suppose that 
 life consists, from the pride and silly pleasures 
 of a man who thinks it a great thing to be dis- 
 tinguished by his house and his money, to 
 the intellect of Humboldt which no house can 
 cover; broad-based as a mountain in the physi- 
 cal truth of things, its sides clad with the tilted 
 strata of the earth, lifting its summit above storms 
 and vapors, and catching some wisdom from each 
 brilliant point of the heavens, as every star of 
 the night flings a sparkle on the frosty cone of 
 Chimborazo! 
 
 We often talk about a " live man." It is very 
 seldom that we see one of our fellows who is 
 half alive. Indeed, a great many of us, as to our 
 humanity, are not born yet. The faculties that 
 
268 Existence and Life. 
 
 inspire life have not opened their eyes. A really 
 live man would be one, every bump of whose 
 brain should be a hopper into which material 
 would be streaming from all quarters of the uni- 
 verse to be ground up into internal riches and 
 strength. 
 
 Somebody once asked an eccentric friend of 
 mine, who is quite a vegetarian, what he found 
 fit to live upon ; and a day or two afterwards 
 the old gentleman showed his questioner a little 
 poem he had written in reply, sa} r ing, that he 
 breakfasted on Socrates, lunched on Pythagoras, 
 dined often on Moses or Paul, kept Plato as his 
 rare Johannisberg, and used Charles Lamb as 
 dessert, Tennyson and Shelley as cream puffs, 
 with Sydney Smith for Worcestershire sauce. 
 There was a meat diet for you, a wholesome 
 cannibalism of the soul ! And so we were made 
 to live on stars, and strata, and the philosophy of 
 Bacon. 
 
 Thus, as Emerson says, " we sit by the fire and 
 take hold on the poles of the earth." The skies 
 are the market, and the globe itself the cellar, 
 and history the larder, from which the manna and 
 wine of truth are to be gathered freely by the 
 human nature, which the body clothes to support 
 and ennoble its life. We merely exist among 
 things, if we do not penetrate by some pungent 
 faculty into the essence of some district of nature, 
 and feel it transmuted into our own being. "A 
 man is a centre for nature, running out threads 
 
Existence and Life. 269 
 
 of relation through everything, fluid and solid, 
 material and elemental." 
 
 We must see, therefore, that space has very 
 little to do with our real life. By casting latitude 
 and longitude you can tell only where a man 
 exists : where he lives depends on where his 
 deepest interest is. 
 
 One man exists in the world of business ; but 
 there are a score of chinks and crannies between 
 the stones of his warehouse, his bales, crates, and 
 ledgers, through which his interior nature sends 
 out aspirations and appetites into the world of 
 substance. Another man exists in the world of 
 business, and lives there, too, in a mean and 
 perilous sense. Old Paracelsus used to say that 
 every man carries a demon in his stomach, who 
 conducts digestion by processes of alchemy ; and 
 you now and then see a man enclosing a goblin 
 to preside over liver, spleen, and pylorus, cunning 
 enough to pulverize money and turn it into a 
 heart and sympathies so hard that you might break 
 the paving-stones of Wall Street against them. 
 Another man exists in the world of business, and 
 desires to live by nobler faculties outside of it, but 
 has not force enough to push any intellectual and 
 delicate filaments through the casings of counting- 
 room and store. He is an appendage to his oc- 
 cupation. The things he owns cannot be called 
 his possessions; for they possess him. He is 
 their secretary, to keep the moth and rust from 
 them, see to their insurance, cast their interest, 
 
270 Existence and Life. 
 
 and attend to the law-business they involve. It 
 is not seldom that an estate or a warehouse jumps, 
 in this way, upon a soul and rides it lean, like 
 the Old Man of the Sea on Sindbad's back. 
 
 Yet let us not forget to say that the great mer- 
 chant's life is no more confined to the limits of 
 his visible sphere, or to the material objects with 
 which he deals than a great poet's, or a great 
 artist's life is. "Might you penetrate the inner 
 counting-room of some mercantile establishment, 
 the merchant's brain, you would find at 
 work there an imagination whose sweep circum- 
 navigates the globe, penetrates the policies of 
 distant cabinets, and anticipates the prospects 
 of remote kingdoms ; studies the play of social 
 caprices, predicts the yield of fields he never saw, 
 and the fertility of seasons yet to roll ; weighs in 
 his letter-scale the chances of peace and war; 
 with a. prophetic vision beholds and secures, in 
 regions now waste and unvalued, the spots that 
 population is presently to seek ; picks out the 
 single gifted projector, the solitary, sagacious pro- 
 ject, among the thousand visionaries and the ten 
 thousand visions that wear an equal promise in 
 ordinary eyes, and doubles and redoubles his 
 fortune on a capital in which sagacity, forecast, 
 meditation, and faith are the largest figures." 
 Such men are among the noblest trophies of 
 modern society. They live half a poet's life. 
 Their schemes, benefiting the world, enlarge our 
 conception of the breadth of living, and show us 
 
Existence and Life. 271 
 
 how cargoes of hides and ship-loads of cotton 
 and restless bills of exchange are the busy shut- 
 tles of a unity of life which national prejudices, 
 animosities, and hostilities of faith could never 
 weave. 
 
 Where a man's deepest interest is, not in the 
 space he occupies, there is his life. The learned 
 blacksmith, Elihu Burritt, blows his bellows and 
 hammers his iron in Worcester, Mass, j but if 
 you could look at his mind you would see fifty 
 languages shooting out their feathery wings on 
 it : look at his spirit and it is flying from land to 
 land, like a dove, emblem of the genius of our 
 religion, with the olive-leaves of peace. If one 
 had hunted for the Apostle Paul in Ephesus, "he 
 would have been found, perhaps, working on 
 sail-cloth in a tent-maker's shop ; but this tent of 
 time was tattered over his head while he was at 
 his toil, and there were mystic breathings and 
 melodies in the air about him, which no observer 
 could have heard, and a subtler light than that 
 of the sun played about his needle as he stitched 
 the Cilician canvas faithfully, "a light that 
 never was on sea or land." 
 
 " A man may dwell in Paradise and dream of 
 a cabbage-garden, or he may dwell in a cabbage- 
 garden and dream of Paradise." The dwelling 
 shows where he exists ; the dream determines 
 where he lives. So some men exist in Boston, 
 but live abroad : the social problems, the art, or 
 the scenery of Europe supplying the atmosphere 
 
272 Existence and Life. 
 
 of their taste and intellect. Another man exists 
 to-day, but lives yesterday. The past is the 
 mould in which his mind thrives. He is vitally 
 related with Pompeii and ancient society and 
 Greek poetry, more than with Washington and 
 Kansas and Dr. Kane. Now and then you see 
 a man who lives so far in the past that he may 
 be said to be not so much behind the age as 
 behind all ages. 
 
 A man who does not believe with his whole mind 
 and heart in freedom, who will ever suffer himself 
 to sneer at it, or to carp at the eloquent vigor 
 of its western Magna Charta, the Declaration of 
 Independence, and who will allow any catch- 
 word or technicality to detain his sympathies 
 from the side where the spirit of liberty struggles 
 against fraud and force for new foothold, cannot 
 be said to live in America. He is spiritually an 
 Austrian, warmed by a western sun, fed by 
 American wheat, using the Anglo-Saxon speech, 
 protected and enfolded by a history with which 
 he has no vital sympathy, and which he feels no 
 sacred passion to continue. Is it difficult to tell 
 on which side his affinities would have fastened 
 eighty years ago? 
 
 Your next-door neighbor, who bows to you 
 courteously and shakes hands with you every day, 
 may live more intimately with Cicero or Mozart 
 or Napoleon than with any dwellers in the block 
 he inhabits. Taste and learning dissipate at 
 once the bonds of space and time, and open the 
 
Existence and Life. 273 
 
 world of wisdom or of artistic luxury for man's 
 abode. 
 
 I have often thought of the magical changes 
 that would be wrought, if the pressures and dead- 
 weights of the body could be annihilated, and the 
 myriads of beings about us, like balloons cut 
 from their fastenings, should range themselves 
 at once into a society according to the affinities 
 and specific gravity of their real natures. Fifth 
 Avenues and Beacon Streets would then be 
 gained and held by actual culture and inmost 
 refinement ; and all who had not these intrinsic 
 titles to such regions would fall to the alleys and 
 byways of the permanent universe, by sogginess 
 of spirit. The real President representative 
 in his nature of the whole diameter of American 
 history, from the faith that gnawed its way into 
 Plymouth Rock to the fortitude that rebuilds the 
 hotel in distant Lawrence would rise to the 
 true White House. And instead of the seeming 
 huddled anarchy of our visible society, the latent 
 order, which only the prophet sees, would become 
 the conspicuous and palpable order : tiers of spirits 
 would sink to the deeps of dissipation, misery, or 
 remorse ; others would float on the strata of envy, 
 pride, and self-love ; some would find the brilliant 
 district of the sphere of truth through their con- 
 trolling intellectual hunger ; others the rosy realm 
 of beauty ; the selectest bands would be seen in 
 the serene, warm light of charity : and so society 
 would show the order of Dante's great poem, 
 12* R 
 
274 Existence and Life. 
 
 banding itself in circles of life that narrow down- 
 wards to the base of the pit, and sweep up and 
 yet up to the joys of Paradise ! * 
 
 * This lecture Mr. King left unfinished. From his hasty notes 
 it would seem that he intended to show that the Bible was em- 
 phatically the " Book of Life." " How life is packed into it," he 
 writes ; " not an abstract chapter, life of all the faculties of man." 
 Again, " If we could see men pictorially, with the constituents of 
 their life around them, we should see bees swarming around one, 
 birds glittering around Audubon, fishes swimming around Agas- 
 siz, Swammerdam enveloped in infusoria, and Herschel with a 
 star on his forehead." Another item is to this effect : " A rolling 
 stone gathers no moss : a whizzing soul gathers no wisdom." 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE EARTH AND THE MECHANIC ARTS. 
 
 I ONCE had the privilege, in the Observatory 
 at Cambridge, of looking through a powerful 
 telescope at the planet Jupiter. It seemed to 
 be a ball about as large as the moon at the full, 
 not white or silvery, but tinted with straw color, 
 except at the poles, where it was deadened into 
 gray, and showing leaden streaks across the cen- 
 tre which at a low power of the instrument ap- 
 peared like one unbroken equatorial belt. It is a 
 magnificent world, that planet Jupiter, the levi- 
 athan of our solar sea. It is fourteen hundred 
 times as large as our own globe, and seventy thou- 
 sand times the volume of the moon, whose size 
 it resembles through the telescope, and there 
 it hangs ; its weight, its mass, its interests, its 
 mysteries, all reduced to a striped and tinted film 
 moving, swimming in the blue firmament. 
 
 So our earth appears to a distant observer 
 within our system. To some of the inhabitants 
 of the side of the moon which we see (if there be 
 intelligence there), it is a glorious globe, fixed 
 perpetually in their zenith, fourteen times as huge 
 as the full moon looks to us, delicately colored, 
 
276 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 like Jupiter, and marked by belts, not perpetual 
 but changing. What a poetic spectacle it must 
 be ! What verses must be written in celebration 
 of it by the Tennysons and Wordsworths among 
 our lunar friends ! 
 
 We may well wonder what they think such a 
 vast orb was thus bathed in beauty for. It must 
 look to them, as they study it with powerful 
 glasses, like a floating Arcadia, not made for 
 work but for dreamy joy. And if one could be 
 brought gradually nearer to it, till at last we 
 could see the line of the morning or of sunset 
 travel over it, bringing out the rose and gold on 
 its mountains, flooding its turning and white- 
 edged seas with purple, bathing its hundreds of 
 miles of forests, and sweeping broad leagues 
 of prairie-green, the splendor would be so over- 
 powering that no thought of toil could be asso- 
 ciated with such an abode. Or if any work was 
 connected with it in the mind of such an ob- 
 server, it would be that of artists only, students 
 and executors of beauty. Perhaps, if seen as the 
 shadows settle on it, and it turns its vast disk 
 into the gloom through which only starlight 
 gleams, it might seem to be a sanctuary-orb, 
 fitted up for cloister-spirits to meditate in and 
 send up the worship of reverent and quiet aspi- 
 ration. 
 
 But this is the distant view and estimate of the 
 earth. As we come nearer to it its roughnesses 
 start out, its poetic hues grow fainter. It stares 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 277 
 
 at us as a rugged reality. It is no Eden, in the 
 close acquaintance. It is a sphere for hard and 
 bitter toil, a world to be subdued and tamed. It 
 was not made for artists chiefly, or for pietistic 
 dreamers, but for men with working clothes, and 
 vigorous muscles, and the conquering implements 
 of mechanical skill. 
 
 I am to speak to-night on the nobleness of the 
 mechanic arts, the true and permanent ground 
 of our reverence for them, and the respect due to 
 those who represent them. And this is the first 
 thought which must arrest and hold us : the world 
 itself was made by the Creator as a field chiefly 
 for the display and advance of the mechanic arts, 
 and for the education of man through the exercise 
 and improvement of them. 
 
 In saying this I do not mean to say that lit- 
 erature of the highest order is not better, as 
 an expression of human nature, than machinery ; 
 nor that painting, music, grand architecture, all 
 exquisite things, are not of loftier grade, as hu- 
 man products, than ploughs, furnaces, and lathes. 
 I do not mean to say or imply that noble char- 
 acter, that sincere worship, is not the highest 
 attainment, the consummate flower of the globe 
 and society. And I am very far from suggest- 
 ing or believing that the doom of the majority 
 of the race is to be coarse and unintelligent 
 toil. 
 
 Men were made to attain ideas and to exhibit 
 and illustrate intellectual power on the earth. 
 
278 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 But the chief proportion of the ideas gained and 
 of the mental power developed by the residents 
 of this globe is to be shown, not through the finer 
 arts, but through the arts that transmute matter 
 and conquer nature. When a seed is planted 
 the intention is that air and soil and light and rain 
 shall be worked over into a vital and organized 
 product. Now the human intellect is placed on 
 the globe to work as a transmuting and organiz- 
 ing power on the matter of the planet, to subdue 
 it to intelligent, useful, and moral purposes, and 
 to set its forces in new and noble combinations 
 for beneficent ends. 
 
 The mastery of the earth is the chief command 
 and trust which the Almighty has committed to 
 mortals here. It is this command which enno- 
 bles labor, and places the mechanic arts, through 
 which alone the mastery of the earth is gained, 
 in their central position as expressions of human 
 power and symbols of human duty. 
 
 Some of the most striking and brilliant chap- 
 ters of natural religion are opened by a study 
 of the relation of man to the earth as the elabo- 
 rator of matter. I recall with great interest and 
 satisfaction the instruction I received, five or 
 six years ago, from a little book published in 
 New York, from the pen of Thomas Ewbank, 
 entitled "The World a Workshop." Such a 
 book does immense service by connecting large 
 ideas with the branches of skilful labor, and I 
 remember how deeply I was impressed by it as 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 279 
 
 a new and rich contribution to natural religioa 
 Every mechanic ought to own it, and read it and 
 re-read it. I do not know that it is on sale in this 
 city, or is in the libraries here. Possibly it is 
 . out of print now, although I hope not. 
 
 As soon as we grasp the conception that man 
 was made to be an artificer of matter, to gain 
 control of the planet, and build up civilization, 
 and enlarge his own intellect and nature by that 
 work, we detect distinct and charming revelations 
 of Divine thought and plan in the connection 
 between man and nature. 
 
 See the relation between the muscular power 
 of man and the force of gravitation. That is the 
 basis power on which, by which, and with which 
 we are to work. If a man with his present mus- 
 cular force were placed on the sun, he could not 
 move. His frame would be crushed at once by 
 the tremendous pull of the sun's mass upon him. 
 Place him on Jupiter, and he would not be half 
 so strong as now. He would stagger along as 
 if he had not too much but too little spirit, or 
 as if, like one of the German turners in the for- 
 mation of the living pyramid, he had two men 
 and a boy standing on his shoulders. Place him 
 on the first of the satellites of Jupiter, and he 
 would have ten thousand times the physical power 
 he has here, and could easily jump ten or fif- 
 teen miles. We can easily conceive the relation 
 between the strength of the frame and the force 
 of gravitation to have been such that men would 
 
280 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 not be half so free, and that the mechanical 
 powers could not have been half so efficient. 
 Mechanic arts and triumphs are provided for in 
 the primary fact of the proportion between our 
 muscles and the globe's dead pull. 
 
 I will not speak at any length of the structure 
 of the hand in relation to the arts by which matter 
 is subdued. You are all familiar with what may be 
 said on that point. Man alone is endowed with 
 a hand; and in the combination it reveals of 
 strength with variety of motion, in the nice ad- 
 justment of firmness to delicacy of perception, in 
 the balance between the softness of the flesh and 
 the sensibility of the nerves and the toughness 
 of the muscles, in the forms and relations of the 
 fingers and thumb, in the provisions wrought 
 into its structure for holding, striking, pulling, 
 feeling, weaving, spinning, and the numberless 
 methods of service which the useful and the 
 fine arts require, are seen some of the most 
 recondite proofs of Divine skill and far-reaching 
 adaptation that have enriched the science of 
 natural theology. The strength of the elephant 
 and the instinct of the bee would be poor com- 
 pensation for the paralysis of a nerve, or the 
 subtraction of a muscle from its composition. 
 When God formed the hand of Adam, the mas- 
 tery of the whole planet by the human race was 
 prophesied and provided for. 
 
 Consider, too, the structure and composition 
 of the earth's crust in connection with the call of 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 28 1 
 
 man to be a great artificer. If the strata of the 
 globe had been laid even, and in the order of 
 their heaviness, and if the metals had been made 
 by Providence in pure masses unmixed with ore, 
 as coal is, or granite, the possibility of almost all 
 the arts would have been annulled. But the 
 comparative lawlessness of the distribution of 
 the strata, the intermixing of material by convul- 
 sions and earthquakes, the creation of metals in 
 the ore state so that they can be broken, handled, 
 and artificially fused into masses compact and 
 pure, place the globe at man's disposal, instead 
 of making him its slave. The study of iron, 
 coal, and granite, as related to civilization, and to 
 their places in the earth's crust, opens one of the 
 deepest, richest, and most mystic volumes that 
 embody the beneficence of Providence. No man 
 can help standing with uncovered soul before the 
 organization and interests of labor, who becomes 
 acquainted with the provisions, ages on ages 
 before the advent of man, for the supply to the 
 future workshops on the globe of coal and iron. 
 The old forests of buried geological epochs, which 
 grew when no human being could have breathed 
 the planet's air, the play and fury of the central 
 fires that seem in a narrow view only disastrous, 
 and the lawlessness of the strata of the globe, 
 which might be easily conceived the freak of 
 chance, turn out eloquent witnesses of the presi- 
 dency over all ages of a plan which contemplated 
 man as the master-workman of the future, the 
 
282 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 large-brained and noble mechanic, for whom the 
 most ample and various supply of material must 
 be provided, that his cunning and his genius 
 might be at once stimulated and equipped. 
 
 It is wrong to touch points like these, which 
 require particular illustrations to vivify them, and 
 to leave them in general statement. But the 
 field of particulars is so rich that a lecture would 
 be monopolized by any one department of them, 
 and I must only sound the keynote, hint the mu- 
 sic to which it points, and pass on to consider 
 in another aspect the nobleness of the arts that 
 are engaged in dignifying and transmuting matter. 
 
 For thousands of years society has been strug- 
 gling against a prejudice that labor upon matter, 
 except in the most refined and artistic ways, is 
 degrading. According to the highest aristocratic 
 prejudice, even the sculptor's and the profes- 
 sional architect's employment is demeaning, in 
 comparison with the ineffable honor of plenty of 
 inherited money, having nothing to do, and doing 
 it. But all lower methods of handling matter, 
 working it into useful forms, and putting ideas 
 into it, are accounted incompatible with pre- 
 tension to position, utterly under ban. To be 
 a soldier, an orator, a poet, to be able to ex- 
 press skill and genius in destruction, or thought, 
 fervor, and sentiment in breath and words, is 
 consistent with some claim to social standing 
 high and secure; but to express conceptions in 
 machinery that create wealth and happiness, to 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 283 
 
 utter talent and genius through new combinations 
 of matter and force, puts the ungenteel stamp 
 upon the brow of the body and the spirit. 
 
 The literature of republican principle has been 
 wrestling with this estimate for centuries. How 
 to throw back this scorn of creative toil, how to 
 prove, in behalf of labor, that direct dealing with 
 matter is not degrading, and that the mechanical 
 departments of work and service are of worthy 
 rank, and are not to be abased before haughty 
 insolence, and are not to be called on to defend 
 themselves either, how to do this, and make 
 the protective argument felt as an impeachment 
 of those who arraign toil, has been the eager aim 
 of those whose sympathy with the race is widest 
 and most penetrating. 
 
 It is well to point to the necessity of skilful and 
 creative labor, and to show that what is necessary 
 to the existence of civilization cannot but be 
 honorable. It is well to call attention to the 
 utility of such labor, and to make the vast array 
 of services which the elaborating arts have ren- 
 dered to modern centuries speak for the workers 
 whose busy fidelity they express. It is well to 
 wing and speed the arrows of satire at those who 
 believe that dainty uselessness is the height of 
 nobility, that the pond, and not the river, is 
 the type of excellence, that the lotus, and not 
 the oak wreath, is the true rewarding crown. 
 
 But the sovereign answer in behalf of labor is 
 this : God is the great artificer. The Saviour 
 
284 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 said, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 
 The Infinite intellect is perpetually dealing with 
 matter. There is not a particle of it that is not 
 vitalized, moved, and moulded by him. You 
 think it low to be a carver of wood, do you, 
 my dilettante friend ? Show me a square inch 
 of wood on this orb that the Creator has not 
 fashioned ! Ship-building, or the construction 
 of timber-bending machinery, is not in accord- 
 ance with the tests of the best society, is it? 
 Show me a natural oak-knee which the Crea- 
 tor of forests has not bent ! Working iron into 
 innumerable uses by the aid of implements that 
 enable the hands to wield it, and to deal with it 
 when heated, imparts or suggests some social 
 contamination, does it ? What do we say of the 
 Creator, who has beaten and heated and alloyed 
 every atom of the rough iron of nature ? Open- 
 ing mines and dealing in coal soils the conven- 
 tional position, by the world's ordinance. What 
 judgment have we for the Lord of all things, who 
 has carbonized and blackened and packed away 
 in the cellar of the planet every flake of the 
 countless myriads of tons of that subterranean 
 Ethiopia which is now yielding its crystallized 
 fervor to the needs of civilization? 
 
 The old mythologies depicted a separate Deity 
 for each district of nature. Jupiter presided over 
 the air and the lightning, Vulcan over the me- 
 chanical processes ; Neptune swayed the sea, 
 Pluto the central depths of gloom and fire. But 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic !A?/s. 285 /r> v 
 
 y ( \\ , ^/. < 
 
 modern religion has brushed away J:Jie;5e, fancied'. 
 
 God is the vitality of all nature. He is tb^foun- O/ r 
 tain of all force, and the giver of all law. He'i i/ ( 
 in direct contact, not by arms and fingers, but by* ' . 
 his spirit, with every atom of the globe and of all - 
 worlds. He is the artificer, and works in matter 
 by bringing his spirit in relations to it far more 
 intimate than we can by our muscular handlings 
 of it, more intimate than the dealing of our 
 spirits with our bones and blood. 
 
 We speak of God as the artist of nature, its 
 painter and ornamenter. But he is also the infi- 
 nite manufacturer and mechanician. Beneath all 
 the polish of beauty is the roughness and strength 
 of the Vulcanic labor. Talk of a plated iron war- 
 vessel that can float and yet resist a broadside ! 
 Think of our globe as a granite-sheathed steamer 
 floating on air, her plates of mail compacted, 
 bolted, and clinched by the Almighty himself, 
 and the flame of Mauna Loa and the smoke of 
 Cotopaxi hinting the deeps and terrors of her fur- 
 naces. Talk of a clipper that cuts the latitudes 
 indifferent to frosts or fervid seas, and rounds 
 Cape Horn with glee. Yes! we may well be proud 
 of her. Those that build her may well sing, 
 
 " Up ! up ! in nobler toil than ours 
 
 No craftsmen bear a part, 
 We make of Nature's giant powers 
 
 The slaves of human art. 
 Lay rib to rib and beam to beam, 
 And drive the treenails free ; 
 Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam 
 
 Shall tempt the searching sea." 
 
286 The Earth and the Mechanic A rts. 
 Yet of the stanchest clipper we must say, 
 
 " Her oaken ribs the vulture beak 
 Of northern ice may peel ; 
 The sunken rock and coral peak 
 May grate along her keel ; 
 And know we well the painted shell 
 We give to wind and wave 
 Must float, the sailor's citadel, 
 Or sink, the sailor's grave ! " 
 
 But think of a comet like our last visitor, that 
 is built with fleecy sails to cross every latitude of 
 the planetary world, to sweep far out beyond the 
 Cape Horn of the system into boundless cold and 
 night, and then to bend, to point her misty prow 
 towards the invisible sun, to obey a helm that 
 keeps her true through the bleak star-watched ether 
 to move on till he becomes visible again, to hasten 
 then as by a pressing breeze, to cross once more 
 the track of the sluggish orbs, to fly nearer and 
 nearer, seeing him swell as she approaches, and 
 at last spreading more canvas, skysails, studding- 
 sails, as she rushes into splendor, sweeping around 
 him again, true to the predicted hour in a course of 
 a thousand years, no soil, no barnacles, no tattered 
 tackle upon her, and shaking out, as she passes 
 the hot goal, a broad pennant of light that streams 
 fifty millions of miles ! 
 
 Or shall we raise the question of steam-engine 
 building and a railway-track, and of its worthiness 
 as a business in a social point of view? When we 
 are about to settle it, suppose that we think of the 
 sun and the solar system as an engine and train 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 287 
 
 of cars, and ask who built them, and with what 
 expenditure of time and thought and interest. 
 For, besides the circular motion of the planets 
 around the sun, the sun himself, with all his train 
 of globes and satellites, is plunging on in space, 
 four hundred thousand miles a day, towards a de- 
 termined point among the fixed stars. 
 
 God is the artificer of matter. Not an ounce 
 of it within the bounds of space that he is not up- 
 holding, penetrating, changing, moulding, every 
 day. He deals with nothing else that we can see. 
 He utters no audible word. He prints with no 
 type. He puts his lessons to us, all his wisdom, 
 all his warnings, all his eloquence, all his love that 
 outward nature holds, into matter as he himself 
 wields and shapes it. The world is a laboratory, 
 a mill, a forge, a factory, as well as an expression 
 of beauty : every particle of matter at some time 
 passes through these stages to be subject to the 
 hammers and the acids and the implements of 
 the Infinite himself ; and we have not settled yet 
 in our high places if labor is honorable, if we 
 do not rise in worth and the scale of humanity as 
 we get farther and farther away from any useful 
 contact with forces and things ! 
 
 We may be told, however, that all labor is hon- 
 orable in the degree that it embodies and sets 
 forth ideas, and therefore that literature must 
 always take precedence of the arts of invention, 
 because it deals directly with ideas, and reaches 
 the intellectual nature as an educating force im- 
 
288 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 mediately. I acknowledge the principle that the 
 grades of nobleness in labor are determined by the 
 amount of intellect involved in them, or uttered 
 through them. And I maintain that the mechanic 
 arts of the last fifty years are not humbled at all 
 before the printed or spoken literature of the last 
 fifty years, as expressions of thought, imagination, 
 the toil of the highest intellectual faculties. Can 
 there be any question where the greatest amount 
 of original thought has been shown during the last 
 generation, in the records of Patent-Offices, or 
 in the catalogues of publications by the chief book- 
 sellers in Christendom ? 
 
 When we talk of sentiment, tenderness, aspira- 
 tion, pathos, love, the moral qualities that breathe 
 through books, or the musical creations of great 
 artists, and the sweetness of rhythm and the deli- 
 cacy of form in poetry, we talk of things which 
 cannot be measured with any of the triumphs of 
 inventive art. 
 
 But as to pure force of intellect, I believe that 
 far more has been expended upon the world, in 
 the last two or three generations, through the 
 channels in which labor flows, than through the 
 avenues that are esteemed especially intellectual. 
 
 What speech has been made in seventy years, 
 which displays such original triumphs of reason 
 and imagination, which holds in solution the re- 
 sults of so many weeks and months of severe 
 thinking, as the steam-engine, even as Watt left it ? 
 I doubt if there is such a thing in all literature. 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 289 
 
 What volume of essays is so new among the 
 products of thought, is so original as a piece of 
 thinking in things, as the carpet-loom^ or the card- 
 ing machine, that seems alive with pure intellect, 
 or the sewing-machine, I will not say which one 
 for fear of bombardment, or the last and bust 
 lathe, which will turn you out, as you please, the 
 model for a Chinaman's boot or a marble fac- 
 simile of Daniel Webster ? Where will you find a 
 stroke of statesmanship to rival the conception 
 that spans the St. Lawrence with welded iron 
 tubes, in spans of a thousand feet, and bolted so 
 that the heaviest laden trains shoot through them 
 as on granite ? What theory, on any large prob- 
 lem of church, state, law, or civilization, has been 
 so thoroughly worked out and harmonized with 
 facts, in the last century, that it can compare 
 as an expression of sinewy and comprehensive 
 thought with a model iron steamer, which mechani- 
 cians can now build so that it may be suspended 
 by stem and stern, with all its machinery on 
 board, or poised in the middle, leaving the ex- 
 tremities unsupported, without breaking? 
 
 Or let me invite you, in part through the glow- 
 ing language of another, to visit an immense foun- 
 dry, and witness " the costly preparations for some 
 great casting of iron, the bed-plate of a vast 
 marine engine, for instance. The sooty work- 
 men, at mine and furnace, have been long at work 
 digging the ore and blasting the iron. There it 
 lies corded in yonder piles of ugly crudeness and 
 13 s 
 
290 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 grim strength ! Here, beneath this lofty roof, full 
 of rough and shapeless materials, of vast cranes, 
 and monstrous tackles and chains from which the 
 world might hang, with the dying light of day 
 struggling in from windows in the roof, and the 
 flaming light of furnaces flashing up from its floor, 
 the preparations have been and are still going 
 on ! For months the skilful workmen, in the 
 moulding-sand that forms the floor, have been 
 busy, with firm and cunning fingers, forming the 
 mould, with every mortise, bolt-hole, groove, stay, 
 inclination, anxiously adjusted and arranged ; 
 and there it lies buried in the ground. Near by, 
 the furnaces, heated seven times hot, hold the 
 obdurate metal seething and boiling in their hell- 
 ish jaws. From minute to minute the doors are 
 opened, and out flows amid flames and sparks 
 that threaten the destruction of the building, and 
 amid which the workmen stand as unharmed and 
 un terrified as the three men that walked in the 
 prophet's furnace buckets of molten iron, that 
 are borne with staggering steps and emptied into 
 the vast caldron, from which the mould is finally 
 to be filled. The long-expected and anxiously 
 prepared-for moment at length approaches, nay, 
 it is precipitated ; for the door of the reservoir 
 leaks with the immense weight of its raging con- 
 tents. ' At a word the channels for the molten 
 iron are cleared ; the foreman stands at the burst- 
 ing gate ; the workmen, with bars and tools suited 
 each to its end, take their posts; while the master, 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic A rts. 29 1 
 
 standing over the mould, and looking calmly but 
 earnestly round, finally gives the signal! Up 
 flies the gate, forth leaps the furious current, the 
 channels blaze with fire, the mould trembles and 
 smokes with the rushing contents, the loosened 
 gates explode from their tubes ; but silence and 
 suspense hold the assembly yet. The master 
 stands intently watching the shrews for signs of 
 any superfluity of metal. Perhaps there has been 
 miscalculation and not enough ! Perhaps the 
 mighty weight has crushed the mould, and the 
 metal is sinking into the ground ! Perhaps the 
 casting is a failure, and the labor of months is to 
 be repeated ! A moment must settle the results of 
 a whole quarter's toil ; the profits of years of in- 
 dustry are at stake ; the pride of the engineer, the 
 suspense of the workmen, all feelings of sympa- 
 thy are concentrated in this anxious minute. But 
 lo ! just here bubbles feebly up the tardy metal, 
 rises a few inches above the surface, and stops, 
 not a gallon of metal to spare, not a hundred 
 pounds over, in a casting of forty tons ! Success 
 proud, happy, glorious success has crowned the 
 arduous work ! " * 
 
 Think of that adjustment of means to ends, 
 that careful, thoughtful insurance of harmony, 
 symmetry, and strength, in the immense product ! 
 How many novels have been written in the Eng- 
 lish tongue, since foundries like this first saw the 
 light, how many plays have been wrought upon 
 
 * Bellows's " Restatements of Christian Doctrines, " p. 298. 
 
292 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 paper ! And what number of novels, do you sup- 
 pose, have shown a plan so broad, a mould so 
 strong, a relation of parts so cunning and exact, 
 a proportion of power so admirable, that they can 
 as intellectual achievements compare with such 
 a casting of a bed-plate ? There is hardly a novel 
 written in English now, whose work does not look 
 flawed, distorted, pinched, or "sloppy" in the 
 contrast. 
 
 Turn from the department of pure literature to 
 the government of the world, and you shall see 
 new testimony to the amount of intellect that has 
 been poured through the mechanic arts in the 
 last fifty or sixty years. Great mechanics have 
 done far more in that time than great politicians, 
 great statesmen, or great generals to affect per- 
 manently the fortune of nations. 
 
 Men in the places of civil power think that 
 they chiefly mould or modify public interests, by 
 their direct dealing through votes, speeches, and 
 schemes with a nation's laws and life. But how- 
 ever much they do, it is the movement of the 
 great social forces below political ones the 
 drift of things that determines good or evil for 
 a people. And these social forces are guided, 
 intensified, or changed very much by the control 
 gained and established over the powers of nature. 
 Think what wonders the mechanic arts of locomo- 
 tion have wrought on colonization the last forty 
 years, the moving of myriads from one country 
 and clime to another without serious social jar ! 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 293 
 
 Think how the mechanical aids of industry, in- 
 creasing many fold the wealth of the world, have 
 raised labor into power in the state, and stealth- 
 ily modified constitutions to meet and fit the new 
 conditions ! It would be impossible, hereafter, 
 for France to sink to such a social condition as 
 she was in during the two generations that pre- 
 ceded, caused, and justified the French Revolu- 
 tion of 1789. It was not the eloquence of Grey 
 and Brougham, but the declamation of the steam- 
 engine, that produced the passage of the Reform 
 Bill a generation ago in England ; and the ma- 
 chinery of the island is now pulling, straining, 
 altering her social charter, her whole system of 
 church and state, with a leverage and a piston 
 and pulley power which are resistless, in favor 
 of larger representation of the people who crowd 
 the factories and feed the furnaces and looms. 
 Even in morals the effect of improvements 
 wrought by mechanical skill is often wonderful, 
 and puts to shame the intentional consecrated 
 labor of moralists themselves. In the countries 
 where fires are necessary for a large part of 
 the year, think what beneficent influence on 
 family life, on temper, on the spiritual as well as 
 real atmosphere of home, the invention must 
 have been that utterly prevents smoky chim- 
 neys ! And I have no doubt that the cheap 
 production of gas and the kindling of the gas- 
 light in the streets of cities have directly prevented 
 more crime, in the last twenty years, than half 
 
294 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 the sheriffs and half the philanthropists have suc- 
 ceeded in doing. In the Book of Job we read 
 of the morning light taking hold of the ends of 
 the earth and shaking the wicked out of it, 
 majestic poetry clothing thus in imagery the 
 hostility of light and crime. And now in the 
 streets of great cities the ruffian cannot say, 
 " Surely the darkness shall cover me," for, as by 
 the presence of God, " the night shall be light 
 about him," and a noontide safety is poured over 
 walks that border the lairs of iniquity. 
 
 Geologists tell us that in some districts of the 
 earth the whole land, mountains and all, from the 
 shore-line, is slowly rising, borne up by quiet 
 continental forces underneath. We conceive the 
 inward energies of the planet as acting through 
 volcanic throes and earthquake fits of passion 
 solely, which are nothing to the noiseless power 
 that works below the earthquakes, and lifts the 
 rock-foundations of an empire. So in the moral 
 raising of society, through the progress of me- 
 chanic art, ennobling labor, spreading comfort, 
 giving power to the people, befriending the good 
 causes and interests of civilization in a thousand 
 subtile ways, we notice the play of the continen- 
 tal moral forces working from beneath the explo- 
 sive ones, and bearing up more and more of 
 society in light and better air. 
 
 In whatever point of view, from whichever side 
 we study it, the fact appears that the human race, 
 as a whole, were made to be workers in matter, to 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 295 
 
 change it into new forms, to get education in 
 doing it, to express their education again in do- 
 ing it, to advance civilization thus, and in such 
 ways to rise into fellowship with the Omnipotent 
 chemist, geometer, and mechanician of the world. 
 
 Every man who is fixed for life in an occupa- 
 tion ought to have the habit of regarding it at 
 times from the highest point of view, and espe- 
 cially of rising into a feeling of kindred with the 
 illustrious masters of it. If a man is a preacher, 
 let him consecrate some hours by the thought 
 of the men Mason and Chalmers and Chan- 
 ning, Fenelon and Bourdaloue, Luther and Knox, 
 Bernard, Chrysostom, and mighty Paul who 
 have worn the same robe on souls electric with 
 the Holy Ghost. And let the thought that he is 
 of that lineage inspire him, whatever be the pro- 
 portions of his gifts, and keep him true. 
 
 If he is a teacher, let him feel what his profes- 
 sion, as a whole, is doing for the world to-day, 
 and, remembering that Agassiz is daily employed 
 in it, and heroes like Dr. Howe, and that the 
 name of Thomas Arnold glows on its roll, let 
 a consecrated pride in its worth and its names 
 animate his will and encourage his heart. 
 
 If he is a merchant, let him not fail to feel, now 
 and then, that his warehouse or office is one tile 
 in the vast edifice of credit, interblended interest, 
 and confidence, whose arches span from London 
 to Canton, which, more than any other influence, 
 knits the nations into unity ; and let him vow that 
 his character, by its looseness or its knavery, shall 
 
296 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 not be an element of danger or decay in that 
 noble pile. 
 
 And if he is a mechanic, let him think how 
 the globe was wrought out on the creative wheel 
 through patient and expectant ages when man was 
 not, but was foreseen in the creative thought. Let 
 him think of constructive toil as 
 
 " A blessing now, a curse no more ; 
 Since He whose name we breathe with awe 
 
 The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
 
 A poor man toiling with the poor ; 
 In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law." 
 
 And let him study the biographies of the great 
 mortal masters of the mechanic powers, the stal- 
 wart thinkers in God's dialect of force, Watt 
 and Franklin, Arkwright and Cartwright, Whitney, 
 Fulton, Whittemore, Stephenson, and Brunei. Lit- 
 erary men read the stories of their struggles, their 
 wrestle with the great secrets of nature, like Jacob 
 with the Spirit, refusing to let go till the blessing 
 was yielded, their single-eyed devotedness to their 
 track and their truth, with admiration and with 
 touched hearts. How should they who are of 
 the same calling follow the record of their careers 
 and triumphs ! There should be niches in every 
 mechanic's memory, where, through faithful and 
 repeated readings of their lives, these spirits 
 should stand as noble monitors and friends. 
 
 The papers tell us that, next week, commis- 
 sioners will be chosen to represent the Pacific 
 Coast at the World's Fair at London next May. 
 
The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 297 
 
 If we were to choose from the whole planet a 
 score of men to represent us on some other globe 
 or in some other system in a great human fair of 
 the universe, it would not be kings, dukes, prime- 
 ministers, the richest men, we should appoint as 
 ambassadors to show what our race is, and what 
 it is doing here, but the great thinkers, artists, 
 and workers, the thinkers in ink, the thinkers in 
 stone and color, the thinkers in force and homely 
 matter, the men who are bringing the globe up 
 towards the Creator's imagination and- purpose ; 
 and on this mission the leaders of mechanic art 
 would go side by side with Shakespeare and Mil- 
 ton, Angelo and Wren, Newton and Cuvier. 
 
 In England, now, they are preparing statues of 
 Brunei the engineer, and the Stephensons, father 
 and son, to be finished and erected about the 
 same time with those of Macaulay and Havelock. 
 The nation is beginning to bow to the occupa- 
 tions and the genius that have added to her 
 power ten thousand fold, is beginning to bow 
 to labor, noble, glorious, sacred labor, which, in 
 partnership with the thoughts of genius, is chang- 
 ing the face of the planet as by a wand of miracle, 
 preparing in no slight degree the advent of His 
 kingdom, and fulfilling His deep purposes, who 
 labored on the planet myriads of years before 
 Adam was moulded, a breathing statue from the 
 dust, and who now calls man to partnership in 
 his plans. 
 
 And how can we honor labor and the arts that 
 raise it, most successfully ? By right thoughts of 
 
298 The Earth and the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 it ; by ennobling ourselves, if any form of it is 
 our calling ; by erecting statues of its great repre- 
 sentatives in our hearts ; and by the fervor, the 
 duties, and the sacrifices of patriotism now. 
 
 a For our national struggle is not only for a capi- 
 tal city, for the old geography, for the Mississippi 
 and Missouri, for the hallowed parchment of the 
 Constitution, it is also for the dignity of labor. 
 The daggers of conspiracy strike at that. Through 
 the rent Constitution, through the holes of the 
 Declaration of Independence, which they scorn, 
 the traitors seek to stab the doctrine of the human- 
 ity and rights of the classes everywhere that toil. 
 They proclaim, at the mouths of their artillery, that 
 the state is built right when votes are restricted, 
 and when lords stand high and insolent on the 
 trampled muscles of those that toil. Their three- 
 barred flag, emblem of infamy in every thread, is 
 symbol also of this apostasy. Let us accept the 
 challenge. Let us see in the stripes and colors 
 of the dear old national banner the streaming rep- 
 resentative of the rights and worth of labor ; and 
 let every bared arm and swelling muscle swear 
 fealty to it now, with the deeper passion. Let it 
 be ready, if need comes, to throw down the ham- 
 mer for it and take the sword. And let the crime 
 against it be avenged, as it only can be, by the 
 smiting down of every tattered rag of the rebel- 
 lion, before the spirit and valor of men who will 
 suffer no empire to be founded in America on 
 perjury, treason, and insult to toil ! 
 
 1861. 
 
IX. 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 ON one of the mountains of New Hampshire, 
 in the Franconia Pass, hangs a great stone 
 face, which tens of thousands of tourists from all 
 parts of the country have looked up to with awe. 
 Many, doubtless, who now hear me have seen it, 
 and remember how they felt when first 
 
 " The giant image broke on them, 
 Full human profile, nose and chin distinct, 
 
 And fed at evening with the blood of suns." 
 
 So, for many years, for the full space of a 
 generation, the brow and features of one man 
 seemed to stand out high and majestic from the 
 solid ridges of New England character and intel- 
 lect, a prominent part of its natural scenery. 
 The very name of the man suggests the texture 
 and strength of granite by the combination of its 
 syllables, Daniel Webster. 
 
 I shall never forget the first time I saw him. 
 It was on Bunker Hill, the loth of September, 
 1840, at the great Whig gathering there of twenty 
 thousand, in the Harrison campaign. Half a 
 dozen stands were erected on different parts of 
 
3OO Daniel Webster. 
 
 the field for speakers ; but, a boy of fifteen, I 
 was indifferent to all speaking, and was in search 
 of the figure of the great Senator. I was eager 
 to see the fountain-head of the eloquence we had 
 been declaiming at school. At last I descried 
 on one of the far-off platforms a mass of dingy 
 grandeur which was unmistakable, and struck 
 what is called a " bee-line " for it through the 
 crowd. I pressed up very near to the platform, 
 and caught the flash from under the thunderous 
 brows, and saw a genial glow upon the face. 
 He was introducing a tall Virginian to the living 
 mass around him. These were the first words I 
 heard : " What shall I say of you, my friend ? 
 This, gentlemen, is Benjamin Watkins Leigh of 
 Virginia, a Whig true to the backbone." Then 
 he slapped him on the shoulder with a force 
 which proved that Mr. Leigh, without question, 
 belonged to the class of vertebrata among poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 When a shower suddenly scattered the thou- 
 sands, I managed to keep close to Mr. Webster as 
 he left the field, seizing every opportunity with the 
 utmost impudence to see the play of his features. 
 And at any time after that day I would have 
 gone farther to look upon his face than to see 
 the Notch of the White Hills or Niagara. It 
 was my fortune to listen to his great speech in 
 1842 in Fanueil Hall, after the Ashburton Treaty, 
 when he flung back the taunts of his party be- 
 cause he had remained in the Cabinet of Mr. Tyler. 
 
Daniel Webster. 301 
 
 His oration on Bunker Hill at the completion 
 of the monument in 1843 I listened to: I saw 
 him in Fanueil Hall in November, 1844, on the 
 evening of the day that brought the news of Mr. 
 Clay's defeat. The vast room, dimly lighted, 
 was packed with men in a quite sombre mood. 
 And when the swarthy statesman stepped upon 
 the stage, and suppressed the cheers that hailed 
 him with the opening words, proudly declaimed, 
 
 " What though the field be lost ! 
 All is not lost ; the unconquerable will, 
 And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
 And courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome ! 
 That glory never shall his wrath or might 
 Extort from me," 
 
 the scene was a grander representation than any 
 picture by Martin of the council which Milton 
 paints, when the defeated spirits gathered to hear 
 their dread commander, who, 
 
 " Above the rest 
 
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
 Stood like a tower." 
 
 Afterwards in 1849 I heard him deliver a his- 
 torical address on the Constitution ; then in 1850 
 the speech in Boston when he said that Massa- 
 chusetts must conquer her prejudices ; after that 
 his final speech in Fanueil Hall. 
 
 Vividly do I recall the last time I saw him. 
 It was a warm day of the spring of 1852. Mr. 
 Webster was walking very feebly along Washington 
 Street, Boston. His hat was pulled low over his 
 
302 Daniel Webster. 
 
 brow, and he seemed anxious to escape the notice 
 of the crowd that gathered to follow him. He 
 wore an olive-green frock-coat, and around his 
 neck and shoulders hung a massive gold chain. 
 Possibly you will like to hear the inscriptions 
 on its clasp. On one side was engraved, "To 
 Daniel Webster, the Defender of the Constitu- 
 tion, and the Advocate of the Union." On the 
 other side, " Manufactured by Woodruff and 
 Addison, San Francisco, California, September 
 29, 1849." I n reply to the letter which presented 
 it he wrote thus about - California : "At last we 
 have seen our country stretch from sea to sea, 
 and a new highway opened across the continent 
 from us to our fellow-citizens on the shore of the 
 Pacific. Far as they have gone, they are yet 
 within the protection of the Union, and ready, 
 I doubt not, to join us all in its defence and 
 support. [Yes, we are ready still ! ] They are 
 pursuing a new and absorbing interest. While 
 their Eastern brethren continue to be engaged 
 in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, naviga- 
 tion, and the fisheries, they are exploring a region 
 whose wealth surpasses fiction. They are gath- 
 ering up treasure in a manner and in a degree 
 hitherto unknown, at the feet of inaccessible 
 mountains and ^long those streams 
 
 ' Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold.' 
 
 Over them and over us stands the broad arch 
 of the Union, and long may it stand, as firm as 
 
Daniel Webster. 303 
 
 the arches of heaven, and as beautiful as the bow 
 which is set in the clouds ! " 
 
 The old man, ten years before, had saved his 
 country by the Ashburton Treaty from the desola- 
 tion of war on the easternmost frontier. It was 
 fit that, as he walked in the streets of the oldest 
 city of the Union, a few months before his death, 
 he should wear a decoration to associate his 
 genius with this youngest city of the extreme 
 West, the farthest limit of the empire which, so 
 long as it obeyed and revered the Constitution, 
 could not outrun the reach of his love. 
 
 Then came the solemn Sunday, October 24, 
 1852, and the tolling bells to tell us in Boston, 
 before church-time, of the death in Marshfield : 
 
 " What ails the morning, that the misty sun 
 Looks wan and troubled in the autumn air, 
 Dark over Marshfield ? 'T was the minute-gun : 
 God ! has it come that we foreboded there ? " 
 
 " This mighty spirit is eclipsed ; this power 
 Hath passed from day to darkness ; to whose hour 
 Of light no likeness is bequeathed." 
 
 And speedily was reported to us there, speedily to 
 the whole land, too, the final scene in the states- 
 man's sick-chamber. We speak of the death of a 
 great man in old age sometimes as the wreck of a 
 weather-stained bark on pitiless rocks, sometimes 
 as the furling of tired sails in quiet port. Neither 
 of these images fits that death-scene. Neither 
 of them is profoundly Christian. The calm ful- 
 filment of every duty, and the reining up of the 
 faculties to obey the mastery of the will; the 
 
304 Daniel Webster. 
 
 desire to know when the experience of dissolu- 
 tion was to commence ; the solemn tones of 
 prayer, laden with the riches of his language and 
 humble with penitence ; the farewell to family 
 and friends, majestic and tender, as he felt that 
 he was floating out beyond earthly reckonings 
 and the outlines of human charts ; and then, 
 after the broken ejaculations of the psalm for the 
 Divine rod and staff, die silent close ! not a 
 wreck on the desolate coasts of mortality, it 
 is we that are on the shore, the fading rather 
 of a noble ship into the mists that curtain the 
 horizon, its sails all set, bearing one great and 
 serene form beyond our gaze into the ineffable 
 light, and into an experience where he could say 
 more truly and intensely than on earth, " I still 
 live ! " 
 
 We must now give some minutes more particu- 
 larly to his biography. 
 
 Mr. Webster was born the i8th of January, 
 1782, in Salisbury, N. H. When his Puritan fa- 
 ther built his log-cabin there, no pioneer hut sent 
 up any smoke or prayers into the sky between 
 this clearing near the head-waters of the Merri- 
 mack and Montreal. The young Daniel was born 
 in midwinter, on the frosty verge of Pilgrim civil- 
 ization, under the auspices and influence of the 
 North Star. 
 
 The name is Scotch, and the large majority of 
 the Webster stock were of the Scottish type, 
 of light complexion and hair, tall, slender, and 
 
Daniel Webster. 305 
 
 bony. But Daniel's grandmother (Bachelder by 
 name) was of the dark and bilious mould and 
 temperament. Mr. Webster said in 1840: "We 
 are all indebted to my father's mother for a large 
 portion of the little sense and character that 
 belongs to us." The boy Daniel was of her type, 
 not of the Scottish pattern, youngest and dark- 
 est of ten children. General Stark told him once 
 that his complexion was admirable for a sol- 
 dier, because burnt gunpowder would not smutch 
 it. He never obtained, however, even amateur 
 military distinction. When fifty-four years old, 
 he wrote from Washington to one of his sons 
 who was disappointed in regard to a military 
 appointment : " We are predestinated not to be 
 great in the field of battle. I once tried to be 
 captain, and failed ; and I canvassed a whole regi- 
 ment to make your uncle an adjutant, and failed 
 also. We are not the sons of Bellona's bride- 
 groom. Our battles are forensic ; we draw no 
 blood but the blood of our clients." 
 
 His father had served in the French war and 
 in the Revolution, and on the little farm in Salis- 
 bury was engaged in a genuine Puritan hand- 
 to-hand fight with nature and the wilderness, 
 wringing subsistence for a wife and ten children 
 out of a thin penurious soil, and a climate di- 
 vided into three parts, nine months winter, 
 two months breaking up of winter, one month 
 setting in of winter. 
 
 There were no luxuries in the farm-house, and 
 
 T 
 
306 Daniel Webster. 
 
 very few books. So much the better. There 
 was opportunity for the farmer-boy to learn the 
 Bible thoroughly, and know Watts's Hymns by 
 heart, and commit a cheap pamphlet-copy of 
 Pope's u Essay on Man " to memory, and get a vig- 
 orous appetite for knowledge from the annual visits 
 of the almanac, whose poetry and anecdotes were 
 devoured with an eagerness that left a smack 
 on the mental palate. If you want a boy to have 
 tough mental fibre in after life, keep him in child- 
 hood on a few strong books that he must chew. 
 
 When he was eight years old, he saw in a 
 country shop a cotton handkerchief with some- 
 thing printed on both sides of it. He gave his 
 whole stock of hoarded pennies to secure it, and 
 absorbed its contents that night with his keen 
 dark eyes, on his father's kitchen floor, by the 
 light of the roaring chimney-fire. What painter 
 will be first to make that scene perpetual in our 
 country's history and art? It was the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, just then in the dawn 
 of its beneficent power under the lead of Presi- 
 dent Washington, that the New Hampshire boy 
 was then stamping on his brain. He told the 
 story himself in 1850, and archly said, " I have 
 known more or less of that document ever since." 
 If a Californian, without excess of reverence, had 
 heard him say that, he would have been apt to 
 break out in the Pacific vernacular, and exclaim, 
 " You bet ! " Forty years from that winter came 
 the great Hayne debate. But I would travel 
 
Daniel Webster. 307 
 
 farther to see a master's picture of the lad, read- 
 ing the Constitution in the rude home on the 
 edge of the northern wilderness, than to see 
 Healy's great painting of the orator in the sena- 
 torial struggle against the theory and passions of 
 secession ; as I would go farther to see a pic- 
 ture of the springs of the Amazon, far up under 
 the cold white splinters of the Andes, than the 
 most adequate representation of the imperial 
 river's tropical tide. 
 
 The father had not been able to give any of his 
 children an education. But Daniel, the youngest, 
 was of too feeble constitution to work much on the 
 farm, and he was sent to an academy. The father 
 pinched himself sadly to bear the burden. The 
 New Hampshire hunters after moose buckled a 
 strap around the stomach in their journeys, and, 
 when provisions were very scant, drew the strap a 
 hole or two tighter to prevent or deaden the gnaw- 
 ing of hunger. That is what the old father did 
 morally, he drew the strap tighter to give one 
 boy an education, and the older sons said that 
 " Dan was sent to school, that he might know as 
 much as the other boys." 
 
 He gained rapidly as a student, but could never 
 get courage to stand up and declaim before his 
 companion-scholars, a difficulty which did not 
 seem to affect him seriously in the Senate in later 
 years. His father then determined to send him 
 to college. He tells us what a warm thrill went 
 through his frame when the old man, toiling up a 
 
308 Daniel Webster. 
 
 hill in the snow, broke the news to him, and how 
 he leaned his head on the sturdy father's shoulder 
 and wept At fifteen he became a freshman in 
 Dartmouth College ; at nineteen he was graduated, 
 all the class feeling that he was destined to emi- 
 nence. 
 
 But when half his college term expired he deter- 
 mined that Ezekiel, his brother next older, should 
 be educated also. And so rapidly was the purpose 
 ca/ried out that, in the year in which he graduated, 
 at nineteen, Ezekiel, twenty-one, entered college. 
 
 And then how he worked for him, to pay the 
 expenses of Ezekiel's college life ! He went to 
 Fryeburg, near the White Mountains, to teach 
 school for thirty dollars a month. But: he found 
 that in the winter evenings he could earn twenty- 
 five cents each by copying deeds, and that in a 
 long evening he could copy two. By this extra 
 toil he paid his board, and saved his monthly 
 salary untouched, to gallop with to the tall, light- 
 complexioned, serious Ezekiel, who in looks seems 
 to have been a Scotch Apollo. Thirty years 
 afterward Mr. Webster told a friend that the ache 
 was n't out of his fingers from that Fryeburg copy- 
 ing. No, and the nobleness was not out of his soul ! 
 
 In college he seems to have blended a very seri- 
 ous intellect with a great deal of humor ; and in 
 the letters that have been preserved which he 
 wrote to college friends after his graduation, from 
 nineteen to twenty-three, there is a rich overflow 
 of fun. He was given to rhymes. After his first 
 
Daniel Webster. 309 
 
 experience of the weed he versifies his profound 
 gratitude to its soothing quality : 
 
 " Come, thou, tobacco, new-found friend, 
 Come, and thy suppliant attend, 
 
 In each dull lonely hour ; 
 And though misfortunes lie around, 
 Thicker than hail-stones on the ground, 
 
 I '11 rest upon thy power. 
 Then, while the coxcomb pert and proud, 
 The politician learned and loud, 
 
 Keep one eternal clack, 
 I '11 tread where silent nature smiles, 
 Where solitude our woes beguiles, 
 
 And chew thee, dear tobac." 
 
 WEBSTER (nineteen years'). 
 
 Young ladies in the country seem to have had 
 a tendency to fall in love with the large-browed, 
 sad-eyed, dark, and handsome youth. Comte, 
 the French atheist, considered the eye imperfect, 
 and thought the solar system could be improved. 
 In a letter to a friend the young Webster makes 
 this physiological proposition : " If there should 
 be a new edition of human nature, I think it would 
 be found expedient to give girls stronger ribs, and 
 a thicker covering for the heart. I say a plague 
 to the girls, if they can't keep their little beaters at 
 home." (Suppose that nature should refrain from 
 making pale, olive-skinned geniuses, with noble 
 features, and eyes large, sad, unworldly, incapa- 
 ble to be fathomed. Perhaps the ribs would be 
 strong enough, then.) 
 
 There certainly were no pecuniary temptations 
 to great softness in the left side of the dam- 
 
3IO Daniel Webster. 
 
 sels towards the young graduate, for he writes 
 thanks to one of his classmates for his excellent 
 receipt for greasing boots, but says, "mine need 
 other doctoring, since they admit not only water, 
 but peas and gravel-stones." 
 
 " What nonsense lurked within the pate, oh ! 
 
 Of definition-making Plato, 
 
 Who sang in philosophic metre, 
 
 ' Man is a rational and biped creature ' 1 
 
 Many do think, and so do I, 
 
 Old codger, that you told a lie ; 
 
 And yet perhaps, you surly lout, 
 
 There is a hole where you '11 creep out ; 
 Males you call rational, but no man 
 
 E'er heard you say the same of woman ! " 
 
 WEBSTER (twenty-two years). 
 
 The richest records of those years of earliest 
 manhood relate to his efforts to keep Ezekiel 
 afloat in college. It was no easy task, after the 
 Fryeburg school-keeping and deed-copying were 
 over. Genius was maturing, but to a young law- 
 student in New Hampshire dollars came hard. 
 A farmer's dollar is not made as Mr. Emerson 
 tells us the city dollar may be, by the skit of a 
 pen; his bones ache with the work that earned it. 
 Ezekiel writes from college : 
 
 " Money, Daniel, money. As I was walking down to 
 the office after a letter, I happened to find one cent, 
 which is the only money I have had since the second 
 day after I came on. It is a fact, Dan, that I was 
 called on for a dollar, where I owed it, and borrowed 
 it, and have borrowed it four times since, to pay those 
 I borrowed of. Yours without money, 
 
 " EZEKIEL." 
 
Daniel Webster. 311 
 
 Daniel writes from Salisbury : 
 
 " I have now by me two cents in lawful federal cur- 
 rency; next week I will send them, if they be all. 
 They will buy a pipe ; with a pipe you can smoke : 
 smoking inspires wisdom ; wisdom is allied to forti- 
 tude ; from fortitude it is but one step to stoicism; and 
 stoicism never pants for this world's goods. So per- 
 haps my two cents by this process may put you quite 
 at ease about cash. We are at home in the old way ; 
 boys digging potatoes with frozen fingers, and girls 
 washing without wood. Write me ; tell me your ne- 
 cessities, and anything else you can think of to amuse 
 me. Be a good child ; mind your books and strive to 
 learn. " DANIEL." 
 
 So for two or three years the correspondence 
 runs on, filled with records of poverty, affection, 
 and fun. Daniel's spirits seem always to wax 
 as money wanes. He says he has discovered 
 what the fulcrum was which Archimedes needed 
 to move the world, cash. Once he borrowed 
 eighty-five dollars to send to Ezekiel, and it was 
 lost by the stage-driver. Here was a blow indeed. 
 These are the young Daniel's reflections in a 
 letter to his brother, I am afraid you will not 
 discover in them a senatorial stateliness or se- 
 verity : 
 
 " Fol de dol, dol de dol, di dol ; 
 I '11 never make money my idol ; 
 For away our dollars will fly all. 
 With my friend and my pitcher, 
 I 'm twenty times richer 
 Than if I make money my idol ; 
 Fol de dol, dol de dol, di dol ! 
 
312 Daniel Webster. 
 
 Through all he had a presentiment of coming 
 fortune. In another letter he writes: "Zeke, I 
 don't believe but that Providence will do well for 
 us yet We shall live, and live comfortably." 
 
 He did see Ezekiel through his troubles. He 
 helped him into position, fame, and competence. 
 Ezekiel became one of the first lawyers of New 
 Hampshire, and one of the noblest, as he was one 
 of the most majestic men of New England. Mr. 
 Webster always spoke of him as the most com- 
 manding and imposing person he had ever seen. 
 Until Ezekiel was comfortably established, the 
 two brothers had but one aim, one purse, one 
 welfare, and one hope. Their love was as that 
 of David and Jonathan, "passing the love of 
 women." 
 
 In 1804 Mr. Webster went to Boston as a law- 
 student, and was a poverty-stricken youth there, 
 where fifteen years later his income was over 
 fifteen thousand a year, a sum equal to more 
 than double that amount to-day. 
 
 In 1807 he opened an office in Portsmouth, 
 N. H. I was a school-boy in Portsmouth thirty 
 years ago ; and people then told with affectionate 
 pride of the young lawyer with the slender frame 
 and splendid eyes ; and how he used to im- 
 provise the most humorous stories for children, 
 about people that passed by the window; and 
 how superbly he read Shakespeare in evening cir- 
 cles ; and what a powerful opponent the great 
 Jeremiah Mason found him in the courts ; and 
 
Daniel Webster. 313 
 
 how Mr. Mason used to say that never was such 
 an actor lost. to the stage as he would have made 
 had he chosen to turn his talents for humor and 
 mimicry that way. 
 
 Six years he served at the New Hampshire bar, 
 and was then sent to Congress, at thirty-one years 
 of age, in 1813. 
 
 Clay, Calhoun, Lowndes, Pickering, Gaston, 
 Forsyth, were the commanding names there. Mr. 
 Webster had never before been a member of a 
 deliberative assembly. He had not studied the 
 ropes of that ship. He never was a member of 
 any State government, except for ten days in the 
 Massachusetts Legislature, and then he introduced 
 and carried a bill that no man should catch trout 
 in the State in any other way than by hook and 
 line. At one bound, when he first took the floor 
 in Congress, he put himself in the first rank of 
 American parliamentary speech and thought. 
 His address on the war-question was so weighty 
 with historical knowledge and temperate logic ; it 
 was so lofty and calm in tone, so free from rant 
 and " splurge," so fit to go into permanent litera- 
 ture as a piece of strong and decisive writing ; it 
 was arranged with so much tact and uttered with 
 such dignified force, that Chief Justice Marshall 
 made the prophecy that the new speaker would 
 become among the very first, if not the first 
 statesman of America. And Mr. Lowndes said, 
 " The North has not his equal, nor the South his 
 superior." 
 
3 14 Daniel Webster. 
 
 Two terms he served in the House, and then, in 
 1816, removed to Boston with his family and de- 
 voted himself to the profession of law. In 1818, 
 when thirty-six, he argued in the Supreme Court 
 of the United States the Dartmouth College case, 
 and won a position as a great constitutional 
 lawyer, not merely of the first rank, but of a new 
 type. In 1820, at thirty-eight, he sounded a new 
 note in American literature, by his Plymouth ora- 
 tion on the second centennial anniversary of the 
 landing of the Pilgrims, 
 
 I once heard a Yankee farmer compare Mr. Clay 
 and Mr. Webster thus : " I Ve heerd 'em both : 
 with Mr. Clay the hearing on 't is more than the 
 reading on 't, but with Mr. Webster the reading on 't 
 is enough sight more than the hearing on 't." In 
 Plymouth the old citizens will tell you, to-day, how 
 sublime the spectacle was, when Mr. Webster, 
 towards the close of the address, uttered his de- 
 nunciation of the slave-trade : " In the sight of 
 our law the African slave-trader is a pirate and a 
 felon ; and in the sight of Heaven an offender far 
 beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. If 
 there be, within the extent of our knowledge or 
 influence, any participation in this traffic, let us 
 pledge ourselves here upon the rock of Plymouth 
 to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the 
 land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. 
 I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke 
 of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are 
 still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of 
 
Daniel Webster. 315 
 
 those who by stealth and at midnight labor in 
 this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become 
 the artificers of such instruments of misery and 
 torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease 
 to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let 
 it be set aside from the Christian world ; let it be 
 put out of the circle of human sympathies and 
 human regards, and let civilized man henceforth 
 have no communion with it." He stood in front 
 of the high pulpit to utter his address. The pul- 
 pit was filled with clergymen. Soon he turned 
 half round, extended his hands, and lifted his 
 blazing eye to the preachers that were leaning 
 over, and said in tones, such as Moses might have 
 spoken, and with a look such as Moses might 
 have worn, fresh from the awful holiness of Sinai : 
 " I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they 
 proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and 
 add its solemn sanctions to the authority of hu- 
 man laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever or 
 wherever there may be a sinner bloody with this 
 guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is 
 false to its trust." 
 
 Alas for the perishableness of eloquence ! It 
 is the only thing in the higher walks of human 
 creativeness that passes away. The statue lives 
 after the sculptor dies, as sublime as when his 
 chisel left it. St. Peter's is a perpetual memorial 
 and utterance of the great mind of Angelo. The 
 Iliad is as fresh to-day as twenty-five centuries 
 ago. The picture may grow richer with years. 
 
316 Daniel Webster, 
 
 But great oratory, the most delightful and mar- 
 vellous of the expressions of mortal power, passes 
 and dies with the occasion. It is 
 
 " Like the snowfall on a river, 
 A moment white, then gone forever. " 
 
 But the reading of this address was as " great " 
 as the " hearing " of it. It seemed like the utter- 
 ance of an incarnate century. Old John. Adams, 
 then more than fourscore, wrote to him : " Mr. 
 Burke is no longer entitled to the praise, the 
 most consummate orator of modern times. The 
 address enters more perfectly into the spirit of 
 New England than any production I ever read. 
 It ought to be read at the end of every century, 
 and indeed of every year forever and ever. It 
 will be read five hundred years hence with as 
 much rapture as it was heard." 
 
 The sentences may be printed, word matched 
 with word and thought linked to thought in per- 
 fect sequence, caught by the nimble cunning of ste- 
 nography ; even the punctuation, each semicolon 
 and every stop, may be arrested and made per- 
 petual. But the cadence and the tones, the swells 
 and sweeps and subsidence of feeling, the ter- 
 ror and the pathos, the vivid poetry of gesture 
 and attitude and eye, the living lightning that 
 poured through words from the deeps of the soul, 
 from the mystic deeps of spirit, all this is evan- 
 escent as the lightning. Even music may be 
 immortal here. The symphony can be raised, 
 generation after generation, from its dumb signs. 
 
Daniel Webster. 317 
 
 The cavatina and the chorus may be retranslated, 
 by adequate voices, age after age. But the orator 
 in his sovereign oration, Demosthenes speaking 
 for the crown, Cicero against Verres, Massillon 
 over the body of Louis XIV., Sheridan denouncing 
 Hastings, Webster pouring out appeals massive 
 and gorgeous for the integrity of his country, 
 each of these is an organ shedding a music which 
 can never be played again. 
 
 In 1822 Mr. Webster, then forty, was chosen 
 Representative to Congress from the city of Bos- 
 ton. During the next six years he made his cele- 
 brated speeches on the Greek question and on the 
 Panama mission ; his oration at the laying of 
 the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, in 
 presence of Lafayette, and his eulogy on Adams 
 and Jefferson; his great speeches on the Tariff 
 and the Judiciary in Congress, and among other 
 important arguments in the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, the splendid, novel, and trium- 
 phant argument in favor of a citizen of Georgia, by 
 which he broke down a monopoly, in the State of 
 New York, of certain rights within their waters, 
 and maintained the ground that the commerce 
 of the country, under the Constitution, was ' a 
 unit, " so that the rights of ship-owners of all 
 sections were equal in all waters of the Union. 
 New York was beaten and Georgia triumphant, 
 although every court of the Empire State had de- 
 cided in favor of its State rights. But New York 
 did not call a convention, or threaten to secede. 
 
3i8 Daniel Webster. 
 
 These eight years, from 1820 to 1828, were 
 Mr. Webster's happiest years. The range of his 
 powers had been exhibited. He was on the way 
 to a large fortune. He was in full health. He 
 was happy in the affections of a devoted family. 
 He had risen to the head of different professions 
 which seem to require powers that one would 
 think cannot be joined in one man. 
 
 It is not for me, to-night, to speak of Mr. Web- 
 ster's party-position, or to give any opinion upon 
 the questions of tariff, bank, or treasury upon 
 which he was so widely at issue with other honest 
 and eminent men. I am to speak now of his 
 genius. The remarkable fact in his genius was 
 that he was so eminent in different and rival 
 spheres. In the fulness of his powers he was 
 master of the best method of speaking to a jury, 
 of the best method of speech to the Supreme 
 Court of the nation, of the most fitting style of 
 address to a great popular audience on a com- 
 manding anniversary, of the highest style of par- 
 liamentary debate, and of the eloquence most 
 pertinent to the Senate of the United States. 
 
 His leading brethren at the bar have remarked 
 this, that the lawyer did not hurt the statesman, 
 nor the statesman the lawyer. What man of all 
 the great names of dominant Englishmen in the 
 last hundred years has been first in the House of 
 Commons and first in the highest English courts? 
 It has been felt there that supremacy in one de- 
 partment is unfitted for supremacy in the other. 
 
Daniel Webster. 319 
 
 He seemed to be like a monster cannon, 
 good for a jubilee when it is eloquent roar that is 
 needed, good for the field when it is a sixty-four- 
 pound shot that must be sent to plough through 
 the battalions of the foe. Yet this was not due 
 to a remarkable flexibility or versatility of genius 
 and faculty in Mr. Webster. 
 
 If one could reach the pole, he would stand at 
 the meeting-point of all the lines of longitude ; 
 he could turn at pleasure, and by a few steps 
 enter Europe or America or Asia. Mr. Webster 
 stood at the focus of many lines of intellectual 
 power and utterance, at the meeting-point of 
 popular, forensic, statesmanlike, senatorial oratory 
 and influence. 
 
 Mr. Webster's eloquence was always founded 
 on facts and the broadest view of facts. It was 
 not a display of sensibility or imagination or 
 speculative skill. Nothing is more dry than 
 facts given by items, summed up by addition, 
 when the mind is enslaved to them and stands 
 below them. Nothing is more winning and fasci- 
 nating than facts set in broad lights by a mind 
 that masters a large field of them and stands 
 above them. The country looks prosaic when 
 you trudge slowly through it, rod by rod : see 
 it from the mountain-side, and you have the 
 gorgeous colors of poetry poured at once over 
 the whole domain. The landscape is instantly 
 eloquent and kindles all classes of mind into 
 delight. 
 
320 Daniel Webster. 
 
 Mr. Webster's power before jury, senate, audi- 
 ence, and court was in this broad view which 
 made facts sublime. A critical friend of mine at 
 the East was fond of saying that Mr. Webster 
 was inductive, Mr. Calhoun was deductive, Mr. 
 Clay was seductive. This is as true as it is brill- 
 iant. Mr. Webster never attempted to seduce 
 the judgment of his hearers by playing upon 
 their impressibility; nor to drive them into a 
 logical corral, by acute deductions of practical 
 results from speculative assumptions, narrowing 
 as he came down. He tried to induce conviction 
 by throwing open the facts, and asking his hearers 
 to rise with him where they could see the broad 
 masses of light and shade. He was a great rea- 
 soner, not a reasoning machine. 
 
 His understanding embraced the whole extent 
 of a subject, methodized its complicated details, 
 discerned its general laws and their remote appli- 
 cations, and exhibited the whole to view with a 
 clearness of arrangement which rendered it per- 
 ceptible to the simplest apprehension. As a 
 reasoner he had hardly an equal among his 
 countrymen, either in the sharp, swift, close argu- 
 mentation of vehement debate, or in the calm 
 survey and powerful combination of facts and 
 principles. 
 
 By this method he held a jury as he held 
 Chief Justice Marshall or Judge Story ; he com- 
 manded the Senate as he commanded Faneuil 
 Hall, or an acre of Whigs at a mass meeting. 
 
Daniel Webster. 321 
 
 And his style was admirably wedded to such a 
 method. How broad it is, and yet how clear ; 
 how rich, and yet how simple ; how energetic, and 
 yet free from all coarseness and audacity ; how 
 easy, and yet what dignity ; how rugged, and still 
 not rough ; how impassioned often, yet never 
 passionate ; how opulent in imaginative sugges- 
 tions, and yet how severe in its rejection of 
 ornament ! 
 
 You will not find a dozen figures of speech, 
 you will not find half a dozen elaborate similes, 
 in all the published productions of his pen. In 
 this how different from Burke! The "Arabian 
 Nights " is not so gorgeous as Burke. His later 
 pages are like the sunset : Mr. Webster's great 
 pages are like the noon. He hated adjectives. 
 He did not, like Mr. Choate, " drive a substantive 
 and six." He loathed all " splurge." Sinew and 
 simplicity, nouns and facts, he clung to, and made 
 eloquence result from the breadth of the field of 
 fact on which his intellect cast light. 
 
 I recall here his criticism of a line of Watts 
 about an angel moving " with most amazing 
 speed." This, he said, was bad. W T hat meaning 
 is there in the phrase " most amazing speed " ? 
 It conveys no sense. " It would amaze us," he 
 said, " to see an oyster moving a mile a day ; it 
 would not amaze us to see a greyhound run a 
 mile a minute." He loved statement, compre- 
 hensive and decisive, positive utterance, down- 
 ward inflections, not the fervor that stirs, so 
 14* 
 
322 Daniel Webster. 
 
 much as the emphasis that settles feeling. If he 
 could make a thing seem great, he would leave 
 out the adjective "great." 
 
 Byron said that he had heard Curran talk more 
 poetry in a speech than he ever put into verse. 
 Mr. Webster's sensibility was always under con- 
 trol ; his imagination and his passions worked 
 through his reason, never overriding it ; no rhet- 
 oric or fancy or sentiment escaped him raw, in 
 mere gushes from an excited temperament, but 
 his most fervid or gorgeous passages were weighty 
 with thought. Generally he kept close to the 
 earth, or if he mounted it was by climbing, ridge 
 above ridge, steep beyond steep. But when he 
 soared, it was no movement of flimsy fancy ; it 
 was the solid condor's body that was borne aloft 
 on the mighty wings of feeling, high over the 
 Cordillera spires of his understanding. 
 
 And his personal presence was part of his 
 genius. What he said seemed to be truer and 
 grander at the moment for his saying it. When 
 Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, saw the cast 
 of his head in Powers's studio in Rome, he said, 
 " Ah, a design for a Jupiter. I see ! " He would 
 not believe the artist, when assured that it was an 
 actual cast from a living American. The coal- 
 heavers in England, Mr. Emerson says, followed 
 him with awe, as a representative of one of the 
 elemental forces of nature. Sydney Smith re- 
 marked that he was a steam-engine in trousers, 
 and complained of him as a living lie, since 
 
Daniel Webster. 323 
 
 nobody on earth could possibly be as great as he 
 looked. 
 
 When he rose to address a great audience on a 
 theme that possessed him, he was the full incar- 
 nation, to the eye, of a philosophic statesman. 
 Then the words of the Old Testament rose into 
 new meaning : " This Daniel was preferred above 
 the presidents and princes, because an excellent 
 spirit was in him." Then the highest office 
 seemed to be nothing but the proper pedestal to 
 set the proportions of his greatness in appropri- 
 ate position and relief. Every one felt that there 
 was an ample mind fitly embodied, itself a 
 spiritual state-house or capitol, rich with the an- 
 nals of constitutional history, filled with the lore 
 of national and civil war, studded with apartments 
 that were crowded with records of diplomatic wis- 
 dom, freighted with the principles and statistics 
 of public economy. Every one felt that his eye 
 was constructed to see the truth and proprieties 
 of national relations ; that he knew the coasts, 
 shoals, and soundings of national experience ; 
 that his arm had vigor to grasp and guide the 
 helm of state. 
 
 And when he spoke, even in his simplest pas- 
 sages, the'power of a great personality was mani- 
 fest. His common-sense was ponderous and 
 even sublime by the momentum which his arm 
 and inflection gave it, and the dignity which his 
 diction imparted to it. No triumph that he ever 
 won seemed to require the whole of his resources, 
 
324 Daniel Webster. 
 
 or to drain the hiding-places of his strength. The 
 movement of his mind was like the sluggish might 
 of the sea. Though his genius has thrown up 
 into literature the most brilliant spray of rhetoric 
 and imagination, its natural movement and sug- 
 gestion was the ground-swell of a resistless and 
 unfathomable power. And hence his eloquence 
 had always the serious and self-assured strength 
 that made it competent to the utterance of a na- 
 tion's thought and purpose. He would have been 
 more fit, by language and manner, than any other 
 man reared on this continent, to represent the 
 American republic in a world's congress of prime 
 ministers and kings. 
 
 Some three or four years ago there was a liter- 
 ary party in London at the house of the venera- 
 ble poet, Samuel Rogers, then ninety years old. 
 He had known Burke and Pitt and Fox and 
 Sheridan personally. And late in life he be- 
 came acquainted with Mr. Webster in England, 
 and corresponded with him. At the party, on 
 the mention of our dead statesman's name, Mr. 
 Rogers said, " I knew him ; I received letters 
 from him. Edmund," he continued, turning to 
 a servant, "bring to me Mr. Webster's letters. 
 Daniel Webster," said he, when he took the let- 
 ters in his hand, " was not only the greatest man 
 of his age, he was the greatest man of any 
 age." 
 
 The years from 1820 to 1828, as we said, when 
 every step of his complicated genius had been 
 
Daniel Webster. 325 
 
 sounded, were his prosperous and happy years. 
 His resource from care was fishing. Trout and 
 blue-fish acknowledged his genius as well as 
 courts and senators. They flocked to his hook. 
 In bait and debate he was equally persuasive. 
 Feeding cattle, or wading for trout, or hauling 
 blue-fish through the surf, when they pulled like 
 horses, he would say to his companions, " This is 
 better than wasting time in the Senate, gentle- 
 men ! " It was while fishing for trout in Marsh- 
 field that he composed the celebrated passage on 
 the surviving veterans of the battle for his first 
 Bunker Hill address. He would pull out a lusty 
 specimen, shouting, " Venerable men, you have 
 come down to us from a former generation. 
 Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your 
 lives that you might behold this joyous day." 
 He would unhook them into his basket, declaim- 
 ing, " You are gathered to your fathers, and live 
 only to your country in her grateful remembrance 
 and your own bright example." 
 
 In his boat, fishing for cod, a day or two before 
 the address was delivered, he composed or re- 
 hearsed the passage in it on Lafayette, when he 
 hooked a very large cod, and, as he pulled his 
 nose above water, exclaimed, "Welcome! all hail! 
 and thrice welcome, citizen of two hemispheres!" 
 
 For many years an Indian was the servant-com- 
 panion of his fishing recreation. Mr. Webster 
 was very generous with him, and the Indian was 
 a strongly attached and faithful dependant. But 
 
326 Daniel Webster. 
 
 once or twice he became sadly intoxicated (the 
 Indian, of course), and was forgiven on serious 
 vows of abstinence. The third time he was found 
 "half-seas over" when he ought to have been 
 on land fit to follow the streams. As soon as he 
 recovered, Mr. Webster, who had found the 
 whiskey-bottle still half full, lectured the penitent 
 Indian on his ingratitude. He stood near a cart, 
 looked poor John, who crouched before him, in 
 the eye, and proceeded to enumerate and enlarge 
 upon his offences, raising the whiskey-bottle over 
 the cart-wheel. The Indian kept two ears open 
 to the rebuke, and two eyes open to the danger 
 of the precious bottle being broken on the wheel. 
 He sobbed and cried ; but, just as the bottle was 
 coming down with a mighty gesture, he jumped 
 and begged, " O, please don't, Mr. Webster ! any- 
 thing but that !" Again the orator set out, poured 
 a deeper flood of indignation over John's fall, set 
 his sin in more appalling colors, raising his arm 
 and brandishing the bottle with the mounting fer- 
 vor. But when the falling inflection was due, the 
 Indian sprang again, "O, please not, Mr. Web- 
 ster! don't break him!" The third time the 
 statesman started on his flight for the climax 
 and the swoop. The Indian trembled with awe 
 and shame, but the third time he leaped up and 
 caught the descending arm, beseeching that he 
 might be flogged, if the bottle could be saved. 
 Mr. Webster used to tell the story as the great 
 defeat of his life. He could change the currents 
 
Daniel Webster. 327 
 
 of constitutional law by an argument in the Su- 
 preme Court room, but he was not master of 
 eloquence enough to make a wretched Indian, 
 who trembled before him, forget half a bottle of 
 
 rum 
 
 In 1828 and early in 1829 Mr. Webster met 
 great sorrows. His wife died, and his noble 
 brother Ezekiel in his fiftieth year, in the prime 
 of great powers, of majestic beauty, and a solid 
 usefulness, fell dead in a court-room while arguing 
 a jury-cause. The blows were very heavy on Mr. 
 Webster's heart. He felt the fatigue of wide 
 labors. He took less interest in causes. He 
 announced his intention of retiring from political 
 life. Man proposes ; God disposes. It was then 
 that he was turned to the work which was the 
 honor and crown of his life. 
 
 At this time he became convinced that the plan 
 of a Southern confederacy had been received with 
 favor by a great many of the political men of the 
 South, especially of South Carolina. The four 
 censuses of 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, had shown that 
 the North was growing in population and power 
 disproportionately to the South ; and it was be- 
 lieved that the protective policy to which the 
 Middle States were ardently committed was re- 
 sponsible for a large degree of the increasing dis- 
 parity. Mr. Calhoun had supported the policy 
 of incidental protection in 1816, and had de- 
 nounced disunion then as " a word which compre- 
 hended the sum of our political dangers." His 
 
328 Daniel Webster. 
 
 tariff sentiments of that year were framed and 
 hung up with Washington's Farewell Address in 
 the parlors, hotels, and bar-rooms of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Mr. Webster, who had opposed the protective 
 policy in its origin, became a partial supporter of 
 it when it had become established ; and in 1828 
 he and Mr. Calhoun, who were on opposite sides 
 in 1816, had chassed across on the national floor, 
 and were still facing each other as antagonists. 
 But with a remarkable difference. Mr. Webster's 
 position was this : Union tariff, or no tariff. Mr. 
 Calhoun's was : no tariff, or no Union. Mr. Web- 
 ster's feeling was that of a patriot ; Mr. Calhoun's 
 that of a partisan. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, by urging and keeping the elec- 
 tion of General Jackson in 1828, hoped to break 
 the protective policy of the country. If that hope 
 should fail, or if General Jackson should prove 
 false, he intended to put in force a new theory of 
 the Constitution, namely, that a State had the 
 right first to nullify a law of Congress, and then 
 secede. 
 
 Mr. Webster foresaw the trouble looming. The 
 cloud no bigger than a man's hand the hand 
 of Mr. Calhoun he saw might become a tem- 
 pest, a sectional typhoon, and he determined to 
 be ready to meet it. His labors in the Supreme 
 Court had led him to a profound study of the Con- 
 stitution ; and now he bent himself to a thorough 
 investigation of the relations of the States to the 
 central government, and of the powers and duties 
 
Daniel Webster. 329 
 
 of the Federal centre towards every possible 
 movement of treason. He made himself master 
 of the whole subject. He told some of his friends, 
 in after years, that there was no imaginable form 
 of conflict between State and Federal authority 
 which he did not consider, and feel prepared to 
 debate and to meet, acccording to what he believed 
 to be the true theory of the Constitution. 
 
 General Jackson was elected, and was inaugu- 
 rated March 4, 1829. Mr. Calhoun was chosen 
 Vice-President. Friends of his were in the Cabi- 
 net, and his influence was weighty, if not control- 
 ling, in the White House. 
 
 The first Congress under that administration 
 assembled in December, 1829. Mr. Clay was not 
 in the Senate. No very prominent Whig or rep- 
 resentative of New England ideas and the pro- 
 tective policy was there but Mr. Webster. The 
 talent was largely preponderant on the Democratic 
 side. 
 
 Very soon protection, New England, and Mr. 
 Webster were made the subject of a combined, 
 powerful, vehement, and imbittered attack. Mr. 
 Calhoun, who presided over the Senate, but could 
 not speak in it, knew Mr. Webster's power, and 
 knew that it was necessary for his own purposes 
 that his probable influence in the country should 
 be crushed. 
 
 About a month after Congress assembled, in 
 January, 1830, Mr. Webster, who had been engaged 
 in a cause in the Supreme Court room, stepped 
 
33O Daniel Webster. 
 
 into the Senate on his way home, with a bag of 
 law-papers under his arm. Mr. Hayne, a young, 
 accomplished Senator from South Carolina, a gal- 
 lant, chivalric, and fiery debater, a friend and confi- 
 dant of Vice-President Calhoun, was delivering 
 a speech in which New England was severely 
 handled. Mr. Webster, preoccupied as he was 
 with a cause in the Supreme Court, at once re- 
 plied, and in a speech which is one of the models 
 of vigorous debate in Saxon literature. 
 
 Mr. Hayne now took up the warfare in hot 
 earnest. Mr. Benton built and kindled the fiery 
 furnace, and Mr. Hayne, in a second speech of 
 two days, made the flame seven times fiercer, to 
 punish the great Daniel and his friends. A speech 
 so intense and so sectional had never then been 
 heard in the Senate of the country. It was uttered 
 with great declamatory skill and energy; it bristled 
 with facts that had an irritating look and sound, 
 all the more provoking because they seemed un- 
 deniable, and it put forth cautiously the new 
 doctrine of the right of nullification, setting up 
 an image of the Union, like that of Nebuchadnez- 
 zar's dream, standing on the right of secession, 
 standing on brittle feet of clay. 
 
 The speech made an immense and intense im- 
 pression. Hundreds said that Mr. Webster was 
 annihilated. A Senator from North Carolina, 
 Mr. Iredell, observed to one of these jubilant 
 friends of Mr. Hayne: " He has started the lion, 
 but wait till we hear his roar or feel his claws." 
 
Daniel Webster. 331 
 
 The roar and the stroke came the next day. I 
 am not going to describe that reply of January 
 26, 1830, Slim, agile, impetuous, fierce, in his 
 intellectual assault, Mr. Hayne's attack was that 
 of a leopard upon a good-natured, sluggish, sleepy 
 lion in his prime. The eyes opened ; the mane 
 bristled the muscles swelled ; he uttered his 
 voice ; he sprang ; he struck. 
 
 Every noble element of power in debate is rep- 
 resented in those seventy large octavo pages of 
 the second reply to Mr. Hayne in 1830. But 
 there is no mean, malignant, taunting, or sarcastic 
 passage in it. It is as generous as it is terrible. 
 A distinguished scholar who heard it said that 
 nothing so completely realized his conception of 
 what Demosthenes was when he delivered his 
 "Oration on the Crown." But the great speech of 
 Demosthenes is veined with the fiercest invective. 
 He played with ^Eschines and then poured vitriol 
 on him. Mr. Webster demolished his antagonist's 
 speech, and yet spared him and South Carolina. 
 It was not only crushing, but Christian. 
 
 The marvel is that the speech, six hours long, 
 running the whole gamut of senatorial eloquence, 
 fit to be stereotyped at once with the noblest 
 orations of literature, equally fascinating in the 
 market-place and the college, was extempore. 
 The language of not a page of it was committed 
 to memory. The brief consisted of half a sheet 
 of letter-paper. Mr. Hayne finished in the after- 
 noon of January 25 ; Mr. Webster replied the 
 
332 Daniel Webster. 
 
 next morning. Mr. Everett spent the evening 
 with him, and found him entirely at ease, sportive, 
 and full of anecdote. " He was as unconcerned," 
 Mr. Everett says, " and as free of spirit, ... . as 
 when floating in his fishing-boat along a hazy 
 shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, drop- 
 ping his line here and there with the varying 
 fortune of the sport The next morning he was 
 like some mighty admiral, dark and terrible, cast- 
 ing the long shadow of his frowning tiers far 
 over the sea that seemed to sink beneath him, his 
 broad pendant streaming at the main, the stars 
 and stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak ; 
 and bearing down like a tempest upon his antag- 
 onist, with all his canvas strained to the wind and 
 all his thunders roaring from his broadsides." 
 
 His brother Ezekiel had died a year before. 
 When, after the Hayne speech, his own praise was 
 sounded over the length and breadth of America, 
 he said, when some one was extolling his merits, 
 " How I wish my poor brother had lived till after 
 this speech, that I might know if he would have 
 been gratified ! " 
 
 A friend of mine, who was a very intimate friend 
 of Mr. Webster, received from him once a state- 
 ment of his feeling when he rose to address the 
 crowded Senate, which is very striking and which 
 has never appeared in print. " Not until I took 
 the floor, and saw the concourse, and felt the 
 hush," said Mr. Webster, " did I feel the slightest 
 trepidation. Then it rushed upon me, the re- 
 
Daniel Webster. 333 
 
 sponsibility of my position. It very nearly un- 
 manned me. A strange sensation came. My feet 
 felt light ; they seemed not to touch the floor. It 
 was as though I began to rise and float. Instantly 
 I thought how my brother Ezekiel died, a year 
 before, falling while making a speech, and dead 
 before his head touched the floor. By a strong 
 effort I subdued the trepidation and the fear. 
 Soon my feet felt the floor again. Then they 
 grew heavy. Then they seemed rooted like rocks. 
 My brain was free. All that I had ever read or 
 thought or acted in literature, in history, in law, 
 in politics, seemed to unroll before me in glowing 
 panorama, and then it was easy, if I wanted a 
 thunderbolt, to reach out and take it as it went 
 smoking by." 
 
 The fiery furnace built by the Jackson and 
 Calhoun men for Mr. Webster did not singe 
 him. It served other uses. In the reply to 
 Hayne Mr. Webster drew out and stated more 
 clearly the latent doctrine of nullification and 
 secession which his antagonist had dallied with, 
 and exposed it to an elaborate and merciless ex- 
 amination. This part of his speech was entirely 
 extempore, not a note for it had been prepared on 
 his brief; and it was the first time that the Consti- 
 tution, in relation to State rights and State wrongs, 
 had been treated on the floor of Congress. He 
 showed that a government over twenty-four States, 
 where any one of them has the right to checkmate 
 Congress, the executive, and the Supreme Court, 
 
334 Daniel Webster. 
 
 was a parody on government. A thing, he said, 
 with such a principle, or rather such a destitution 
 of all principle in it, should not be called a con- 
 stitution. " No, sir. It should be called, rather, 
 a collection of topics for everlasting controversy, 
 heads of debate for a disputatious people." 
 
 The chord he struck sounded rich and deep all 
 over the land. It roused a new tone of patriot- 
 ism. It called out a letter from the aged Madi- 
 son, who indorsed his doctrine as the doctrine of 
 the framers of the Constitution, and who said " it 
 crushes nullification, and must hasten the aban- 
 donment of secession." 
 
 But it did the most efficient work in the Sen- 
 ate. It compelled the Democratic statesmen to 
 consider the question in the egg, and take sides. 
 Mr. Calhoun presided over debates in which his 
 theory found less and less favor, and which seemed 
 to show that the administration would not be com- 
 mitted to his ulterior plans. 
 
 Yet he did not despair. A few weeks later 
 the birthday of Mr. Jefferson was celebrated in 
 Washington. The nullifiers, Mr. Madison said, 
 attempted " to make the name of Mr. Jefferson 
 the pedestal of their colossal heresy." Mr. Cal- 
 houn and the new President were at the table. 
 The regular toasts were ambiguous and shaky. 
 Mr. Calhoun's ran thus : u The Union : next to 
 our liberty the most dear ; may we all remember 
 that it can only be preserved by respecting the 
 rights of the States, and distributing equally the 
 
Daniel Webster. 335 
 
 benefit and burden of the Union." This is 
 conditional, roundabout, metaphysical. Andrew 
 Jackson was at the table. Mr. Calhoun, the Vice- 
 President, was his intimate confidential friend. 
 But Old Hickory had done a large deal of think- 
 ing, with a pipe in his mouth, over Mr. Webster's 
 reply to Hayne. He had a sentiment to offer. It 
 did not take many words. " Our Federal Union : 
 it must be preserved." The electricity bristled on 
 the hero's hair, and gave a healthy shock, at the 
 right moment, to the great Democratic party of 
 the land. Mr. Webster's speech had become a 
 wedge between Calhoun and Jackson. Mr. Cal- 
 houn might indoctrinate South Carolina as a State; 
 but Mr. Webster's speech rose like Fort Sumter, 
 which is built on courses of New Hampshire 
 granite, frowning over his path with solemn muz- 
 zles, and bearing aloft, full high advanced, the 
 gorgeous ensign of the republic, " its arms and 
 trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a 
 stripe erased or polluted, not a single star ob- 
 scured, and bearing for its motto, in characters 
 of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, the 
 sentiment, dear to every true American heart, 
 Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in- 
 separable ! " 
 
 But more trying times were at hand, times 
 not only for debate, but for action. The Tariff 
 Bill of 1832 was passed, which was felt and per- 
 haps justly by South Carolina to be oppressive 
 and tyrannical. And the State which had, sixteen 
 
336 Daniel Webster. 
 
 years before, dropped the seeds of the protective 
 policy, prepared for nullification and secession. 
 The feeling in parts of the South towards large 
 portions of the North, and especially New Eng- 
 land, was very bitter, scarcely less so than to-day. 
 Bat it was redeemed often by a wit which is not 
 common now. Here, for instance, is a chemical 
 analysis by Satan of a Yankee soul, which was 
 circulated among our Southern brethren : " Cun- 
 ning, \2\ per cent; hypocrisy, \2\ per cent; 
 avarice and falsehood, each i2\ per cent; sneak- 
 ingness, \2\ per cent ; nameless and numberless 
 small vices, 14 per cent; the remaining 23 \ per 
 cent being divided between New England rum, 
 essence of onions, codfish, molasses, and beans." 
 (This ought to satisfy some of my German rela- 
 tions, who were anxious a few weeks ago to hear 
 me state of what the blood of a Yankee professor 
 is compounded.) 
 
 Here, too, is a picture of a Yankee, Virgil 
 Haskins, hauled up in the next world before 
 Rhadamanthus, to answer for deeds done in the 
 body. Rhadamanthus says : "I find you charged, 
 sir, with selling, in one peddling expedition, 
 400,000 wooden nutmegs, 280,000 Spanish cigars 
 made of oak leaves, and 647 wooden clocks. 
 What do you say to that charge ? " The Yankee 
 ghost replies, " Wai, that was counted in our 
 place about the greatest peddling-trip that ever 
 was made over the Potomac." The judge con- 
 tinues : " To stealing an old grindstone, smear- 
 
Daniel Webster. 337 
 
 ing it over with butter, and then selling it as 
 a cheese." The ghost : " Jimminy ! surely ye 
 would n't punish a man for that, would ye ? " 
 Rhadamanthus again : " To making a counterfeit 
 dollar of pewter, when you were six years old, 
 and cheating your own father with it." The 
 ghost, with glee : " Daddy was mighty glad when 
 he found it eout. He said it showed I had 
 a genius." The Yankee was condemned by 
 Rhadamanthus to be thrown into a lake of hot 
 molasses with a grindstone around his neck. 
 
 This was one way in which the effect of Web- 
 ster's reply to Hayne was nullified. 
 
 The Tariff Act of 1832, which a Democratic 
 President had signed, was dealt with thus : A 
 convention was called in South Carolina and the 
 act was annulled. Duties enjoined by it were 
 forbidden to be paid in the State. No appeal to 
 the Supreme Court to attest the validity of nulli- 
 fi ration was to be allowed. If the government 
 attempted to enforce the tariff laws, South Caro- 
 lina would secede. Mr. Hayne was now gov- 
 ernor, and he resolved to carry out the pro- 
 gramme. The State was almost unanimous. 
 The military were ready. Blue cockades with a 
 palmetto button in the centre were the rage. 
 Even medals were struck, with these words : 
 " John C. Calhoun, first President of the South- 
 ern Confederacy." 
 
 The President replied in a proclamation which 
 indorsed the constitutional doctrines of Mr. Web- 
 
338 Daniel Webster. 
 
 ster, and was made up in part of his language. 
 He poured intense scorn on the new doctrine 
 that a State had the right to secede under the 
 Constitution. " Was our devotion paid to the 
 wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance which 
 this new doctrine would make the Constitution ? 
 Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an 
 airy nothing, a bubble that must be blown away 
 by the first breath of disaffection ? " He outlined 
 the prosperity and happiness of the nation of 
 which South Carolina was a part, and of which 
 her blood had been the cement, and he said : 
 " Say, now, if you can, without horror and re- 
 morse, This happy Union we will dissolve, this 
 picture of peace and prosperity we will deface, 
 this free intercourse we will interrupt, these 
 fertile fields we will deluge with blood, the 
 protection of that glorious flag we renounce, 
 the very name of Americans we discard. And 
 for what, mistaken men ! for what do you throw 
 away these inestimable blessings ? for what would 
 you exchange your share in the advantages and 
 honor of the Union ? For the dream of a sepa- 
 rate independence, a dream interrupted by bloody 
 conflicts with your neighbors and a vile depend- 
 ence on a foreign power." 
 
 Such is the rhetoric that befits the White 
 House when the cockatrice egg of treason is 
 hatched and the young serpents, whose look is 
 venomous when they have grown, begin to hiss. 
 
 Mr. Hayne in response to this proclamation 
 
Daniel Webster. 339 
 
 declared that South Carolina would resist the 
 general government to the extremity. 
 
 General Jackson told one of his friends once 
 that he never had a tremor of the hands in his 
 life. "My nerves are like steel bars." An old 
 military friend called on him in the midst of the 
 secession storm. He was smoking a favorite 
 pipe. " Sam," he said, " they are trying me 
 here, you will witness it; but by the God of 
 heaven, I will uphold the laws." His friend 
 hoped that things would yet go right. "They 
 shall go right, sir," said Old Hickory, on fire, 
 and he shivered his pipe on the table. He did not 
 save his pipe and shiver his country, and puff his 
 duty off in smoke. They say that the General 
 never was able to believe the earth was round. 
 One thing he believed, that his country was a 
 whole, and he did not mean to see it torn into 
 shreds while he had power to strike the wretched 
 treason. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun was still in South Carolina, and 
 still Vice-President. He resigned that office, was 
 elected Senator of South Carolina, and hurried on 
 to Washington to defend the attitude of his State 
 and the right of secession in the midst of the 
 storm. Jackson could deal with the treason ; but 
 who could meet the intellectual leader of it, and 
 vanquish him before the public sentiment ? One 
 man only, Daniel Webster, who was at fatal issue 
 with Jackson on all the other measures of his 
 administration. He had taken slight part in the 
 
340 Daniel Webster. 
 
 debate ; but now he struck hands with the hero 
 of New Orleans, the stateliest intellect and the 
 firmest will in the land compacted by patriotism 
 against arrogant treason. 
 
 The Constitution was threatened ; the country 
 was in danger ; the foundations of American 
 liberty were marked for approach by sappers of 
 treason. Mr. Webster saw that it was no time for 
 party lines and feuds and titles. He threw away 
 the name "Whig" ; he forgot that Andrew Jackson 
 was a Democrat. He remembered only that he 
 was an American, and that General Jackson was 
 a patriot, and he pledged to him all his strength 
 of brain and arm, just as to-day Mr. Dickin- 
 son and Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dix and General 
 Butler, strong opponents of President Lincoln's 
 party platform, refuse to know anything about 
 platforms when the Constitution is struck at with 
 daggers and the flag betrayed ! 
 
 The debate of February, 1833, on the bill 
 empowering the President to collect the revenue 
 in South Carolina, was a very different one from 
 the Hayne debate of three years before. This 
 was discussion with hands upon swords. Mr. 
 Calhoun was the Hector of this Iliad, not unlike 
 Homer's Hector either, 
 
 Prepared 
 
 And ardent for the task ; nor less he raged 
 Than Mars while fighting, or than flames that seize 
 Some forest on the mountain-tops ; the foam 
 Hung at his lips ; beneath his awful front 
 His keen eyes glistened, and his helmet marked 
 The agitation wild with which he fought." 
 
Daniel Webster. 341 
 
 Mr. Webster was the Achilles of the contest, 
 Achilles, whom Homer calls the "godlike." 
 
 " His ponderous helm 
 He lifted to his brows ; star-like it shone, 
 And shook its curling crest of bushy gold. 
 
 He drew his father's spear forth from his case, 
 Heavy and huge and long. That spear, of all 
 Achaia's sons, none else had power to wield. 
 
 " Then his corselet bright 
 Braced to his bosom, his huge sword of brass 
 Athwart his shoulder slung, and his broad shield 
 Uplifted last, luminous as the moon." 
 
 Yes, it was his country's shield, rinsed with the 
 ocean, as that of Achilles was. And the fate of 
 the secession theory in that mental combat was 
 the fate of Hector. It was dragged at the con- 
 queror's wheel. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun's speech of two clays in February, 
 I ^33, to prove the constitutional right of nullifica- 
 tion and secession, was a splendid intellectual effort. 
 But it was acute, artificial, and metaphysical. It 
 puzzles you while you read it ; it melts away from 
 you when you lay it down. It is a consummate 
 piece of logic, but it does not stand to reason. 
 And, like a Prince Rupert's drop, break it any- 
 where, and it flies to pieces. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun was fond of subtile speculations. 
 He would rather take a machine to pieces and 
 spoil it, to find out the method of its action, than 
 to see it run. 
 
 When he was a student in Yale College, he 
 
342 Daniel Webster. 
 
 one day delivered a disquisition on a very strange 
 and apparently absurd proposition, which he de- 
 fended with great acuteness. The president of 
 the college said to him, when he had finished, 
 " Calhoun, that is a brilliant piece of logic, and 
 if I wanted anybody to prove that shad grow on 
 apple-trees, I would appoint you." 
 
 To argue the right of secession as granted in 
 the Constitution was to attempt to prove that a 
 very scaly shad grows on an apple-tree. 
 
 While he was delivering it in the Senate before 
 an enormous crowd, a man in the gallery shrieked 
 out, "Mr. President, something must be done, 
 or I shall be squeezed to death ! " That is the 
 way we feel in reading it. It is an immensely 
 able, but speculative and artificial process of logic 
 for making any one State superior, in an emer- 
 gency, to the United States, and for squeezing a 
 large-limbed patriotism to death. Mr. Calhoun's 
 theory of nullification was a theory concocted to 
 meet a fact and justify a passion. 
 
 The drapery in the old United States Senate- 
 room was looped up and fastened by supports in 
 the shape of stars. When Mr. Calhoun had fairly 
 commenced his nullification speech, one of these 
 stars fell to the floor of the chamber with a start- 
 ling noise. No wonder ! 
 
 Mr. Webster replied to him at once in a 
 speech of five hours, which met every turn and 
 twist of the secession hypothesis, unfolding the 
 Constitution as a power sovereign forever, for 
 
Daniel Webster. 343 
 
 certain purposes, over all the States and all the 
 individuals in them, and to be interpreted by 
 Congress and the Supreme Court. Mr. Calhoun 
 contended for the constitutional right of nullifica- 
 tion. His conception of the government was 
 like an engine with a sieve for a cylinder. Mr. 
 Webster demonstrated that no such right was 
 revealed or hidden or hinted in the Constitu- 
 tion, that it was an absurdity, and that it was 
 treason. 
 
 His argument was a noble piece of reason 
 contrasted with logic. It stands square on the 
 facts of the Constitution and the early adminis- 
 tration of it. It is self-consistent and self- 
 luminous. 
 
 In closing, Mr. Webster said that if the friends 
 of nullification succeed, " they will prove them- 
 selves the most skilful * architects of ruin,' the 
 greatest blasters of human hopes, that any age 
 has ever produced. They would stand up to 
 proclaim in tones which would pierce the ears of 
 half the human race, that the last great experi- 
 ment of representative government had failed. 
 The doctrine of the divine right of kings would 
 feel, even in its grave, a returning sensation of 
 vitality. Millions of eyes of those who now feed 
 their inherent love of liberty on the success of 
 the American example would turn away from our 
 dismemberment, and find no place on earth to rest 
 t their gratified sight. Amidst the incantations 
 and orgies of nullification, secession, disunion 
 
344 Daniel Webster. 
 
 and revolution would be celebrated the funeral 
 rites of constitutional and republican liberty." 
 
 Mr. Webster rode in General Jackson's car- 
 riage to the Senate-chamber when he made the 
 speech. This was General Jackson's summing 
 up of the Websterian principles : " If this nulli- 
 fication goes on, our country will be like a bag 
 of meal with both ends open. Pick it up in the 
 middle or endwise, and it will run out. I must 
 tie the bag and save the country." 
 
 Mr. Webster tied the bag in theory ; General 
 Jackson tied it in fact, and saved all the meal, 
 even the South Carolina portion. He was ready 
 to arrest Mr. Calhoun, and have him tried and 
 executed under martial law in the District of 
 Columbia for treason. The great Senator was 
 visited one night, and his danger revealed to him 
 in bed. But his neck was saved by the com- 
 promise tariff measure, which was forced through 
 Congress by Mr. Clay about the time that the 
 Revenue-Force Bill was passed. Mr. Calhoun 
 was coerced into voting for it, and South Caro- 
 lina stripped off her military robes and avoided the 
 open conflict with Jackson's unyielding will. 
 
 General Jackson declared in his last sickness, 
 that in reviewing his life his chief regret was that 
 he had not executed Mr. Calhoun for treason. 
 " My country," said he, " would have sustained 
 me in the act, and his fate would have been a 
 warning to traitors in all time to come." 
 
 As a display of varied and sweeping eloquence, 
 
Daniel Webster. 345 
 
 the speech cannot be compared with the reply to 
 Hayne, three years before. It is of another char- 
 acter. It is an exhaustive discussion of the one 
 great question, " Is the Constitution a sovereign 
 power of government within its limits, directly 
 reaching the people of the States, or is it a league 
 or treaty which any State may construe, and from 
 which any State may withdraw when it suits her 
 interests or pleases her passion ? " 
 
 Mr. Calhoun maintained that there is no such 
 thing as the people of the United States as one 
 body. There are separate communities only, 
 each owing supreme loyalty to the State consti- 
 tution ; and whenever a State convention votes 
 the United States Constitution of no authority 
 within its borders, no man within that State 
 owes a particle of allegiance to the central gov- 
 ernment. In Mr. Calhoun's conception the gen- 
 eral government is like a large sheet of postage- 
 stamps, all ready to be detached in a moment, 
 and each having no connection with the others 
 that can be injured vitally by being torn off. 
 
 Mr. Webster regarded the State divisions as 
 the lines and squares rather on a chess-board, 
 over which the great power of the government 
 moved freely according to prescribed rules, and 
 so related that no one square and no seven 
 squares could be separated from the rest without 
 breaking up the whole board and destroying the 
 possibility of the game. 
 
 He followed up every winding and artifice and 
 15* 
 
346 Daniel Webster. 
 
 sophism of the secession hypothesis, and exposed 
 it. His ponderous intellect never played with 
 more vigor, never showed its weight of metal and 
 the fatal force of its blows more superbly, than 
 through the five hours of this demolition of Mr. 
 Calhoun's heresy. 
 
 His strokes fell like a trip-hammer. The doc- 
 trine of secession was pounded down by it, beat 
 after beat, not into gold-leaf, for there is not 
 any gold in it, it is only a slug of pewter, but 
 into pewter thinner than tissue paper. Mr. Web- 
 ster hammered it down by the plain language of 
 the Constitution, by general reasoning on the 
 powers that belong to all government, by fair 
 interpretation of its delegated authority, by the 
 history of its formation and adoption, and by 
 showing, through logical satire, dignified but 
 merciless, what an absurdity, in every possible 
 respect, a government would be, composed of a 
 score or two of states, any one of which could 
 annul its action at any moment by a decision of 
 its local courts and legislature. 
 
 Mr. Webster disapproved the tariff compromise. 
 His position was, " No ground can be granted, 
 not an inch, to menace and bluster. No measure 
 ever passed Congress," he said, " during my con- 
 nection with that body, that caused me so much 
 grief and mortification. The principle was bad, 
 the measure was -bad, the consequences were 
 bad." He believed, with Mr. Benton, that " a 
 compromise made with a state in arms is a capit- 
 
Daniel Webster. 347 
 
 ulation to that state." He wanted the strength 
 of the government tried, to determine the point, 
 once for all, if we have a government worth 
 cherishing and worth taxing ourselves to support. 
 General Jackson would have carried the country 
 through without the compromise ; Mr. Calhoun 
 saved his head by it ; and yet just enough was 
 yielded in it to give him the excuse for saying 
 that the government receded before his State in 
 arms. 
 
 The debate between Mr. Webster and Mr. Cal- 
 houn was free from all personal heat, from all 
 bitterness, from every tinge of ungentlemanly 
 allusion. In 1847 Mr. Webster toasted the 
 memory of Hayne at a public dinner in Charles- 
 ton. In 1850 he spoke weighty, respectful, and 
 noble words over Mr. Calhoun in the United 
 States Senate. And on his death-bed Mr. Cal- 
 houn spoke most respectfully and kindly of his 
 great antagonist, saying, " Mr. Webster has as high 
 a standard of truth as any statesman whom I 
 have met in debate." 
 
 They rest from their labors and their works do 
 follow them. Error is not innocent. Mr. Calhoun 
 was a pure, lofty, narrow man. His the ught has 
 done more than any other single force to disinte- 
 grate the republic. It has been the slow corrosion 
 of acid and frost. Mr. Webster's thought was a 
 compacting, confederating, organizing energy. Mr. 
 Calhoun was the chieftain of a clan ; Mr. Webster 
 the representative of a continent. 
 
348 Daniel Webster. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun would have written or branded on 
 the soul of a man the word " Kentucky," or " South 
 Carolina," or " Ohio," or " Maine." Mr. Webster 
 would have these written only in small letters, for 
 a small area, but in large capitals, fit to be read 
 in Europe, and everywhere on this round globe, 
 under every sky where a seventy-four with the 
 stars and stripes may penetrate, the word " Ameri- 
 can." 
 
 After his great debates of 1830 and 1833 he wore 
 the title " Defender of the Constitution." He was 
 in the general regard less a politician than the 
 epic poet of 1787. The work of the great conven- 
 tion that framed our government seemed nobler 
 to the people when reflected in his capacious 
 understanding, and as its ideal rods and beams 
 and valves worked without friction in the bright 
 medium of his imagination. He did not grow 
 tired through years of pleading for devotion to 
 the Constitution and Union. The rhythm of his 
 speech had peculiar majesty, a tone of Hebrew 
 grandeur, on this topic, recurrent and ever fresh. 
 
 It may be a sign of the secondary grave of his 
 genius that the idea of right, in its abstract sub- 
 limity, did not burn as his beacon. No abstract 
 principle or sentiment withdrew him from a care- 
 ful measure of the good which an actual system 
 would secure to men in the long run. The cotton 
 handkerchief which he bought in boyhood was 
 absorbed into his brain and blood. His eye 
 always seemed to take in the moral and civil 
 
Daniel Webster. 349 
 
 scenery of the country, its thousands of happy 
 homes, its schools and churches, its factories 
 and workshops, the vast fleets of its commerce, 
 and the widening line of civilization before which 
 the wilderness was falling, and when he spoke 
 the word " Constitution " or " Union," in senate, 
 in caucus, in festive hall, in journeys north or 
 south, he made it embody and exhale all the glad- 
 ness and the grandeur which so much prosperity 
 and plenty, so much order and happiness, awak- 
 ened in his breast. For this reason he called on 
 his countrymen to cherish the sentiments that 
 should make that word sacred. For this reason 
 he continually used the awful imagery of the 
 breaking up of constellations, and of anarchy in 
 the firmament, to state the terrors and woes that 
 would attend an explosion of the forces which 
 bind the States together. His intellect seemed to 
 feel that their combination was not of man, but 
 was an organic miracle, and to be constantly con- 
 scious of the delicacy of their poise. 
 
 In 1850, when California knocked for admission 
 into the Union, and he was ready, as he was not 
 in 1833, to meet clamor with compromise, and 
 there were so many who loved him that could not 
 go with him, he did not act from base motives. 
 He was not indifferent to the evils which are 
 covered and partially maintained by our national 
 bond, but he would not look at the evils exclu- 
 sively or minutely. He saw an immense over- 
 balance of good, benefits more various, more 
 
3 SO Daniel Webster. 
 
 substantial, and more precious than any polity on 
 earth had ever secured to men. 
 
 And the great future of America (if explosive 
 passions could then be kept down) charmed his 
 imagination. He comprehended what the country 
 would be centuries hence. In swelling speech he 
 loved to bid future generations hail. And he 
 seemed to see, I doubt not, the upturned faces of 
 the Saxon millions yet to come, beseeching him, 
 by their looks and by their prayers, to pledge all 
 the resources of his intellect and his influence to 
 preserve the unity and peace of a nation upon 
 which their fortunes and happiness were at issue. 
 He thought that a little concession then would 
 be final. He thought the North was bound by 
 oath and obligation to return the fugitives. He 
 granted the concession. He put his lips to the 
 trumpet and called on the North to obey the Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 But no word from his fervid speeches and 
 countless letters of those last years is in the re- 
 motest degree kindred with the logic and the 
 passions of secessionists to-day or of their abettors, 
 or of the lukewarm supporters of the Constitution, 
 which are the most despicable tribe. (A man 
 may well be perplexed to know what course of 
 action is wisest in the head of the nation, but if 
 he is lukewarm in feeling towards treachery and 
 towards his country's Constitution and flag and 
 Congress and President, the nation says, in the 
 voice of the Apocalypse, " So then, because thou 
 
Daniel Webster. 351 
 
 art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew 
 thee out of my mouth/') 
 
 Mr. Webster did not propose to alter the Consti- 
 tution to appease rebellion. He proposed to make 
 it obeyed in the North ; and every man ought to 
 say now, that the Constitution must be obeyed in 
 the South, arms grounded, forts yielded, stolen 
 money returned, the flag run up and saluted, and 
 Abraham Lincoln acknowledged as rightful Presi- 
 dent of thirty-four States, before the convention 
 shall be called that is to consider an alteration 
 of the Constitution of the land. 
 
 A year after Mr. Webster's ;th of March speech, 
 in his oration, 4th of July, in Washington, in laying 
 the foundation of the new wing of the Capitol, he 
 denounced the spirit of secession then smoulder- 
 ing in South Carolina and Mississippi in language 
 at once ponderous and impassioned. He said that 
 the trouble there was excessive prosperity under 
 the Constitution, and for that the advice of the 
 secession doctors, he doubted not, would be a 
 sovereign remedy. 
 
 Call up his swarthy ghost to help secession ? It 
 is Saul calling up Samuel, to hear denunciation 
 and the prophecy of doom ! 
 
 The spirits that come at the call of patriotism 
 perplexed Washington and Hamilton, Jeffer- 
 son and Adams, Marshall and Story, Jackson and 
 Webster, Benton and Clay, representing the suf- 
 fering and victory of the Revolution, the early joy 
 on the adoption of the Constitution, the peaceful 
 
352 Daniel Webster. 
 
 civil struggles under it, and every form of the 
 prosperity it has poured upon East and South and 
 North preach, in common tone, to all sections, 
 obedience to the central law till all the people 
 shall legally dissolve the bond ; they frown upon 
 disruption ; they counsel common devotion to the 
 common and just ends of government; they plead 
 for the return of fraternal sentiments ; and they 
 appeal to the rising life of the land in the words 
 of Webster shortly before he passed into immor- 
 tality : " The young men of this generation, and 
 of the succeeding generations : may they live for- 
 ever, but may the Constitution and the Union 
 outlive them all ! " * 
 
 MARCH 19, 1861. 
 
 * After the rebellion broke out, Mr. King added the following 
 passage to this lecture : " Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun, we say, 
 are dead. No ; they ' still live.' On the floor of the Senate they 
 were for twenty years the able, fit, and courteous representatives 
 of hostile principles. They might be respectful and kindly towards 
 each other, and shake hands as friends, but their principles were as 
 irreconcilable as two railroad trains approaching on the same track 
 under full steam. Mr. Clay, in 1833, switched them off just in time 
 to save a collision. But now the crash is about to come. There 
 is no switch-man now ; and nobody wants any. Those two men 
 are ruling America at this hour by the hostile array of their ideas 
 for a final collision. 
 
 " Mr. Calhoun's thought has taken form in the conventions that 
 have voted down the Constitution, and yet have not submitted their 
 treason to the votes of the people ; in the three or four millions of 
 white men that refuse the name ' American ' and say that the 
 fathers of the republic were mistaken in their doctrines of free- 
 dom ; in the booming cannon that fired at the national flag over 
 Sumter ; in the arming of privateers against American commerce ; 
 in the appeal of the confederate traitors for fifty millions to lie 
 spent in striking at the national flag still more passionately ; in the 
 
Daniel Webster. 353 
 
 doctrine dramatized in disaster and war, that the minority ought 
 to be allowed to rule. 
 
 " Mr. Webster's thought breaks out afresh in the proclamation of 
 the President that America is one and cannot be broken ; it bursts 
 forth in the banners thick as the gorgeous leaves of the October 
 forests that have blossomed all over eighteen or twenty States ; it 
 shows itself in the passion of the noble Union men of the South 
 who will not bow to Baal ; it floats on every frigate that rides the 
 sea to protect our shipping ; it leaps forth and brightens in the sa- 
 cred steel which patriots by the hundred thousand are dedicating, 
 not to ravage, not to murder, not to hatred of any portion of the 
 southern section of the confederacy, but to the support of the im- 
 partial Constitution, to the common flag, to the majestic and be- 
 neficent law which offers to encircle and bless the whole republic ; 
 it utters itself in the thunder-voice of twenty millions of white citi- 
 zens of the land, that in America the majority under the Constitu- 
 tion must rule, and the public law must be obeyed. 
 
 " And when the work of the government shall be accomplished, 
 when the stolen money of the nation shall be refunded ; when hos- 
 tile artillery shall be withdrawn from the lower banks of the Mis- 
 sissippi ; when the flag of thirteen stripes and thirty-four stars shall 
 float again over Sumter, over New Orleans, over every arsenal that 
 has seen it insulted, over Mount Vernon and the American dust of 
 Washington, over every State capitol, and along the whole coast 
 and border line of Texas; when every man within the present 
 limits of the immense republic shall have restored to him the right 
 of pride in the American navy, and of representation on common 
 terms in the national Capitol, and of citizenship on the whole con- 
 tinent ; when leading traitors shall havebeen punished, and the Con- 
 stitution vindicated in its unsectional beneficence, and the doctrine 
 of secession be stabbed with two hundred thousand bayonet wounds, 
 and trampled to rise no more, then the debate between Mr. 
 Calhoun and Mr. Webster will be completed, the swarthy spirit of 
 the great defender of the Constitution will triumph, and a restored, 
 peaceful, majestic, irresistible America will dignify and consecrate 
 his name forever." 
 
X. 
 
 BOOKS AND BEADING.* 
 
 I CANNOT imagine how a speaker can more 
 profitably use the hour in which you honor 
 him with a listening ear than by an address on 
 Books and Reading. 
 
 The supreme privilege and advantage which 
 modern society enjoys over society five hundred 
 years ago is printed literature. There are scores 
 of blessings connected organically with civiliza- 
 tion that raise the plane of our life ; but over all 
 secular boons this one is sovereign, the print- 
 ing-press, which arrests and cheapens, which ac- 
 cumulates and scatters, the victories of genius and 
 the stores of intellectual toil. 
 
 Our education is conducted by the first masters 
 in each department through the help of books 
 and their cheapness. We go to a college, pos- 
 sibly, where only third-rate professors preside and 
 teach, or we may be too poor to attend any 
 college or academy ; but for a dollar or two we 
 
 * This lecture, written in San Francisco, had an extraordinary 
 popularity in every city and town in California where it was de- 
 livered. 
 
Books and Reading. 355 
 
 may be in Faraday's class in chemistry, force 
 Buttmann to teach us Greek, listen to Owen on 
 anatomy, make Schlegel interpret the master- 
 pieces of literature, and detain Macaulay or 
 Guizot at will, to unfold their knowledge of the 
 laws and the heroes of the last eighteen hundred 
 years. 
 
 Books are our university. Spirits are our 
 schoolmasters. The quintessence of truth, for 
 which a man has spent years and genius and 
 thousands sterling, too, is compacted into a pack- 
 age that does not waste by multiplying, and, for 
 a few shillings, is a force of education to crowds 
 by the Mississippi, near the Yuba, and "in the 
 continuous woods where rolls the Oregon." 
 
 All other helps to culture are feeble in impor- 
 tance contrasted with books. To hundreds of 
 thousands the whole sky is less than an ordinary 
 treatise on astronomy, and, if they should live 
 under it through twenty generations, could never 
 suggest a thousandth part so much. A tolerably 
 cultivated man might thread all the passes of the 
 Alps, and travel along the table-land of the 
 Andes with eyes wide open, and know less of 
 mountains, and be stirred with a feebler sense 
 of sublimity, than by reading the fourth volume of 
 Ruskin's " Modern Painters." The Wandering Jew 
 might gossip to you the details of Europe during 
 the last ten centuries, and leave with you immeas- 
 urably less of history than a compend by Vico, 
 Montesquieu, or Hegel would impart. The first 
 
356 Books and Reading. 
 
 would show you a pageant ; the second would 
 disclose the laws on which centuries are strung. 
 And the careful study, during the evenings of a 
 week, of the "Essay on Classification," about 
 two hundred pages long, which introduces Agas- 
 siz's great work on the Natural History of our 
 Country, would disclose vastly more of the crea- 
 tion to a man of average brain, than if he could 
 see all the living creatures of the globe march by 
 him, two and two, as the animals went into the ark, 
 and could then be conducted through a museum 
 crowded with fossil exhibitions of every species 
 entombed in the planet's crust. The sight of all 
 the facts would be like looking upon a shapeless 
 heap of types. The study of the essay by the 
 great naturalist would show you something of the 
 thought of the Creator expressed in the animal 
 world, from the birth of the first creature with 
 sensation, hundreds of thousands of years ago, 
 to the turtle that lies now on his back in Clay 
 Street, awaiting promotion to soup and humanity. 
 
 To the mass of the world, who have not the 
 leisure or the ability to wrest truth at first hand 
 from its hiding-places, contact with books is of 
 more account than immediate contact with all 
 of the Divine wisdom that is directly poured into 
 the universe. 
 
 There is no danger, therefore, that, with all 
 our stilted apostrophes to the printing-press, we 
 shall overrate the privilege of libraries and litera- 
 ture. There is far more danger that, because 
 
Books and Reading. 357 
 
 of this din of turgidness, we shall lose the sense 
 of our boon, or fail to take its measure. 
 
 Plato, in one of the most charming of his 
 Dialogues, disparages books as a means of 
 instruction, in comparison with conversation. 
 " Written truth," he says, " resembles painting. 
 Its productions stand out as if they were alive ; 
 but if you ask them any question they observe a 
 solemn silence. And so it is with written dis- 
 courses ; you would think that they spoke as 
 though they possessed some wisdom ; but if you 
 ask them about anything they say, from a desire 
 to understand it, they give only one and the self- 
 same answer. And when it is once written, every 
 discourse is tossed about everywhere, equally 
 among those who understand it, and among those 
 whom it in no wise concerns, and it knows not 
 to whom it ought to speak and to whom not. 
 And when it is ill-treated and unjustly reviled it 
 always needs its father to help it ; for, of itself, 
 it can neither defend nor help itself." 
 
 Now it is by the grace of the printing-press 
 that we are able to know this criticism of the 
 great Plato, and to make Plato repeat his best 
 sayings at our pleasure. By books we, in fact, 
 go into the society of the best men of all ages, 
 and hear them say their best things. I know 
 that a man is greater than his noblest book, and 
 that to know him thoroughly and have intimate 
 communion for years with his genius in its private 
 and flexible play, is better than to know all his 
 
Books and Reading. 
 
 editions by heart. But no talk with Milton could 
 give " Paradise Lost " or "Comus" or even "II Pen- 
 seroso." If one could have made a call on New- 
 ton in his library, or at his office in the mint, he 
 might have been in a peevish mood, you might 
 hear him fret over his quarrel with Flamsteed, or 
 he would possibly talk a little about the philoso- 
 pher's stone. You would not get a chapter of 
 queries as to optics out of him, or a demonstra- 
 tion of the speed of the moon's fall towards the 
 earth every second. You certainly would not 
 get the whole "Principia." Suppose you could 
 have dropped in to see Shakespeare in his com- 
 fortable country home. He would have treated 
 you to as much sack, no doubt, as you could 
 " sta gg er under," you might have gone away "hap- 
 py " as Cassio, but do you think that in your inter- 
 view you could have been carried up into the 
 region of his genius where Imogen and Hamlet 
 started into life, or down into the depths of his 
 feeling whence the richest sonnets issued ? Call 
 on Thackeray, in London, and there is danger 
 that he will engage the time with his grievances 
 against his fellow-member of a literary club, who 
 photographed his broken nose too vividly in a 
 letter : he would not sketch Mrs. Henry Esmond 
 for you. Nor would Dickens, seek him with the 
 warmest letter of introduction, unveil to you that 
 tropic region of his sea-like heart from which the 
 Agnes of " David Copperfield " rose as Aphrodite 
 from the foam near Cyprus. He might be too 
 
v y 
 
 Books and Reading/ I 'y, , 359 
 
 -, 
 
 busy with details of domestic friufyy, . ,1 haver') 
 seen letters lately from friends in Florence vrfrijclji 
 describe most temptingly the vigor and passiort 
 of old Walter Savage Lander's dinner-table con- 
 versation. But you can take a volume of his 
 " Imaginary Conversations " and overhear what he 
 would say at a dozen dinner-parties, if he could 
 have the winnowed genius of two thousand years 
 for guests. Perhaps the report which a genial 
 and appreciative gentleman once gave me of a 
 long interview with Thomas De Quincey, who 
 lately died in Scotland, came as near affecting me 
 with envy as any literary tidings of that kind I 
 ever heard. Yet for six " bits " I can buy De Quin- 
 cey's " Suspiria de Profundis," the sequel to his 
 " Opium-Eater," and, whenever I please, can sink 
 into the music of that prose which, I believe, is 
 the most rich and masterly since Hooker's. 
 
 No doubt there are a great many persons who 
 think thus with themselves when they desire a 
 firmer or clearer Christian faith : What a privi- 
 lege it was to live in the time of Jesus ! to see 
 him pass through the village of Capernaum or 
 Sychar, or resting in Bethany ! to hear the sen- 
 tences of the Sermon on the Mount fall from his 
 lips ! to see him take little children in his arms 
 and bless them ! to be present when he unsealed 
 the sight of Bartimeus, and know thus that he 
 was from heaven ! or, greater privilege still, to 
 have been with him a witness of the transfigura- 
 tion ! The first disciples, some are apt to say, 
 
360 Books and Reading. 
 
 had unspeakably richer opportunities than we can 
 have to know the truths and to live out the spirit 
 of the Christian religion. 
 
 Yet, have we ever thought of the fact that, by 
 means of a book that would not make more than 
 two hundred duodecimo pages, we know more 
 about Jesus than any inhabitant of Nazareth, any 
 citizen of Cana, any dweller in Sychar, could have 
 known ? They knew only a fragment or two of 
 his experience. They heard only a parable, or 
 saw only one wonderful act performed as he went 
 through their streets on his way to Jerusalem. 
 Which has had the ampler earthly opportunity 
 to get into communion with the mind and spirit 
 of the Saviour, the woman of Samaria, who lis- 
 tened to his talk with her by the well, and misun- 
 derstood the most of it, or you, who are present, 
 whenever you please, though the printed biogra- 
 phies, at that interview, and are within " earshot " 
 also of his dialogue with Nicodemus, his parable 
 of the Good Samaritan, his conversation with the 
 young Pharisee, his various calls to consecration, 
 his interpretation of God's character in the pic- 
 ture of the prodigal's father, you who have the 
 whole outline of Christ's career, and scores of 
 avenues, by his acts and his instructions and his 
 prayers, to reach the inmost riches of his soul ? 
 
 Books are our crowning privilege in modern 
 civilization. With a taste for books and music, 
 let every person thank God, night and morning, 
 that he was not born earlier in history. " Books 
 
Books and Reading. 361 
 
 and music," did I say ? Books are music. What 
 was it to know Beethoven personally in compari- 
 son with knowing and hearing the andante of the 
 Fifth Symphony, the scherzo of the Seventh, the 
 adagio of the Ninth ? Books contain the hid- 
 den harmonies, the ecstatic melodies of the spirits 
 that are touched to fine issues. If an organ was 
 conscious and could play itself, what would its 
 broken phrases, its irregular fantasies, its musical 
 chatter, however rich in separate tones, or occa- 
 sional chords, be to the overhearing it some 
 vesper-time, or at midnight, pour out the full 
 capacity of its tenderness and passion through a 
 fugue or mass or Hallelujah Chorus? It is the 
 chatter of genius that we get in the ordinary play 
 of the personality of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, 
 Scott and Carlyle. Sit down alone with "Mac- 
 beth" or "The Excursion," with "The Cenci " 
 or " Wallenstein," with " Pilgrim's Progress " or 
 " Guy Mannering " or " Sartor Resartus," and you 
 begin to hear the organ swells and symphonies. 
 
 If books cost in proportion to their grade or 
 value, or if the higher levels of composition and 
 creation were, of necessity, so written that they 
 could be understood only by severe application, 
 like that of learning a foreign language, or the 
 higher mathematics, how would society be af- 
 fected with a fresh and worthy sense of the privi- 
 lege of books and reading ! If only the aristoc- 
 racy of wealth could buy Dante and the Waverley 
 Novels, and the literature of the age of Elizabeth, 
 16 
 
362 Books and Reading. 
 
 or could read of Copernicus, the law of gravita- 
 tion, and Herschel's astronomy, or could own the 
 Prophets and the four Gospels ! 
 
 No, we do not say the empire of letters, the 
 kingdom of letters, the aristocracy or oligarchy 
 of letters, but the republic of letters. Knowledge 
 of the alphabet is your card of invitation and 
 your unquestioned ticket of entrance to its ses- 
 sions and feasts. A friend of mine said once at 
 a public dinner in New York that it was no 
 wonder the age was bearing on all nations and 
 institutions to greater freedom ; " for," said Ire, 
 " the steam-engine is a snorting democrat." It 
 does have a short-jacket, grimy, shoulder-striking 
 look. Every steam-engine seems to me as though 
 it would like to say, " Take a good stare at me, 
 I am one of the boys." Only it is not a disunion 
 democrat. It wants free range up and down the 
 country, east and west and criss-cross ; and pants 
 for the time when it can scare a herd of buffaloes 
 on the central plains, and make Brigham Young 
 stop his ears, as it screeches through Utah, on 
 an excursion westward with the great United 
 States mail behind, and the old flag flashing 
 through its smoke with no star less than it bears 
 to-day. 
 
 So is the steam-press a democrat. Men may 
 hoard money and hide it ; but the cylinder-press 
 screams to the people: "If there is any truth 
 uttered in any part of the world, and you want it, 
 let me know and you shall have it cheap." A 
 
Books and Reading. 363 
 
 great man may reserve his personal conversation 
 for a favored few, but the large talk of his soul is 
 poured out through literature to whatever crowds 
 will gather around his page, and even his private 
 correspondence, after one generation, is rum- 
 maged for the entertainment of everybody. A 
 man of genius, if he have affluence, may be mean 
 and niggardly with it. He may build a palace <for 
 selfish enjoyment, and may wall himself out from 
 sympathy with his kind, while he devotes his 
 means and time to the acquisition of knowledge 
 as a private luxury. But the palace of truth 
 which he rears thus over his spirit, its founda- 
 tions of visible fact, its pillars of law, its dome 
 solemn with the glimmer of mysteries, from 
 this he cannot exclude the race ; our little ticket 
 of the alphabet admits you and me j he cannot 
 fence off his ground or patent his key; it is open 
 forever to all pilgrims, and " no man can shut 
 the door " ; it is free to you if you have fellow- 
 ship with his thought, and can be kindled by 
 it, as St. Peter's is to the poorest believer in 
 Rome.* 
 
 " But we, brought forth and reared in hours 
 Of change, alarm, surprise, 
 What shelter to grow ripe is ours ? 
 What leisure to grow wise ? 
 Too fast we live, too much are tried, 
 Too harassed, to attain 
 Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide 
 And luminous view to gain." 
 
 ARNOLD'S Olermann. 
 
364 Books and Reading. 
 
 When we begin to talk more practically about 
 the privilege of books and reading, of course we 
 must lay heavy stress on the word "selection." 
 
 The largest collection of books in the world, 
 the Imperial Library of Paris, contains more than 
 800,000 volumes and about 100,000 manuscripts. 
 Now we often talk about an omnivorous reader 
 and a very widely read man. But " art is long 
 and time is fleeting." At the rate of a volume 
 a day, stopping on Sundays to rest the eyes 
 (and go to church), it would require almost 3,000 
 years to finish the job. A man who should have 
 begun it in the reign of King David would be 
 just about checking the last book on the catalogue 
 to-night. 
 
 If single copies of every book that has been 
 published since the invention of printing could be 
 placed lengthwise in this State, the line would 
 stretch from the vineyards of Los Angeles to the 
 snowy beard of Mount Shasta. And all the paper 
 that has been printed to be bound into books 
 would doubtless cover every State and Territory, 
 lake, river-bed, and mountain-range of the United 
 States. Yet no man lives, no threadbare book- 
 worm, no German professor whose blood is a de- 
 coction of tobacco-smoke and beer, that has 
 read through probably half as many volumes as 
 the Mercantile Library in this city contains. So 
 important to the greediest reader does Nature 
 which does not build our lives on the scale of 
 Methusaleh make selection. 
 
Books and Reading. 365 
 
 A hundred volumes, I believe, could be se- 
 lected, the mastery of which, by attentive read- 
 ing, would make a man better furnished with 
 instruction, and better able to comprehend and 
 enjoy the advances of knowledge, under the lead 
 of the explorers of this generation, than any 
 scholar or literary man we have in our country 
 to-day. So important is wisdom in selection for 
 its practical benefits ! 
 
 Of course, I am talking now of reading for the 
 sake of enjoyable knowledge, not for the sake of 
 a profession, or for practical application to any 
 branch of labor, or for the purpose of exhaustive 
 acquaintance with any science or any depart- 
 ment of literature. Each of these demands hard 
 study in narrow and exclusive lines. A great Ger- 
 man grammarian in Latin, reviewing his career, 
 said that if he could begin his life over again, he 
 should devote himself entirely to the dative case. 
 (Perhaps he is at it now, in the next world.) If 
 a man is ambitious of eminence as a leader or 
 master now in any branch of science or art, he 
 must pour his power thus concentrated in a very 
 restricted groove. But to become an appreciative 
 reader, and to know in pretty full outline the re- 
 sults of the best thinking, discovery, and literary 
 productiveness of this globe, with a general ac- 
 quaintance, too, with history, I repeat my belief 
 that a hundred volumes, well selected and read 
 carefully and repeatedly, can make a man of aver- 
 age intelligence in this city who can command five 
 
366 Books and Reading. 
 
 hours of leisure out of the twenty-four, better in- 
 formed than any except the few supereminent 
 literary men of the land. 
 
 The prominent classes into which the products 
 of the press may be distributed are three. Books 
 of fact, books of life, and books of art. The first 
 class, or books of fact, include all scientific trea- 
 tises or manuals in which the discoveries in nature, 
 up to the line of humanity, are registered and in- 
 terpreted. Books of life include all histories and 
 biographies, and all speculations and inquiries 
 concerning society, morals, and faith. In these 
 two classes the substance of truth is the all-impor- 
 tant thing, without regard to elegance of form or 
 attractiveness of arrangement The third class, 
 books of art, comprehend all the works in verse 
 and prose in which not abstract truth, but exalted 
 pleasure is the object, in which form is as neces- 
 sary as the matter itself, in which truth appears 
 robed in beauty, for purposes of inspiration. In 
 this division, all poems and dramas, the whole 
 mass of fictitious literature, and every work that 
 asks admission into the department of belles-let- 
 tres, must be placed. 
 
 Now if a person reads for information, not for 
 practical skill or exhaustive attainment in any 
 line, a very few volumes wisely selected from the 
 first class, the books of fact, will start a man rightly 
 on the road of knowledge, and be an undrain- 
 able resource besides. All education, it seems 
 to me, should be based on the revelations of sci- 
 
Books and Reading. 367 
 
 ence concerning the scale of space and time. It 
 is a sad shame that so little is known by the gen- 
 eral mind known "for certain," known so as 
 to set our life and our interests in the fit contrasts 
 of glory and gloom, magnificence and mystery 
 of the results of astronomy and geology. The 
 results may be understood and appreciated by 
 everybody; the processes by which the results 
 are reached of course can be followed and com- 
 prehended only by the elect intelligence among 
 men. 
 
 Geology opens to us the cellar department, and 
 astronomy the dome, of our home in nature. 
 Mrs. Somerville's " Connection of the Physical 
 Sciences," LyelFs " Elements and Principles of 
 Geology," NicolFs fascinating work on the Plane- 
 tary System, or Mitchell's eloquent " Lectures on 
 the Phenomena of the Heavens," or the treatise by 
 Buckland, and the masterly one by Whewell in 
 the Bridgewater Treatises, or parts of the lucid 
 and cheap series by Dr. Lardner, in the course 
 of one winter, if faithfully read, would stretch a 
 man's mind so that he could not go to his business 
 in the morning, or see the evening star steal out 
 from the prison of daylight, without feeling the 
 preparation that has been made for his existence 
 here, and the laws that bind the order of the 
 universe. 
 
 No man has a right to go on living in a world 
 whose upholstery is so gorgeous and foundations 
 so sublime, without knowing something of both. 
 
368 Books and Reading. 
 
 Napoleon, speaking once of courage, said that the 
 highest order was " the two-o'clock-in-the-morning 
 kind," the courage a man would show in a press- 
 ing disaster reported to him when just aroused 
 from sleep. Now there are some things which a 
 man should know with a two-o'clock-in-the-morn- 
 ing knowledge. Wake him from deep slumber, 
 and he ought to be able to tell you his birth- 
 day, his age, how many feet front his house-lot 
 is, what neighbors live in the same block with 
 him, and what notes he is to meet on steamer- 
 day. And he ought to be able to tell you as 
 clearly at once the number of full-grown planets 
 in the solar system (of course no one can keep 
 the run of that straggling litter of asteroids, the 
 pup-orbs of the family), the millions of miles which 
 the earth beats in a year, the reach of the sun's 
 gravitation, the number of States, Territories, and 
 square miles in his country, the salient facts and 
 dates of its history, the probable number of years 
 that the Mississippi has been running, and the 
 dead certainty that he is against secession so long 
 as the Mississippi runs down the line of our cli- 
 mates into the Gulf of Mexico. [There are some 
 planets within the solar confederacy that do not 
 come out into the visible order and beauty of the 
 family. One has lately been discovered within 
 the orbit of Mercury, with a very swift, narrow, 
 and fiery track, the Hotspur, the South Carolina, of 
 the confederation ; it has never been seen except 
 as a round dot of darkness hurrying across the great 
 
Books and Reading. 369 
 
 sun's disk (the planet I am talking of); but it 
 would not do to let it go, or to let the sun swallow 
 it. It would be bad for it, bad for the sun, and 
 bad for us.] 
 
 A man ought to know all the facts I have 
 alluded to with as decisive and intense a convic- 
 tion as if he expected to be examined on them 
 every year before the school-board of San Fran- 
 cisco. A late traveller in Liberia tells us that 
 there are inhabitants there who can see the satel- 
 lites of Jupiter with the unassisted eye. Every 
 person that has had a common-school education 
 ought to carry with him a sub-consciousness of 
 the immensity of the zodiac and the splendors of 
 the space in which his life is framed. 
 
 And half a dozen fascinating books will tell all 
 this, and the distance of the nearest fixed star, 
 and how near Lord Rosse's telescope has come 
 to seeing houses on the moon. All it needs is 
 that they be read, not as water is poured upon 
 sand, but as water is poured upon the root of a 
 tree, to be absorbed and incorporated into instinc- 
 tive knowledge. 
 
 The books of fact include every department of 
 science, organic and inorganic, sciences offeree 
 and sciences of law ; and in every department the 
 results have been popularized for parlors as fast 
 as demonstrated, and can be understood and en- 
 joyed by anybody who has mind enough to cast 
 interest for months and days at one and a half per 
 cent. The constitution, laws, and speed of light 
 16* 
 
370 Books and Reading. 
 
 can be investigated and proved by very few, but 
 anybody who can peel a potato can enjoy the elo- 
 quent description of their mystic witchery. You 
 need not drag the sea to appreciate Maury's 
 entrancing book upon it. Physical geography is 
 one of the most winning and simple of studies in 
 such a work as Guyot's "Earth and Man," the 
 compressed oil of ten thousand books of travel 
 and the geological delving of countless explorers. 
 Without a tithe of the toil which it would require 
 to add by discovery or culture one to the three 
 hundred and twenty thousand species of plants 
 which botanists distinguish, you may learn their 
 classes, the processes of botanic growth, and the 
 laws of their distribution. And of the two mil- 
 lions of forms of organic life which the zoologists 
 have enumerated, though you never hear or read 
 the names of a hundred of them, you may become 
 acquainted with the thoughts of the Creator which 
 they express, and the exact plans of structure on 
 which all the myriads have been strung from this 
 hour back to the morning of the fifth day of the 
 creation. Very few of us could learn to build 
 a grand piano. Not a soul in this land could 
 write a melody of Mozart any more than he 
 could make a nightingale's throat. Compara- 
 tively few can learn to play one, when properly 
 imbedded in its harmony. But how many can 
 appreciate and delight in one when played ! In 
 the chief sciences the instrument is built, the 
 music is written, skilled performers are playing 
 
Books and Reading. 371 
 
 it to us ; the question is simply if we will unstop 
 our ears and listen. 
 
 Books of life, I suppose, are naturally more 
 attractive than books of fact, that detain us out- 
 side of humanity. History and biography are the 
 prominent branches of this division ; and in both 
 departments human genius and industry seem to 
 have been exerted to the utmost strain, since this 
 century began, to increase the resources of easy 
 knowledge and delight for the average mind. 
 
 The most important events in the deciphered 
 history of nations may be gained in one winter's 
 reading. Of course, histories are an endless task : 
 but history, its epochs, outline, and mountain-swells 
 of controlling and determining facts, is within the 
 grasp of six months' consecutive, interested read- 
 ing in leisure hours. 
 
 Of course, the method would have to be a little 
 different from that of the English country gentle- 
 man, who, to cultivate his mind and solace 'his 
 lonesomeness, concluded to attack the " Vicar of 
 Wakefield" in successive evenings. He placed 
 the book-mark properly every night to note his 
 progress, which was ten pages a sitting, and as 
 regularly a roguish niece put the mark back, 
 before the next sitting, about eight pages. His 
 advance was almost as slow as that of the toad in 
 the well who jumped up four feet and fell back 
 six. After some months, however, the squire did 
 jump out of his well, and the niece asked him how 
 
372 Books and Reading. 
 
 he liked the volume. " O, very well, but don't you 
 think there 's a little repetition in it ? " 
 
 If we do not put the book-mark back too often, 
 we can learn the deepest facts and truths which 
 thirty centuries hide, in a year, so as to have a 
 track of twilight, at least, in our memory over its 
 expanse. How much that one book about the fif- 
 teen decisive battles of the world, which costs about 
 a dollar, clears up to a reader who knows the gen- 
 eral divisions of history and relations of empires ! 
 
 And what can be more refreshing and stimu- 
 lating than Prescott's histories connected with 
 Spain, and Macaulay's England? They ought 
 to be read always in connection and contrast, to 
 learn something of the art of historic painting, 
 and how various are the methods by which ability 
 of equal range and level communicates itself and 
 produces its effects. 
 
 The first thing to do, in reading either of those 
 works, is to become acquainted with the truth 
 which the authors have quarried for us and ar- 
 ranged. But the processes of arrangement are no 
 less interesting in their way as studies. Go from 
 a chapter of Macaulay to a chapter of Prescott, 
 and you are affected with an unpleasant sense of 
 thinness in the sentences, poverty in expression, 
 commonplace in the reflections, and watery pale- 
 ness in the color. Macaulay is so opulent in vivid 
 detail, exuberant in rhetoric, affluent in discrimi- 
 nating logic, and the palette from which he enlivens 
 his canvas is so rich with deep, strong Rubens- 
 
Books and Reading. 373 
 
 hues ! You feel, in contrast, that it is a very 
 limited dictionary from which Mr. Prescott draws ; 
 it seems doubtful if he will be able to find words 
 enough to get through a dozen pages more ; and 
 half his space seems to be filled with crayon- 
 outlines, because he had not pigments enough for 
 his brush. 
 
 But read a volume of each and compare the 
 results in your memory ! How superior Prescott 
 is in the ability to handle and dispose all the 
 facts of a reign, or to open a vista through the 
 entangled politics of a continent ! He is consum- 
 mate master of historical perspective. Macaulay's 
 canvas is all foreground, packed with vivid char- 
 acters the drawing of any one of which is a triumph. 
 No man so competent to finish a portrait in an 
 essay : but his history is a collection of essays and 
 a succession of portraits ; and we miss at the close 
 the higher art which subordinates parts, masses 
 and reduces detail, graduates light, concentrates 
 splendor, and gives the grateful impression of 
 large space, unity, and repose. In these qualities 
 of a great historian, in the arrangement of back- 
 ground and distance, and the relation of events 
 to prominent characters, and one policy, and final 
 unity of impression, so that facts group themselves 
 into the sternest unspoken moral, Mr. Prescott 
 is as superior to Macaulay as he seems to be in- 
 ferior in the treasury of gifts which a historian, one 
 would think, requires as an outfit. 
 
 I must not dwell on such points here, however, 
 
374 Books and Reading. 
 
 for they belong properly under the last head 
 of the lecture. I allude to it, in passing, to indi- 
 cate the stores of enjoyment as well as instruction 
 at the command of those who read histories with 
 open eye. Each prominent name Gibbon, Thirl- 
 wall, Thierry, Grote, Guizot, Merivale, Milman, 
 Michelet, Carlyle, Bancroft, Motley is a painter 
 on a large scale ; can be compared with some 
 master in the art of color ; and yields from his 
 volumes the double joy, when wisely read, of im- 
 mense information and peculiar art in the group- 
 ing and illumination of it. 
 
 But the richest region in the wide literature of 
 life is the department of biography. We need 
 science enough to give us the scale of our exist- 
 ence here, and history enough to show us in a 
 general way how old we are, and who are our 
 fathers, and what are the chief moral strata of 
 the past; but it is still true that "the proper 
 study of mankind is man." 
 
 The readers may be few who can appreciate 
 the kinds of genius displayed in the laying out 
 and filling in of a great history, but every 
 person of moderate attainments and leisure can 
 appreciate and enjoy the masterpieces of biograph- 
 ical literature. If I were to begin life now, and 
 to lay anew the foundations of a library, it should 
 be controllingly a biographical one, literary por- 
 traits, memoirs, and correspondence. There is 
 no way in which history is taught so vividly, and 
 by which we get so close to the springs of it. 
 
Books and Reading. 375 
 
 There is no way in which so much anecdote, wit, 
 vivid and sparkling truth, can be acquired. 
 There is no way in which moral impressions so 
 healthy and deep may be left on the conscience 
 and heart. 
 
 And think of it, each week may introduce 
 you to some man or woman of genius, mon- 
 arch, general, priest, statesman, philanthropist, 
 scientist, traveller, inventor, discoverer, poet, 
 artist. You may see his whole life the dawn 
 of his genius, his struggles and sorrows, his 
 wrongs and triumphs in the pomp of his intel- 
 lectual strength, and in his dressing-gown and 
 slippers. You may take a look through him at 
 his century ; you may see how he treats his wife 
 and children ; you may know what he had for 
 dinner and the best things he and his guests gos- 
 siped about : you may rummage even his private 
 letters. Eaves -dropping and keyhole listening 
 are contemptible, unless we do it at the remove 
 of a generation. Then it is biography. The 
 queen is very strict with the reception-invitations 
 and etiquette. St. James Street is wary and 
 scrupulous as to cards to dinner and soire'es. 
 Wait a little while, and the walls are thrown down 
 and the rabble look on. Histories are the large 
 landscapes. Biographies are the stereoscopic in- 
 teriors of the past. 
 
 The third department of literature I spoke of 
 comprehends books of art, or books in which the 
 
376 Books and Reading. 
 
 subjects are either fictitious and ideal or in 
 which the form and moulding are integral ele- 
 ments of their value. 
 
 All novels are included in this department. 
 This in all popular libraries is the most attractive 
 alcove. We can see that our city library is no 
 exception ; for by the monthly statistics it con- 
 tinues true that about ten times more works of 
 fiction are sought from its store-house than from 
 any other line of literature. 
 
 It is useless to quarrel with this fact, if we 
 dislike its intimations ; for it is useless to quar- 
 rel with a primal passion of our being. And it 
 is folly for any intelligent man to cast a slight, or 
 utter any indiscriminate scorn against novels as 
 a class. There is no such thing as novels as a 
 class ; we might as well speak of human life as 
 a class or history as a class. 
 
 Fiction is a mighty branch of literature, includ- 
 ing under it different orders, classes, genera, and 
 species of books. English fiction and German 
 fiction no more belong to the same species than 
 a leopard and a hippopotamus. Modern French 
 fiction has a vitality as different from the modern 
 Anglo-Saxon as the life in a healthy body differs 
 from " the worm that dieth not " in the carcass 
 due to Gehenna. Sans-Culotteism in 1789 broke 
 up into Paris from the pit of flame. The By- 
 ronic spirit in literature is often characterized as 
 the Satanic school. But as Milton's fiend could 
 never get to the bottom of his abyss, finding 
 
Books and Reading. 377 
 
 beneath each deep " a lower deep still threaten- 
 ing to devour" him, we see in the latest schools 
 of French novels the presiding demon of all can- 
 cerous corruption in the human heart, rising, not 
 from Stygian gloom and flame, but with appro- 
 priate effluvium from what Swedenborg describes 
 to us as the excrementitibus hells. 
 
 The Saxon intellect has hardly shown its rich- 
 ness and soundness more marvellously during the 
 last sixty years, in the progress of science and the 
 miracles of invention, than through its fertility in 
 noble fictions, from Scott and Miss Austen to 
 Thackeray, Dickens, Kingsley, and the painters of 
 Jane Eyre, John Halifax, and Adam Bede. Such 
 creativeness has not been known since the age of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 And after biography, no reading can be made 
 more profitable, if the substructure of education 
 has been attended to, than novels. Of course, 
 they must be read for something beyond sensa- 
 tions, as products of art and of thought. 
 
 A library of novels is like a gallery of pictures. 
 One man saunters through the gallery and sees 
 what the pictures are about, one is a battle- 
 piece, one a sunset in Italy, one a love-scene, one 
 a Madonna, one a mountain-range, one a sea- 
 storm. Another man goes through the gallery, 
 sits before the chief pictures, and sees what the 
 artists were about, what is the range of the pow- 
 ers of each, the degrees of their technical skill, 
 and the directions in which they lie open to the 
 
378 Books and Reading. 
 
 Infinite. The first man sees the paint, all of it ; 
 the second man sees the paintings. The first has 
 whiled away an hour, and had a sensation ; the 
 last has enjoyed himself intelligently and fed his 
 mind. Novels good ones have all the range 
 and all the characteristics of the higher classes of 
 paintings, color, tone, grouping, precision of 
 drawing, perspective, and the quality of the lesson, 
 or the elevation of spirit, that looks out through 
 all. And when read with one eye to the story 
 the left eye and the other the right to the 
 art of the book, the pleasure is intellectually as 
 profitable as it is noble. 
 
 Suppose an intelligent reader of Walter Scott's 
 novels one who has gone through them all two 
 or three times should attempt to account to 
 himself for his reading, and force himself to give 
 a rational verdict which novel, or which triad of 
 them, shows the ripest power ; or suppose a 
 reading-circle should devote two or three evenings 
 to the point why " Guy Mannering " is a greater 
 book than " Ivanhoe," which has more glitter, 
 and " The Heart of Mid-Lothian " than "Quentin 
 Durward " or " Count Robert of Paris," the reflec- 
 tion and the discussion would bring out into dis- 
 tinct relief the real privileges of fiction-reading. 
 Nobody concerned could help, after that, perusing 
 a novel more carefully. 
 
 Or let us imagine a reading-circle attempting to 
 classify novels by these tests. Which of them 
 deal most faithfully with the ultimate realities and 
 
Books and Reading. 379 
 
 passions of human nature, and which are conven- 
 tional, drawing character within a very narrow cir- 
 cle of society and experience, or what recent 
 novelist deals most nobly with the passion of 
 love, and what one with the religious sentiment ? 
 or what is the organic difference between the 
 methods of drawing a life-portrait by Dickens and 
 by Thackeray ? Still further, let a reading-circle, 
 or any devourer of books, propose these queries 
 for outward or mental discussion : Why Mr. 
 Charles Reade, so brilliant in swift sketches and 
 dialogue, cannot unfold and develop a character 
 without degrading it ; why Copperfield stands 
 head and shoulders above the range of Mr. Dick- 
 ens's stones ; why it is absurd and libellous (for 
 I believe it is both) to say that Mr. Thackeray's 
 writings are mere satires, and weaken faith in the 
 reality of virtue ; why the close of Bulwer's work, 
 "What will He do with it," a work in which 
 incidents are handled, woven, and untangled with 
 such a masterly hand, is such an unmitigated 
 piece of snobbery that one feels like pitching 
 book and author into a region where types are 
 nevermore set up ; why " Charles Auchester '* 
 must have been written with ink weakened by 
 milk-and-water; why Mrs. Stowe's "Dred," the 
 first volume of which is by far the grandest volume 
 she has written, runs down so swiftly into weak- 
 ness and failure in the second ; why the draw- 
 ing of Rochester, so melodramatic in attitudes and 
 color, is the feeblest portion, intellectually, of a 
 
380 Books and Reading. 
 
 book which is more marvellous on the tenth read- 
 ing than on the first, Jane Eyre ; and wherein 
 consists the literary art by which Miss Brontd 
 could describe the furniture of a room and a 
 sleety day so that they are more vivid than light 
 and experience could make them ; why the au- 
 thoress of "Adam Bede" is the most eminent 
 of living feminine English novelists, and why the 
 largeness of handling, the freedom from all spasm, 
 the reserve, and the depth of moral space out of 
 which each character shines like a star from the 
 boundless blue, make it superior to the more nar- 
 row, more coarse, a little more bitter, though still 
 very able and vigorous, " Mill on the Floss." 
 
 These hap-hazard queries relate rather to the 
 artistic qualities of novels, and show by casual 
 suggestion how varied and deep they are. The 
 moral interests in all eminent and decent fiction 
 is no less. What is more dreary than moral 
 philosophy, or the abstract discussion of questions 
 of ethics bearing on the grades of sentiments and 
 conflicts of duties ? But no question was ever 
 raised, possibly, by the acutest casuist which has 
 not been set at work vitally and dramatically in 
 some modern novel. And if all novel-readers 
 were compelled, when they close a book, to write 
 out the main doctrine or proposition which is the 
 axis of the incidents and plot, it would be better 
 for their moral education than if they could listen 
 once a week to the best lecture on ethics that is 
 delivered by the foremost professor in civilization. 
 
Books and Reading. 381 
 
 One of the most practical, impressive, and 
 strong-headed preachers in this country is a con- 
 stant student of novels. They are the staple of his 
 reading. They furnish him with a museum of char- 
 acters, and with revelations of the status and needs 
 of modern society which no other reading could 
 furnish. He sees the world, he tastes life, by 
 means of them, as we all may, if we will approach 
 them for something besides their pepper and salt, 
 for what their condiments merely flavor. And 
 I have often thought that the pulpit could not do 
 better with one sermon in every quarter, than by 
 preaching on the health or disease of the most 
 prominent novel which all parishioners are read- 
 ing, and showing wherein and how far its main 
 characters illustrate or reject the spirit of life 
 which glows through the incidents of the four 
 Gospels from " the Word made flesh." 
 
 In other departments of books of art, in all 
 the bigher forms of prose and in poetry, the key 
 to the richest enjoyment is a sensitive taste for 
 style, for differences and peculiarities in richness, 
 melody, and rhythm. 
 
 It is said that, with his eyes shut, a man could 
 not tell the difference between beef and mutton, 
 veal and rabbit, pork and elk. Let them be put 
 in his mouth without seeing or smelling, and his 
 tongue could not tell " which is which." It may 
 be so, but it is no reason why a man cannot tell, 
 and ought not to be able to tell, with his eyes 
 open. 
 
382 Books and Reading. 
 
 There are persons who seem to be utterly im- 
 pervious to the flavors of literature. One book 
 reads as much like another, to them, as one mul- 
 tiplication-table like another. But since the first 
 book was written which belongs in the artistic 
 region, no two styles are alike. They differ even 
 in prose, as faces, forms, gaits, differ. They differ 
 because souls differ. No two living books, to the 
 end of time, will have the same style. Often the 
 very best and most precious thing about a noble 
 book is its style. It is, as to its matter, what the 
 atmosphere is to a landscape in Southern Italy. 
 Banish its unctuous opaline lusciousness, and 
 hang a New Hampshire air over it, and see how 
 much is gone. Strip the style off and leave the 
 matter in Mr. De Quincey's essays, and you would 
 find that it is like taking the sound out of a grove 
 of pines. 
 
 This miracle of style has not been sounded 
 yet, why, when one man writes a fact, it is cold 
 or commonplace, and when another man writes 
 it, in a little different, but equivalent phraseology, 
 it is a rifle-shot or a revelation. One can 
 understand a little how the wink or twinkle of 
 an eye, how an attitude, how a gesture, how a 
 cadence or impassioned sweep of voice, should 
 make a boundless distance between truths stated 
 or declaimed. But how words, locked up in 
 forms, still and stiff in sentences, contrive to tip 
 a wink, how a proposition will insinuate more 
 scepticism than it states, how a paragraph will 
 
Books and Reading. 383 
 
 drip with the honey of love, how a phrase will 
 trail an infinite suggestion, how a page can be so 
 serene or so gusty, so gorgeous or so pallid, so 
 sultry or so cool, as to lap you in one intellectual 
 climate or its opposite, who has fathomed yet 
 this wonder ? 
 
 " The style is the man." Education for enjoy- 
 ing and fathoming books of art consists in becom- 
 ing sensitive to their air and music. There are 
 elements in Hawthorne's romances, all of them, 
 as repulsive to me as anything, not openly im- 
 moral, in literature. But his style, so sweet, 
 natural, genial, perspicuous, easy in its most curi- 
 ous felicities, the purest and most artistic Eng- 
 lish, I believe, written by any pen in a living 
 hand to-day, English of a higher order even 
 than Washington Irving's, though akin to Irving's 
 in showing something of " that sleepy smile that 
 lies so benignly on the sweet and serious diction 
 of old Izaak Walton," this makes me love his 
 genius, and believe that it is destined for richer 
 service yet in the universe, when the unhealthy 
 spot shall be taken by the proper medicine or 
 surgery out of his soul. 
 
 A man with leisure and a tendency to reading, 
 who has no appreciation of the subtleties of 
 grace and meaning in styles, is to be pitied as a 
 man is to be commiserated to whom a banana 
 and lemon taste alike, and who should eat the 
 berries and fruits of summer apricots and 
 plums, Bartletts and early Crawi r ords as a turkey 
 
384 Books and Reading. 
 
 gobbles oats and corn. How often I have 
 heard people class Mr. Emerson and Carlyle 
 together, and say that one borrowed from the 
 other, men whose philosophy of life bear as 
 much resemblance as a tropic thunder-storm and 
 an arctic night, and whose styles are as much 
 alike as the light of a pitch-pine knot blazing 
 and smoking in a wild mountain pass and an 
 icicle hanging with still, clear, pitiless brilliance 
 in a winter noon. 
 
 I cannot enlarge upon this point with illustra- 
 tions to enforce it ; but can only say that it 
 applies to poetry as manifestly, at least, as to 
 prose. 
 
 One of the strangest things which a deep stu- 
 dent of Shakespeare learns is the variety of his 
 music and rhythm in the same ten-syllable blank- 
 verse. No other writer of his age commanded 
 such music ; and the movement and measure of 
 his Macbeth and Romeo, Hamlet and Antony, 
 Lear and Tempest, are as different as if different 
 writers on the Shakespeare level had given 
 each the training of a life to one of these plays. 
 And in each case the movement or melody is a 
 subtle accompaniment to the passion or the law 
 that informs and ensouls the piece. 
 
 The reason why Goethe cannot be translated is 
 that no equal Goethe stands on the English side 
 of the line to link the equivalent words with 
 equivalent music. The process of rendering 
 Goethe or Beranger into another tongue is that 
 
Books and Reading. 385 
 
 which a German, not over-familiar with our 
 phrases, uses to describe translation ; he says 
 such a German book has been "upset into 
 English." 
 
 A reader with an ear for melody has a feast 
 spread for him in Saxon poetry fit for Apollo. 
 Many a person imagines that a poet's office is 
 akin to that of wood-sawyers, that it is their 
 business to saw up language into measure, and 
 pile it even and gracefully, rhymed at the end. 
 But with the ear for rhythm, Milton and Words- 
 worth, Coleridge and Shelley, Keats and Tenny- 
 son, are richer than an organ in the house. It 
 was Hood, I believe, who divided poetry into two 
 kinds, " verse and worse." The verse is what has 
 melody, that which has it not is worse. Charles 
 Mackay's verses seem as though they were com- 
 posed on an even, hard-trotting horse upon a 
 macadamized road. Whittier writes as though 
 a trumpet was continually sounding through his 
 Quaker soul. What an advance in melody in 
 Longfellow, from the " Voices of the Night," with 
 its " sweet-sixteen " poetry and sentiment, to some 
 of the chapters of " Hiawatha " and his last lyric 
 in the Atlantic Monthly, " Paul Revere's Ride " ! 
 What exquisite meditative imagination in the 
 slow sinuous harmony of Bryant's " Thanatopsis " ! 
 Coleridge and in this respect Edgar Poe was 
 like him seemed to write fragments only to 
 show how superior is the suggestion of sound to 
 the expression of sense in verse. Shelley's words, 
 
386 Books and Reading. 
 
 in many of his songs, appear to stand there simply 
 to prevent the melody from melting into utter 
 spirit. And Tennyson's " Idyls of the King," the 
 crowning work of his genius, needs the rarest 
 voices that have been attuned oa the globe to 
 read it, and set free the melody healthy and del- 
 icate as the echoes which his own Bugle Song 
 describes : 
 
 " O hark, O hear, how thin and clear, 
 And thinner, clearer, farther going, 
 O sweet and far, from cliff and scar, 
 The horns of Elfland faintly blowing." 
 
 So from souls on the western shore of the Atlantic, 
 and from the borders of the Pacific, too, the echoes 
 return of his genius. 
 
 And here we must pause. The distance of a 
 star, the age of the planet, the flow of history, the 
 stores of biography, the vast and crowded spaces 
 of fiction, the richest music borne from infinite 
 deeps through the rarest pipes of genius, such 
 knowledge, such society, such inspiration, or such 
 solace may be ours through a library of a hundred 
 books ; no more. If you have taste, you may find 
 leisure to win something of the luxury of truth or art 
 in the busiest life for the uplifting of your spirit. 
 
 Mrs. Browning in one of her early poems, " A 
 Vision of Poets," describes a church she saw in a 
 dream, and the approach of the great masters of 
 verse and passion at midnight up its aisles to its 
 altar : 
 
 " Here Homer, with the broad suspense 
 Of thunderous brows, and lips intense 
 Of garrulous god-innocence. 
 
Books and Reading. 387 
 
 " There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb 
 The crowns o' the world. O eyes sublime, 
 With tears and laughters for all time ! 
 
 " Electric Pindar, quick as fear, 
 With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear, 
 Slant, startled eyes that seem to hear 
 The chariot rounding the last goal. 
 
 " Lucretius, nobler than his mood ; 
 Who dropped his plummet down the broad 
 Deep universe, and said, ' No God,' 
 
 " Finding no bottom : he denied 
 Divinely the divine, and died 
 Chief poet on the Tiber-side. 
 
 " And Ossian dimly seen or guessed ; 
 Once counted greater than the rest, 
 When mountain-winds blew out his vest. 
 
 " And Goethe, with that reaching eye 
 His soul looked out from, far and high, 
 And fell from inner entity. 
 
 " And Schiller, with heroic front, 
 Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon 't, 
 Too large for wreath of modern wont. 
 
 " Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim, 
 The shapes of suns and stars did swim 
 Like clouds from them, and granted him 
 God for sole vision. 
 
 " And Burns, with pungent passionings 
 Set in his eyes. Deep lyric springs 
 Are of the fire-mount's issuings. 
 
 " And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave 
 And salt as life : forlornly brave, 
 And quivering with the dart he drave. 
 
388 Books and Reading. 
 
 " And visionary Coleridge, who 
 Did sweep his thoughts as angels do 
 Their wings, with cadence up the blue. 
 
 " These poets faced, and many more, 
 The lighted altar looming o'er 
 The clouds of incense dim and hoar. 
 
 " And all their faces in the lull 
 Of natural things looked wonderful 
 With life, and death, and deathless rule." 
 
 And such an altar we may have in our memory 
 and our inner being, where all these men, and 
 others, the priests of science and the great ser- 
 vants of good, shall be our companions, teachers, 
 and friends. The title to it is taste for literature, 
 reading with our eyes open, reading with rigid 
 selection and exclusion, reading with a sense of 
 its privilege, reading for an end. 
 
 1861. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE PRIVILEGE AND DUTIES OF PATRIOTISM.* 
 
 LET us waste no words in introduction or 
 preface. I am to speak to you of the Priv- 
 ilege and Duties of American Patriotism. 
 
 First the Privilege. Patriotism is love of 
 country. It is a privilege that we are capable 
 of such a sentiment. Self-love is the freezing- 
 point in the temperature of the world. As the 
 heart is kindled and ennobled it pours out feeling 
 and interest, first upon family and kindred, then 
 upon country, then upon humanity. The home, 
 the flag, the cross, these are the representatives 
 or symbols of the noblest and most sacred affec- 
 tions or treasures of feeling in human nature. 
 
 We sometimes read arguments by very strict 
 moralists which cast a little suspicion upon the 
 value of patriotism as a virtue, for the reason that 
 the law of love, unrestricted love, should be our 
 guide and inspiration. We must be cosmopolitan 
 by our sympathy, they prefer to say. Patriotism, 
 if it interferes with the wider spirit of humanity, is 
 
 * From an Address before the " Sumner Light Guard," No- 
 vember 1 8, 1862. 
 
3QO The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 sectionalism of the heart. We must not give up 
 to country " what is meant for mankind." 
 
 Such sentiments may be uttered in the interest 
 of Christian philanthropy, but they are not healthy. 
 The Divine method in evoking our noblest affec- 
 tions is always from particulars to generals. God 
 " hath set the solitary in families," and bound the 
 families into Communities, and organized commu- 
 nities into nations ; and he has ordained special 
 duties for each of these relationships, and inspired 
 affections to prompt the discharge of them^ and 
 to exalt the character. 
 
 The law of love is the principle of the spiritual 
 universe just as gravitation is the governing force 
 of space. It binds each particle of matter to 
 every other particle, but it attracts inversely as 
 the square of the distance, and thus becomes 
 practically a series of local or special forces, hold- 
 ing our feet perpetually to one globe, and allowing 
 only a general unity, which the mind appropriates 
 through science and meditation, with the kindred 
 but far-off spheres. The man that has most of 
 the sentiment of love will have the most intense 
 special affections. You cannot love the whole 
 world and nobody in particular. If you try that, 
 it will be true of you as of the miser who said, 
 " what I give is nothing to nobody." However 
 deep his baptism in general good-will, a man must 
 look with a thrill that nothing else can awaken, 
 into the face of the mother that bore him \ he 
 cannot cast off the ties that bind him to filial 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 391 
 
 responsibilities and a brother's devotion ; and 
 Providence has ordained that out of identity of 
 race, a common history, the same scenery, litera- 
 ture, laws, and aims, though in perfect harmony 
 with good-will to all men, the wider family 
 feeling, the distinctive virtue, patriotism, should 
 spring. If the ancient Roman could believe that 
 the yellow Tiber was the river dearest to Heaven ; 
 if the Englishman can see a grandeur in the 
 Thames which its size will not suggest ; if the Al- 
 pine storm-wind is a welcome home-song to the 
 Swiss mountaineer; if the Laplander believes that 
 his country is the best the sun shines upon ; if the 
 sight of one's own national flag in other lands will 
 at once awaken feelings that speed the blood and 
 melt the eyes ; if the poorest man will sometimes 
 cherish a proud consciousness of property in the 
 great deeds that glow upon his country's annals 
 and the monuments of its power, let us confess 
 that the heart of man, made for the Christian law, 
 was made also to contract a special friendship for 
 its native soil, its kindred stock, its ancestral 
 traditions, let us not fail to see that where the 
 sentiment of patriotism is not deep, a sacred 
 affection is absent, an essential element of virtue 
 is wanting, and religion barren of one prominent 
 witness of its sway. 
 
 But why argue in favor of patriotism as a 
 lofty virtue ? History refuses to countenance the 
 analytic ethics of spiritual dreamers. It pushes 
 into notice Leonidas, Tell, Cincinnatus, Camillus, 
 
392 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 Hampden, Winkelried, Scipio, Lafayette, Adams, 
 Bolivar, and Washington, in whom the sentiment 
 has become flesh, and gathered to itself the world's 
 affections and honors. It asks us, " What do you 
 say of these men ? These are among the brighter 
 jewels of my kingdom. Thousands of millions 
 fade away into the night in my realm, but these 
 souls shine as stars, with purer lustre as they re- 
 treat into the blue of time. Is not their line of 
 greatness as legitimate as that of poets, philoso- 
 phers, philanthropists, and priests ? " 
 
 Nay, the Bible is opened for us, to stimulate 
 and increase our love of country. Patriotism is 
 sanctioned and commended and illustrated there 
 by thrilling examples : by the great patriot- 
 prophet Moses, who, during all those wilderness- 
 years, bore the Hebrew people in his heart; by 
 Joshua, who sharpened his sword on the tables 
 of stone till its edge was keen as the righteous 
 wrath of Heaven and its flame fierce as a flash 
 from Sinai, as it opened a path through an idola- 
 trous land for the colonization of a worthier race 
 and a clean idea ; (O that there were enough of 
 that steel in America to-day to make a sword for 
 the leader of the Union armies!) by the great 
 statesman Samuel, to whom every Jew may point 
 with pride as the Hebrew Washington ; by David, 
 who, for the glory of his nation, wielded the hero's 
 sw6rd and tuned the poet's harp ; by the long line 
 of the fire-tongued prophets, whose hearts burned 
 for their country's redemption while they pro- 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 393 
 
 claimed the " higher law " ; by the lyric singers 
 of the exile, like him who chanted the lament, 
 which seems to gush from the very heart of patri- 
 otism, " How shall we sing the Lord's song in 
 a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let 
 
 my right hand forget her cunning Let my 
 
 tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer 
 not Jerusalem above my chief joy ! " 
 
 Yes, and when we pass higher up than these 
 worthies of the older inspiration, to Him the 
 highest name, Him from whom we have received 
 our deepest life, Him whose love embraced the 
 whole race in its scope, the eternal and impartial 
 Love made flesh, who pronounced the parable of 
 the Good Samaritan, and shed the warmth of that 
 spirit through his life into the frosty air of human 
 sentiment, do we not read that he felt more keenly 
 the alienation of his countrymen according to the 
 flesh than he felt the spear-point and the nails, 
 and paused over the beautiful city of David to 
 utter a lament whose burden swept away the pros- 
 pect of his own lowering destiny, "O Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem, .... how often would I have gathered 
 your children together, even as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
 not. Behold, your house is left unto you deso- 
 late." 
 
 Although the highest office of revelation is to 
 point to and prepare us for "a better country, even 
 a heavenly," no one can rightly read the pages 
 of the Bible without catching enthusiasm for his 
 
394 The Privilege and Ditties of Patriotism. 
 
 earthly country, the land of his fathers, the shelter 
 of his infancy, the hope of his children. 
 
 It is a privilege of our nature, hardly to be 
 measured, that we are capable of the emotion of 
 patriotism, that we can feel a nation's life in our 
 veins, rejoice in a nation's glory, suffer for a 
 nation's momentary shame, throb with a nation's 
 hope. It is as if each particle of matter that 
 belongs to a mountain, each crystal hidden in its 
 darkness, each grass-blade on its lower slopes, 
 each pebble amid its higher desolation, each 
 snow-flake of its cold and tilted fields, could be 
 conscious, all the time, of the whole bulk and 
 symmetry and majesty and splendor of the pile, 
 of how it glows at evening, of how it blazes at the 
 first touch of morning light, of its pride when it 
 overtops the storm, of the joy it awakens in hearts 
 that see in it the power and glory of the Creator. 
 It is as if each could exult in feeling I am part 
 of this organized majesty ; I am an element in 
 one flying buttress of it, or its firm-poised peak ; 
 I contribute to this frosty radiance ; I am enno- 
 bled by the joy it awakens in every beholder's 
 breast ! 
 
 Think of a man living in one of the illustrious 
 civilized communities of the world, and insensi- 
 ble to its history, honor, and future, say of 
 England ! Think of an intelligent inhabitant 
 of England so wrapped in selfishness that he 
 has no consciousness of the mighty roots of that 
 kingdom, nor of the toughness of its trunk, nor 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism . 395 
 
 of the spread of its gnarled boughs ! Runny- 
 mede and Agincourt are behind him, but he is 
 insensible to the civil triumph and the knightly 
 valor. All the literature that is crowned by 
 Bacon, Shakespeare, and Milton, the noblest this 
 earth ever produced from one national stock, 
 awakens in him no heart-beat of pride. He 
 reads of the sturdy blows in the great rebellion, 
 and of the gain to freedom by the later and more 
 quiet revolution, and it is no more to him than 
 if the record had been dropped from another 
 planet. The triumphs of English science over 
 nature, the hiss of her engines, the whirl of her 
 wheels, the roar of her factory drums, the crackle 
 of her furnaces, the beat of her hammers, the 
 vast and chronic toil that mines her treasures, 
 affect him with no wonder and arouse no exult- 
 ant thrill of partnership. And he sees nothing 
 and feels nothing that stirs his torpid blood in 
 the strokes and sweep of that energy, before 
 which the glory of Waterloo and Trafalgar is 
 dim, which has knit to the English will colonies 
 and empires within a century which number 
 nearly one fourth of the inhabitants of the globe. 
 The red flag of England hung out on all her 
 masts, from all her housetops, and from every 
 acre of her conquests and possessions, would 
 almost give this planet the color of Mars, if seen 
 through a telescope from a neighboring star. 
 What a privilege to be a conscious fibre of that 
 compacted force ! If I were an Englishman, I 
 
396 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 should be proud every hour of every day over my 
 heritage. I believe I should now and then imitate 
 the man who sat up all night to hate his brother- 
 in-law, and sit up all night to exult in my privi- 
 lege. And as an Englishman I should keep clear 
 of the pollution of sympathy with the American 
 rebellion. The man who is dead to such pride 
 ought not to be rated as a man. 
 
 And is it any less a privilege to be an Ameri- 
 can ? Suppose that the continent could turn to- 
 wards you to-morrow at sunrise, and show to 
 you the whole American area in the short hours 
 of the sun's advance from Eastport to the Pacific ! 
 You would see New England roll into light from 
 the green plumes of Aroostook to the silver stripe 
 of the Hudson ; westward thence over the Em- 
 pire State, and over the lakes, and over the sweet 
 valleys of Pennsylvania, and over the prairies, 
 the morning blush would run and would waken 
 all the line of the Mississippi ; from the frosts 
 where it rises, to the fervid waters in which it 
 pours, for three thousand miles it would be visi- 
 ble, fed by rivers that flow from every mile of 
 the Alleghany slope, and edged by the green 
 embroideries of the temperate and tropic zones ; 
 beyond this line another basin, too, the Missouri, 
 catching the morning, leads your eye along its 
 western slope till the Rocky Mountains burst 
 upon the vision, and yet do not bar it ; across 
 its passes we must follow, as the stubborn cour- 
 age of American pioneers has forced its way, till 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 397 
 
 again the Sierra and their silver veins are tinted 
 along the mighty bulwark with the break of day ; 
 and then over to the gold-fields of the western 
 slope, and 'the fatness of the California soil, and 
 the beautiful valleys of Oregon, and the stately 
 forests of Washington, the eye is drawn, as the 
 globe turns out of the night-shadow, and when 
 the Pacific waves are crested with radiance, you 
 have the one blending picture, nay, the reality, 
 of the American domain ! No such soil, so varied 
 by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by for- 
 est and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and 
 by opulent plains, yet all bound into unity of 
 configuration and bordered by both warm and 
 icy seas, no such domain was ever given to 
 one people. 
 
 And then suppose that you 'could see in a pic- 
 ture as vast and vivid the preparation for our 
 inheritance of this land : Columbus haunted by 
 his round idea and setting sail in a sloop to see 
 Europe sink behind him, while he was serene in 
 the faith of his dream ; the later navigators of 
 every prominent Christian race who explored the 
 upper coasts ; the Mayflower with her cargo of 
 sifted acorns from the hardy stock of British 
 puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know 
 not, that bore to Virginia the ancestors of Wash- 
 ington ; the clearing of the wilderness, and the 
 dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly 
 wisdom and Christian trust ; then the gradual in- 
 terblending of effort and interest and sympathy 
 
398 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 into one life, the congress of the whole Atlantic 
 slope to resist oppression upon one member, the 
 rally of every State around Washington and his 
 holy sword, and again the nobler rally around 
 him when he signed the Constitution, and after 
 that the organization of the farthest West with 
 North and South into one polity and communion ; 
 when this was finished, the tremendous energy of 
 free life, under the stimulus and with the aid 
 of advancing science, in increasing wealth, sub- 
 duing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying 
 fertile fields, and busy schools, and noble work- 
 shops, and churches hallowed by free-will offer- 
 ings of prayer, and happy homes, and domes 
 dedicated to the laws of states that rise by magic 
 from the haunts of the buffalo and deer, all in 
 less than a long lifetime; and if we could see 
 also how, in achieving this, the flag which repre- 
 sents all this history is dyed in traditions of 
 exploits, by land and sea, that have given heroes 
 to American annals whose names are potent to 
 conjure with, while the world's list of thinkers 
 in matter is crowded with the names of American 
 inventors, and the higher rolls of literary merit 
 are not empty of the title of our " representative 
 men " : if all that the past has done for us and 
 the present reveals could thus stand apparent in 
 one picture, and then if the promise of the future 
 to the children of our millions under our common 
 law, and with continental peace, could be caught 
 in one vast spectral exhibition, the wealth in 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 399 
 
 store, the power, the privilege, the freedom, the 
 learning, the expansive and varied and mighty 
 unity in fellowship, almost fulfilling the poets 
 dream of 
 
 " The Parliament of man, the federation of the world," 
 
 you would exclaim with exultation, *'I, too, am 
 an American ! " You would feel that patriotism, 
 next to your tie to the Divine Love, is the great- 
 est privilege of your life ; and you would devote 
 yourselves, out of inspiration and joy, to the obli- 
 gations of patriotism, that this land so spread, so 
 adorned, so colonized, so blessed, should be kept 
 forever against all the assaults of traitors, one 
 in polity, in spirit, and in aim ! 
 
 Gentlemen, this is what we ought to do, what 
 we should try to do ; we should seize by our 
 imagination the glory of our country, that our 
 patriotism may be a permanent and a lofty flame. 
 Patriotism is an imaginative sentiment. Imagi- 
 nation is essential to its vigor ; not imagination 
 which distorts facts, but which sweeps a vast field 
 of them and illumines it. It comprehends hills, 
 streams, plains, and valleys in a broad concep- 
 tion, and from traditions and institutions, from 
 the life of the past and the vigor and noble ten- 
 dencies of the present, it individualizes the des- 
 tiny and personifies the spirit of its land, and 
 then vows its vow to that. 
 
 It is of the very essence of true patriotism, 
 therefore, to be earnest and truthful, to scorn the 
 flatterer's tongue, and strive to keep its native 
 
4OO The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 land in harmony with the laws of national thrift 
 and power. It will tell a land of its faults, as a 
 friend will counsel a companion. It will speak 
 as honestly as the physician advises a patient. 
 And if occasion requires, an indignation will 
 flame out of its love like that which burst from 
 the lips of Moses when he returned from the 
 mountain and found the people to whom he had 
 revealed the austere Jehovah, and for whom he 
 would cheerfully have sacrificed his life, worship- 
 ping a calf. 
 
 We condense all the intimations of these last 
 thoughts in saying that true patriotism is pledged 
 to the idea which one's native country represents. 
 It does not accept and glory in its country merely 
 for what it is at present and has been in the past, 
 but for what it may be. Each nation has a rep- 
 resentative value. Each race that has appro- 
 priated a certain latitude which harmonizes with 
 its blood has the capacity to work out special 
 good results, and to reveal great truths in some 
 original forms. God designs that each country 
 shall bear a peculiar ideal physiognomy, and he 
 has set its geographical characteristics as a bony 
 skeleton, and breathed into it a free life spirit, 
 which, if loyal to the intention, will keep the 
 blood in health, infuse vigor into every limb, give 
 symmetry to the form, and carry the flush of a pure 
 and distinct expression to the countenance. It 
 is the patriot's office to study the laws of public 
 growth and energy, and to strive with enthusiastic 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 40 1 
 
 love to guard against every disease that would 
 cripple the frame, that he may prevent the lin- 
 eaments of vice and brutality from degrading 
 the face which God would have radiant with truth, 
 genius, and purity. 
 
 He was the best patriot of ancient Greece who 
 had the widest and wisest conception of the ca- 
 pacities and genius of Greece, and labored to paint 
 that ideal winningly before the national mind, and 
 to direct the flame of national aspiration, fanned 
 by heroic memories, up to the noblest possibilities 
 of Grecian endeavor. The truest patriot of Eng- 
 land would be the man whose mind should see 
 in the English genius and geography what that 
 nation could do naturally and best for humanity, 
 and, seizing the traditional elements that are in 
 harmony with that possibility, should use them to 
 enliven his own sympathies, and to quicken the 
 nation's energy. We might say the same of Rus- 
 sia and of Italy. The forward look is essential 
 to patriotism. 
 
 And how much more emphatically and impres- 
 sively true is this when we bring our own country 
 into the foreground ! We have been placed on 
 our domain for the sake of a hope. What we 
 have done, and what has been done for us, is only 
 preparation, the outline-sketching of a picture to 
 be filled with color and life in the next three cen- 
 turies. Shall the sketch be blurred and the 
 canvas be torn in two ? That is what we are to 
 decide in these bitter and bloody clays. 
 
4O2 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 Our struggle now is to keep the country from 
 falling away from the idea which every great pa- 
 triot has recognized as the purpose towards which 
 our history, from the first, has been moving. God 
 devised the scheme for us of one republic. He 
 planted the further slope of the Alleghanies at first 
 with Saxon men ; he has striped the Pacific coast 
 with the energy of their descendants, protecting 
 thus both avenues of entrance to our domain 
 against European intrusion j but the great wave 
 of population he has rolled across the Allegha- 
 nies into the central basin. That is the seat of 
 the American polity. And an imperial river runs 
 through it to embarrass, and to shame, and to 
 balk all plans of rupture. The Mississippi bed 
 was laid by the Almighty as the keel of the Amer- 
 ican ship, and the channel of every stream that 
 pours into it is one of its ribs. We have just 
 covered the mighty frame with planking, and have 
 divided the hull into State compartments. And 
 the rebels say, " Break the ship in two." They 
 scream, " We have a right to, on the ground of the 
 sovereignty of the compartments, and the prin- 
 ciples of the Declaration of Independence ; we 
 have a right to, and we will ! " The loyal heart 
 of the nation answers, "We will knock out all 
 your Gulf compartments and shiver your sovereign 
 bulkheads, built of ebony, to pieces, and leave you 
 one empty territory again, before you shall break 
 the keel." This is the right answer. We must 
 do it, not only for our own safety, but to preserve 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 403 
 
 the idea which the nation has been called to fulfil, 
 and to which patriotism is called and bound to 
 be loyal. Ay, even if there were one paragraph 
 or line in the Declaration of Independence that 
 breathed or hinted a sanction of the rebellion ! 
 Geology is older than the pen of Jefferson ; the 
 continent is broader than the Continental Con- 
 gress ; and they must go to the foundations to 
 learn their statesmanship. 
 
 The Procrustes bed of American patriotism is 
 the bed of the Mississippi, and every theory of 
 national life and every plan for the future must 
 be stretched on that ; and woe to its wretched 
 bones and sockets if it naturally reaches but half- 
 way ! 
 
 Providence made the country, too, when the 
 immense basin should be filled with its fitting 
 millions, to show the world the beauty and econ- 
 omy of continental peace. It is a destiny rad- 
 ically different from that of Europe, with its four 
 millions of armed men, that has been indicated for 
 us. By the interplay of widely different products 
 into one prosperity cotton and cattle, tobacco 
 and corn, metals and manufactures, shipyards 
 and banking-rooms, forests and fields, and 
 all under one law, and all enjoying local liberty, 
 sufficient centralization, but the mildest pressure 
 on the subordinate districts and the personal will 
 Providence designed to bless us with immense 
 prosperity, to develop an energy unseen before 
 on this globe, and to teach the nations a lesson 
 
404 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 which would draw them into universal fraternity 
 and peace. 
 
 The rebels have tried to frustrate this hope and 
 scheme. Patriotism, which discerns the idea to 
 which the nation is thus called, arms to prevent 
 its defeat. They say that there shall not be such 
 unified prosperity and all-embracing peace for the 
 future hundreds of millions on our domain. We 
 say that there shall. And we arm to enforce our 
 vision. 
 
 But is not that a strange way to establish peace, 
 by fighting on such a scale as the republic now 
 witnesses ? Is it not a novel method to labor for 
 economy of administration and expense in gov- 
 ernment by a war which will fetter the nation with 
 such a debt ? We answer, the rebellion gave the 
 challenge, and now victory at any cost is the only 
 economy. Carnage, if they will it, is the only 
 path to peace. 
 
 " For our own good 
 
 All causes shall give way ; we are in blood 
 Stept in so far, that, should we wade no more, 
 Returning were as tedious as go o'er." 
 
 Yes, if we return, all our blood and treasure are 
 wasted. The peace we gain by victory is for all 
 the future, and for uncounted millions. The debt 
 we incur by three years' fighting will be noth- 
 ing compared with the new energy and security 
 aroused, nothing to the next hundred years. And 
 it will establish the idea to which the land was 
 dedicated. 
 
 But do you say that if we conquer the rebel- 
 
The Privilege arid Duties of Patriotism. 40$ 
 
 lious area, we must bold it in subjection by a stand- 
 ing army which will be very costly, and is contrary 
 to the American idea ? Very well, if we do not 
 conquer, if the rebels gain a strong and arrogant 
 independence, we must keep up an immense stand- 
 ing army. It would cost more to watch them than 
 it will to hold them. For we should be obliged 
 in watching them to watch Europe too. We pre- 
 fer to pay money to hold rather than to watch ; 
 and if we pay our money I suppose we can take 
 our choice. Patriotism says, and says it in the 
 interest of peace and economy and final frater- 
 nity, " Fight and conquer even at the risk of 
 holding them for a generation under the yoke." 
 Fight, though, on such a scale, that there will be 
 no need of holding them ; that they will gladly 
 submit again to the rule which makes the repub- 
 lic one, and blesses all portions with protection 
 and with bounty. Fight till they shall know that 
 they kick against fate and the resistless laws of 
 the world ! Patriotism calls on the Cabinet and 
 the head of the nation and the generals who give 
 tone to the campaign to forget the customs and 
 interests of peace till we shall gain it by the sub- 
 mission of the rebels and the shredding of their 
 last banner into threads. 
 
 The stake is worth this style of fighting. For 
 it is the peace of our grandchildren, the inter- 
 blended prosperity of the continent, the economy 
 of centuries, the abolition of standing armies for 
 a thousand years, the indefinite postponement of 
 
406 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 war, the idea of America, that we are to bend up 
 thus " each corporal agent " to secure. Fight 
 with hose-pipes and lavender-water if you want 
 perpetual hatred and indefinite slaughter ; fight 
 with sheets of schrapnel and red-hot shot if you 
 want to see the speedy dawn again of American 
 peace and good-will! 
 
 And Providence, still further, dedicated this 
 land as the better home for labor, and to a polity 
 that honors and blesses labor. Not equal rights, 
 so much as new honor to the workman, is the 
 idea which our polity is divinely called to embla- 
 zon and to guard. For this and to help this 
 our immense fields were shrouded in darkness 
 until a race should be ready who would bring a 
 free ballot-box with them, and an untitled church, 
 and a free Bible, and the seed of public schools, 
 and a spirit that should shake at last the " glit- 
 tering generalities " of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence into literature, like dew-drops in the 
 morning from a tree. Into whatever movement 
 or conceptions the doctrine of the sacredness of 
 man and the worth of labor flows, there patriotism 
 discerns the proper march of the tide of American 
 thought and spirit. Whatever denies and cramps 
 and opposes, that is hostile to the call and des- 
 tiny of the younger continent. For whatever in 
 America blasphemes the rights of labor and bars 
 the education of the workman, smites the soil to 
 that extent with blight, degrades literature, drains 
 public spirit, chains the wheel of progress, insults 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 407 
 
 the New Testament, and flouts the nobler tradi- 
 tions of the land. 
 
 I need not tell you that the rebellion is guilty 
 of this too. It sins against the Mississippi ; it 
 sins against the coast line ; it sins against the 
 ballot-box j it sins against oaths of allegiance ; it 
 sins against public and beneficent peace ; and 
 it sins, worse than all, against the corner-stone of 
 American progress and history and hope, the 
 worth of the laborer, the rights of man. It 
 strikes for barbarism against civilization. We 
 have taken the carbon of labor from Europe, and 
 tried to promote it into the diamond. Under the 
 true American system a journeyman machinist in 
 his striped shirt becomes General Nathaniel P. 
 Banks. The rebel idea is hostile to all this 
 crystallization. Keep all labor in its grimy and 
 carbon state, they say; and so they choose it 
 and perpetuate it of a color that will fulfil their 
 arrogant conception. 
 
 Patriotism calls us to brace our sinews against 
 this hideous apostasy, and to see that the land is 
 not severed by it. Our unity gone, our economi- 
 cal peace broken up, standing armies imposed on 
 us forever, European intrigue and antagonism our 
 law, and all for the doctrine that labor may 
 rightfully be trodden into the mire, what a 
 close of the book of our national story ! What 
 a robbery of the crown from our once proud 
 forehead ! 
 
 Gentlemen, it is a privilege that we can feel 
 
408 The Privilege and Ditties of Patriotism. 
 
 a patriotism which sets our present struggle in 
 such relations, and coolly sees that our country 
 has been dedicated to a mission and a service 
 so vast and eminent. The duties correspond to 
 the privilege. One great duty is to feel the privi- 
 lege more keenly, and by the inspiration of it 
 stand strong for the country's unity. 
 
 Especially against any intimation from foreign 
 powers of intervention to stop our war and break 
 our integrity. If France tries it, we will arm as 
 France armed against the intervention of Europe 
 in her great Revolution, and hurled the circling 
 armies back ! If England tries it, we will say to 
 her as Macaulay said, with admirable vigor and 
 eloquence in the House of Commons, when the 
 secession of Ireland was threatened : " The Re- 
 peal of the Union we regard as fatal to the 
 empire, and we never will consent to it ; never, 
 though the country should be surrounded by dan- 
 gers as great as those which threatened her when 
 her American Colonies, and France, and Spain, 
 and Holland were leagued against her, and when 
 the armed neutrality of the Baltic disputed her 
 maritime rights ; never, though another Bona- 
 parte should pitch his camp in sight of Dover 
 Castle ; never, till all has been staked and lost ; 
 never, till the four quarters of the world have 
 been convulsed by the last struggle of the great 
 English people for their place among the nations." 
 It was an island, utterly disjoined from England, 
 and separated more widely by blood and belief 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 409 
 
 than by the chafing sea, of whose threatened 
 secession these words were spoken by the most 
 widely read English orator of this generation. 
 How much more fitly and honorably can we urge 
 the spirit of them if England should attempt to 
 break our hold upon integral portions of our 
 empire, the very courses of our rivers, the very 
 land for which we have paid our millions and our 
 blood ! Let the spirit sweep through our loyal 
 millions which Macaulay thus uttered; let us 
 become such a battery that fervor and determina- 
 tion of that temperature shall leap out whenever 
 the thought of foreign intervention is breathed. 
 Then Europe will be careful enough how she 
 touches the awful galvanic pile. Patriotism of 
 that temper will be a peace-preserver. 
 
 And another duty of patriotism now is to call 
 for the declaration of a new policy in the war. 
 
 Many of you have heard of the eloquent sailor- 
 preacher of Boston, Father Taylor. No man is 
 more patriotic ; no man is more powerful in 
 prayer. A few weeks ago he prayed thus for 
 our excellent Chief Magistrate in Boston : (those 
 of you who have heard him will conceive with 
 what vitality and emphasis he shot out the adjec- 
 tives :) " O Lord, guide our dear President, our 
 Abraham, the friend of God like old Abraham ! 
 Save him from those wriggling, intriguing, politic, 
 piercing, slimy, boring keel-worms ; don't let them 
 go through the sheathing of his integrity ! " Now 
 we ought to begin to beseech Abraham, and to 
 18 
 
4 1 o The Privilege and Ditties of Patriotism. 
 
 pray Heaven in his behalf and ours, that the 
 " keel-worms " shall not, through his delay or 
 scruples, bore through the sheathing of the na- 
 tion's integrity. 
 
 The time has come when we must look more 
 at the actual Constitution of the nation than at 
 the paper constitution through which the rebel 
 chiefs have struck their daggers. The time has 
 come when it should be said and known and pro- 
 claimed with the trumpet of the President, that 
 we strike to exterminate the power of the slave- 
 aristocracy of the rebel region. 
 
 The slave-oligarchy of the rebel States, if the 
 war is to end in our favor, must be shorn of all 
 their power for mischief. Otherwise the war, 
 though we conquer, does not end in our favor. 
 By the necessity of their position they stand thus 
 hostile. Hostility to the American spirit steams 
 like an intellectual malaria from their plantations. 
 They breathe it invisibly and perforce. They, 
 are enemies by fate to all that as loyal Americans 
 we honor, and all that we are fighting to save. 
 
 In the now rebellious States there are less than 
 three hundred thousand of them. We must crush 
 their power. Any other issue to the war is simply 
 chopping off the rattles from the snake instead of 
 drawing the fangs. And to crush their power, we 
 must strike the fetters from their bondmen. And 
 we must say soon that our purpose is nothing less 
 than this, that we shall hold on until we accom- 
 plish this. 
 
The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 41 1 
 
 Some would do this as a crusade in favor of 
 the freedom of the black race. I would do it as 
 a wise and statesmanlike blow for the permanent 
 interest of all the white race in our empire, and 
 to insure the unity and peace of the Continent 
 for centuries. Thus we make America homoge- 
 neous Thus we give the war a principle. 
 
 Thus we strike at the root of our differences, our 
 dangers, our sorrows, and our mighty wrong. 
 The rebel aristocracy have staked their power 
 upon this challenge. If they fail they have lost, 
 and we must see that they both fail and lose 
 
 O that the President would soon speak that 
 electric sentence, inspiration to the loyal North, 
 doom to the traitorous aristocracy whose cup of 
 guilt is full ! Let him say that it is a war of 
 mass against class, of America against feudalism, 
 of the schoolmaster against the slave-master, of 
 workmen against the barons, of the ballot-box 
 against the barracoon. This is what the struggle 
 means. Proclaim it so, and what a light breaks 
 through our leaden sky ! The war-wave rolls then 
 with the impetus and weight of an idea. 
 
 " The sword ! a name of dread ! yet when 
 Upon the freeman's thigh 't is bound, 
 While for his altar and his hearth, 
 While for the land that gave him birth, 
 The war-drums roll, the trumpets sound, 
 How sacred is it then ! 
 
 " Whenever for the truth and right 
 It flashes in the van of fight, 
 Whether in some wild mountain pass, 
 
4 1 2 The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism. 
 
 % 
 
 As that where fell Leonidas ; 
 
 Or on some sterile plain and stern, 
 
 A Marston or a Bannockburn ; 
 
 Or mid fierce crags and bursting rills, 
 
 The Switzer's Alps, gray Tyrol's hills; 
 
 Or, as when sunk the Armada's pride, 
 
 It gleams al5bve the stormy tide ; 
 
 Still, still, whene'er the battle's word 
 
 Is Liberty, when men do stand 
 
 For Justice and their native land, 
 
 Then Heaven bless the sword ! 
 
 Yes, gentlemen, then Heaven will bless the 
 sword! .... 
 
 1862. 
 
XII. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL DUTIES OF STUDENTS IN THEIR 
 ACADEMIC YEARS.* 
 
 I 
 
 CONGRATULATE you all, students, officers 
 of this college, and patrons and friends of it, 
 upon this anniversary, upon the excellence of the 
 exercises to which we have listened, and upon the 
 good auspices for the future. 
 
 None of you, young men, are Alumni yet. The 
 highest class here has one year more of academic 
 opportunity before assuming the responsibility of 
 active life, or turning to the narrower lines of an 
 exclusive professional training. Many of you look 
 forward to several years of privilege in the quiet 
 absorption of preliminary knowledge. Years of 
 opportunity and privilege, I say. Would that you 
 might account them as precious as those who are 
 engaged in the wear and waste of professional toil 
 know and feel that they are ! 
 
 The preparatory school and the college lay the 
 basis of the power and the satisfaction with which, 
 in after years, the work of life will be discharged. 
 Young men do not go to college to complete their 
 
 * An address before the students of Oakland College, California, 
 June. 4, 1862. 
 
414 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 education, but to draw the ground-plan of it, and 
 to lay the under courses of a future building deep 
 and firm. To use the words of St. Paul in a secu- 
 lar sense, they are then "laying up for themselves 
 a good foundation against the time to come." 
 And the years are profitably used just to the 
 extent that habits of mental industry are formed, 
 loyalty to truth confirmed, and the principles 
 which underlie and support knowledge and cul- 
 ture are laid and cemented imperishably by the 
 masonry of application. 
 
 Nobody can become wise, in the best college 
 on this planet, between twelve and twenty. But 
 a youth of capacious powers can do more in those 
 years towards enlarging the resources and enno- 
 bling the proportions of his mental character and 
 influence, than in 4fcy twice eight years after he 
 shall have taken up the tasks of life. It is no 
 time to look to the lower tiers of the edifice after 
 the rafters are up and the roof is on. It is no 
 time to be attending to a crack in the basement, 
 or a leaning wall, after the builder has moved 
 into the house with his family. The best he can 
 do is to move out of it and buy another, or spend 
 largely to have it put in friendship with math- 
 ematics and gravitation. But a student cannot 
 remove from his mental house, in his busy years, 
 although he may see that the ground-tier of stone 
 is not based right, and that the walls are not 
 thick enough for the weight they must bear. 
 
 And then the misery that comes ! To be 
 
in their Academic Years. 415 
 
 obliged to apply principles and not to be sure 
 of them ! To feel the need of fundamental in- 
 struction, which might once have been thoroughly 
 acquired, while the mind must act, and in respon- 
 sible callings too, as though it felt secure ! To be 
 under the necessity of being student and worker, 
 journeyman and artist, in the same hour, without 
 the satisfactions that belong to either branch of 
 toil, and with the burden of practical, and perhaps 
 very important duty upon the hands and con- 
 science, this is a species of refined and exquisite 
 agony which many a professional man in our day 
 experiences, and which is the penalty either of an 
 enforced adoption of the duties of a profession 
 without ample preparation, or of wasted academic 
 hours. 
 
 Do not be so eager, young men, to advance in 
 knowledge, as to become masters of elementary 
 knowledge, so that it can never slip from your 
 grasp, but becomes incorporated with your mental 
 substance. There is no intellectual wretchedness 
 more keen, as I have said, than conscious inade- 
 quacy of the mental furniture to the mental duties, 
 especially in the grasp of primal truths. And 
 there is no intellectual pleasure more sweet than 
 the assurance, tested in arduous labor, of being 
 grounded in truth, of finding that you have built 
 your house upon a rock, than the repose that 
 comes when you know something positively and 
 know that you know it, and feel the mastery of a 
 practical field because of that consciousness. 
 
41 6 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 This pain or reward a student in the seclusion 
 of college may store up for himself. If he is to be 
 called to any prominent professional position, he 
 is laying it up by his sloth or his diligence. Be 
 more careful for elements and principles than for 
 results, for the multum than the rnulta. Think 
 less of harvests than of the supply and temper 
 of reaping-instruments and the knowledge of the 
 composition of the soil. In English composition 
 do not try to write something as imaginative as 
 Burke or as sinewy as Webster, ten chances to 
 one you will not succeed in the attempt, but 
 study as thoroughly as you can the structure and 
 forces of the English tongue, the powers of words, 
 their shades of distinction, their relative purity 
 and excellence in the immense scale of our com- 
 posite and wonderful language. This is the proper 
 employment of the years of training. If you are 
 ever to rival Burke or Ruskin, Macaulay or Web- 
 ster, it will be by dissolving and digesting the 
 English dictionary as they did. And if you should 
 never rival either of them, you will fit yourself to 
 express your thought, whatever its grade may be, 
 in a pure and scholarly way, and you will not be 
 obliged to begin to learn the principles of language 
 when you need to use it. 
 
 In mathematics, do not be afraid of learning 
 Euclid too thoroughly, or of wielding too easily 
 the formulae that lead towards the adytum of the 
 Calculus. In chemistry, or botany, or geology, 
 or physiology, keep your eye on the ground-plan 
 
in their Academic Years. 417 
 
 of each science, and care for the outline more than 
 the filling up. You can fill up easily in odd hours 
 in after years, if you are not to pursue science as 
 a devotee ; but no odd hours will clear up for 
 you the basis and scope of each science as you 
 can master it in college. And if you are never 
 to study geology minutely, let me beseech you to 
 learn enough of it to prevent you from saying 
 " a strata," which is so common a mistake, even 
 among intelligent people in our State. We can- 
 not make the article " a " plural even by the ut- 
 most exaggeration which is sometimes attributed 
 to all Californians in their dealing with truth ; we 
 cannot make strata singular unless we fuse the 
 crust of the earth into " conglomerate " in a most 
 ungeological way. And therefore we had better 
 refrain from the combination, unless we are will- 
 ing to speak of " an oxen " or " a teeth." 
 
 In the study of history, too, the most practical 
 use of the academic years is to become acquainted 
 with the skeleton facts and the great articulations 
 of national experience, and to master them thor- 
 oughly, rather than to seek wide information by 
 reading on a narrower scale. The first is basis- 
 knowledge, which must be gained by drilling the 
 memory when the mind is undistracted by practi- 
 cal cares ; and when it is gained, all after reading 
 readily takes its place as part of a rich organism 
 of truths. 
 
 Let me apply the same principle to the classic 
 languages. In American colleges, as in the Euro- 
 18* 
 
41 8 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 pean system, the study of classic literature takes 
 the most honored rank in the scheme of scholarly 
 training. Yet how many graduated students, in 
 proportion to the whole number, could read, ten 
 years after leaving college, a page of yEschylus 
 easily, an ode of Catullus, or a satire of Horace? 
 It may be of very little consequence to a man 
 in the press of American life that he can meet 
 such a test, but his failure throws an unpleasant 
 light back upon the economy of his time in the 
 years of training. If it is worth while to spend 
 so much time on Latin and Greek between ten 
 and twenty, it is worth while to spend it in such 
 a way that the results cannot be wiped out by the 
 ten years of active life next succeeding the college 
 commencement. The true scholarly object is not 
 to read a few pages more of this classic author or 
 that, in the junior and senior years, but to con- 
 quer the Latin and Greek tongues by exploring 
 the nooks in which difficulties hide, by mastery 
 of exceptions, by exercise in synonymes, by faith- 
 ful study of measure, by appreciation of niceties 
 of construction and phrase. It lies with students 
 to do this, by their persistent devotion to the 
 groundwork of these noble languages in their 
 groundwork years. They can lay in the sub- 
 structure of memory the grammar of the classic 
 tongues and enough of their vocabulary by the 
 time of leaving college, if they study wisely and 
 with systemized will, so that they shall never lose 
 the power of receiving delight from the elegant 
 
in their Academic Years. 419 
 
 majesty of Virgil, or of being lifted up with con- 
 scious joy on the ground-swell of Cicero's philo- 
 sophic eloquence, or of feeling upon any page of 
 his printed triumphs the momentum and force 
 of the furious logic of Demosthenes. I should 
 not care to live over again the last twenty years 
 of my life ; but I should consider it an unspeaka- 
 ble boon to be able, with my present conviction 
 of their importance, to re-live the season of train- 
 ing between ten and seventeen. I am sure that 
 by using to the full the opportunities of that period 
 I could easily have doubled the productiveness, 
 worth, and intellectual satisfaction of the twenty 
 years of active life that have been allotted to me. 
 
 Do not fail, then, young men, to use carefully 
 the months, the days, the hours, in which as yet 
 you are secluded from all cares but those of til- 
 lage. Do not be in a hurry to reach responsi- 
 bility. Strive to be furnished for it. And in 
 every line of inquiry that you open, be eager for 
 the facts that belong to the substructure, rather 
 than for those that belong to the finish of culture. 
 The deeper you go now into principles, the higher 
 you will rise in results in the years to come, when 
 the bulk of your powers must be pledged to work, 
 and only the uncertain leisure can be devoted to 
 further acquisition. 
 
 Another point of which I would speak, and in 
 the light of which the college years are critical, 
 is the choice of occupation. For ordinary labor 
 there is a law of demand and supply which the 
 
420 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 political economists interpret to us. The coarser 
 necessities of a community determine how, during 
 a period of five years, the laboring force of a state 
 shall be distributed into bridge-builders, miners, 
 carpenters, blacksmiths, masons ; and without 
 much trouble the general force can be turned 
 over from one department to another. But in 
 the higher or finer domains of industry the ten- 
 dency of the individual is to be consulted. The 
 destiny is seated within, not without. In the 
 selection of your life-work follow your bent. 
 
 How wonderful and how beautiful is the secret 
 working of Providence by which intelligent power is 
 diversified into ten thousand varieties and special- 
 ties, men of equal intellectual energy and altitude 
 being so marked for different lines and services 
 that they are infants if taken out of their track 
 and fastened to another style of task ! The laws 
 of society are wiser than the wisest laws that can 
 issue from human reflection. The struggle of the 
 race is to throw off the hampers of human igno- 
 rance and quackery, that the inwrought forces of 
 society may have free play. Then we get order, 
 symmetry, freedom. In the development of civili- 
 zation there would be an immense stride towards 
 happiness, and the establishment of public sanity, 
 if everybody could follow the bent of his nature, 
 except the bent for wickedness, which, in an Or- 
 thodox Church and in this presence, I am not 
 going to say is weak. If from birth the leanings 
 of the nature could be known, and education 
 
in their Academic Years. 421 
 
 could be applied to it, so that at manhood and 
 womanhood each soul could find itself in its own 
 place, the Fourier dream of attractive industry 
 would not be so wild, the millennium would receive 
 a push hitherward, and Dr. Gumming might fix 
 his dates with less fear of the elasticity of pro- 
 phetic arithmetic. 
 
 Students ought to revere this stirring of Provi- 
 dence within, and recognize the peculiar talent 
 as the call. Inclinations are to be searched and 
 scrutinized and weighed, perhaps utterly disre- 
 garded. Aptitudes are to be respected and 
 obeyed. If you are by direction a mathematician, 
 find a calling where your prime mental faculty 
 will be called prominently into play. If you are 
 an artist, not by desire simply to handle a brush, 
 but by competence and by the chronic passion to 
 express thought in form and color, do not be 
 forced into law or medicine. Break your way by 
 obstinate denials and sacrifices through the thorn- 
 iest social chapparal, although it take you years 
 to do it, that you may get into the path where 
 your instincts will be like the wings of Mercury to 
 your feet. 
 
 What losses of force, what raggedness of ser- 
 vice, what wretchedness of heart, have resulted 
 from maladjustment of powers to stations, 
 blacksmiths in pulpits, preachers in counting- 
 rooms, artists in the rough holding trowels, arti- 
 sans disguised as architects, admirable subjects 
 for the Inebriate Home wearing shoulder-straps 
 
422 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 and stars, thieves spelling their titles in three 
 syllables, " Contractors," and traders appearing 
 as politicians, till statesmanship means, " How 
 will you swop ? " 
 
 Think what a change in the fortunes of the 
 race if Columbus had not been able to get aboard 
 his sloop ; if Bacon had been kept in politics so 
 exclusively that he had not written the " Novum 
 Organum " ; if Newton had not happened to hear 
 of a new measurement of the earth's radius, and 
 of a degree of latitude, which was the occasion of 
 the final demonstration of the force and law of 
 gravity ; if Milton had not found his fit setting 
 in English history; if Watt had been placed in 
 circumstances that would have quenched his in- 
 tellectual enthusiasm. Artemus Ward tells us 
 that Shakespeare would have been entirely unfit 
 to be a reporter of a New York newspaper, be- 
 cause he had not imagination and fancy enough. 
 How fortunate, therefore, that he was drawn to 
 and held in a sphere where his more limited sup- 
 ply attracted the attention of the world ! 
 
 Every student is bound to honor the law that 
 the talent is the divine commission, and then to 
 fit his own talent to the field he enters, so that he 
 shall extend the bounds of light in his depart- 
 ment. Subdivision is the condition of intellectual 
 eminence and solid reputation, and of the advance 
 of science. If you go into law, or medicine, or 
 theology, or any avenue of physical research, or 
 become a student in literature, select, besides the 
 
in their Academic Years. 423 
 
 general practical duties of your calling, one narrow 
 district or vein of the great treasury of truth in 
 your department, and work in that till you master 
 all that has been done in it, and then try to push 
 the line of darkness a little further out. 
 
 Every intellect is forced now to be a parasite 
 of some branch, leaf, organ of the mighty struc- 
 ture of universal truth. Concentrate power upon 
 one line of your profession, one narrow line, and 
 you shall win mental satisfaction to fill a portion 
 of every day with sweetness, and shall find your 
 study advancing you to a clear and powerful 
 knowledge of the whole domain into whose larger 
 paths your chosen and tiny district opens by mod- 
 est and delightful aisles. 
 
 Another duty of students in their preparatory 
 years is to form the habit of intellectual respect 
 and hospitality. 
 
 The world of truth is immense, the mind of 
 man is fragmentary, and the heart of man is nar- 
 row. When we get harnessed into the toils and 
 conflicting interests of practical life, truth does 
 not have a fair chance at our hands. We have 
 taken sides. We are soon organized by friend- 
 ships and by customs into the partial antagonism 
 of movements, schools, and creeds. We cannot 
 devote ourselves to the culture of broad sympa- 
 thies, but must act where the very channels of 
 action, the only channels through which we can 
 do efficient service, are barriers of division, and 
 tend to alienate sympathies, and to narrow the 
 mental vision. 
 
424 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 A man who has been devoted for years to one 
 theory in a science, and whose fame and inter- 
 ests are involved in its security, is not in the free 
 condition to give the kind of welcome to a rival 
 hypothesis which it has a right to claim. All it 
 asks is severe, unprejudiced logic. But the logic 
 which will be applied by the' famous representa- 
 tive of a theory that will be displaced by it, can 
 hardly be unprejudiced, however sure it may be 
 to prove sufficiently severe. .The homoeopath 
 and allopath will hardly do justice to each other's 
 philosophy of medicine when each is winning 
 patients from the other in the fluctuations of a 
 city experience. It is only clergymen who are 
 always clear of partisanship, and able to look 
 at competing doctrines through an achromatic 
 lens! 
 
 Providence made us to be workers ; made us to 
 choose sides, and forbids us to be perpetual in- 
 quirers, always pampering an intellectual charity 
 which restrains us from saying things positive, and 
 from striking, now and then, hard blows. Still, 
 mental tolerance is one of the chief graces and 
 glories of character, and the time to lay the sub- 
 structure of it is in the studious years, before we 
 become pledged to the duties and interests that 
 exercise the will, and indispose the mind to turn- 
 ing new pages in the book of truth. Youth is the 
 time for wide views, and to fix the habit of intel- 
 lectual respect founded on the knowledge of the 
 breadth of the field of truth and speculation. 
 
in their Academic Years. 425 
 
 In our unfettered studious years we see that, in 
 spite of all that Plato taught and wrote, Aristotle 
 had an immense deal to say for himself, that 
 stoicism kept rising from repeated rebuffs, that 
 materialism and idealism renew in every age their 
 desperate contests through consummate athletes, 
 and that the shores of history are littered with the 
 wrecks of systems which once pretended to ac- 
 count for nature, and claimed to be able to rule 
 human thought forever. The student should not 
 learn from this that he must not be a party man. 
 He must be. He will never be able to settle and 
 harmonize what millions of minds and a score of 
 centuries have not reduced to consistent sym- 
 metry. But he must learn not to be a partisan, 
 and to keep clean of the infection of intellectual 
 contempt towards thinkers and systems that have 
 a long lineage. 
 
 God has diversified the world of souls into 
 various classes of temperament ; he has made 
 no mind competent to manage and harmonize 
 the profoundest mysteries of moral and spiritual 
 life ; and he has disposed certain classes of souls 
 by their temperament to turn in certain directions 
 of the spiritual universe for their nutriment, that 
 many groups may illustrate by their character the 
 riches of the mighty realm. 
 
 Conservatives have a right to exist, as the bark 
 and trunk of an oak have no apology to offer 
 for themselves. The tree needs muscle and 
 weight. Advance thinkers have a call to exist, 
 
426 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 for the tree needs leaves and expansion. Gravi- 
 tation and opposition to gravitation are equal 
 requisites of tree-truth. Let the fibres settle the 
 philosophy of the business and its contradiction 
 among themselves, if they can. They are called 
 to choose sides, but they will be wise if they 
 recognize the mystery in their organism, and 
 work with a feeling of common wonder and 
 mutual toleration. 
 
 Take a High Churchman, an earnest Metho- 
 dist, a devoted Quaker, and excite the religious 
 sentiment in them to fervor. The Churchman 
 drops on his knees before the printed prayer of 
 St. Chrysostom ; the Methodist will ache if he 
 cannot cry out, not from Chrysostom, but from the 
 sacred tumult in his private breast ; the Quaker 
 is quiet as the mountain lake at midnight reflect- 
 ing the calm of the quivering stars. Are their 
 intellects made to agree, when their souls are 
 thus formed to take different hues, and live in 
 different airs of sentiment ? No religious philos- 
 ophy is ample that does not justify the ritualism, 
 the hallelujah, and the silence. Nobody was 
 made to live on error, but living on a part of the 
 truth is not living on error, any more than the 
 persistent redness of the rose and the chronic 
 whiteness of the lily prove that one or the other 
 of them rejects the sun. Apostolical succession ! 
 Yes, but there were twelve Apostles with differ- 
 ent types of grace expressed in their spiritual 
 organization \ and then Paul comes in to make 
 
in their Academic Years. 427 
 
 a generous dozen ; and each church can have an 
 apostolical succession of its own. 
 
 We hear of the five points of Calvinism. Do 
 not fear that I am going to attack them, under 
 the delusion that it is Sunday and that I am in 
 my own church. If I were there I should not. 
 Brethren, you claim too little. I believe that 
 Calvinism has more than five points. It has as 
 many as one hundred and eighty ; that is the 
 number of degrees in half a circle, is n't it ? And 
 I believe that its philosophic roots run down to 
 the foundations of intellectual and spiritual truth. 
 But truth, like the earth, is a globe ; and the foun- 
 dation is the centre ; and Arminius has another 
 one hundred and eighty degrees and he comes 
 down to the centre too ; and Swedenborg gets 
 there also ; and I have a suspicion that Channing 
 once sank his shaft as far. A score of sects on 
 some lines get down to the centre, and there is 
 room enough there for all the shafts, and power 
 enough there to hold all the systems firm. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell, a name to be mentioned nowhere 
 but with the heartiest respect, and with peculiar 
 reverence and affection before this college, once 
 said that he could sign as many creeds as might 
 be offered to him, since words are so elastic and 
 truth so comprehensive. Let us thank Heaven 
 for the Doctor and the vigor of his mental diges- 
 tion, and be stimulated by his words to a nobler 
 temper than contemptuous dogmatism. And as 
 students^ in the years of inquiry, before the feet 
 
428 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 are fettered and the hands tethered to practical 
 responsibilities and vows, let us bow before the 
 vastness and mystery of the world and " the Word," 
 and prepare to enter diverging paths of confession 
 and service, with joy in the breadth of the wis- 
 dom which can use such variety of temperament, 
 and view, and organization in the illustration of 
 its composite and blinding light. Students are 
 called to the duty of so surveying the expanse 
 of the domain of truth, that all diversity, where 
 the foundations of morals are not touched, shall 
 be genial in temper, and all discussion between 
 permanent classes of belief dignified, candid, 
 catholic, and calm. 
 
 And now I cannot refrain, young men, from 
 referring to another duty of American scholars, 
 in their studious years, namely, to fill their hearts 
 with patriotism by feeding their minds from the 
 wonderful annals of their country's history. 
 
 Whatever path a young man chooses in the 
 intellectual world, whatever severity of study he 
 may impose upon himself in the ambition to 
 master it, two volumes must always be pouring 
 their influence into his nature, the New Testa- 
 ment and the volume of records of his native 
 land. Religion and patriotism must stream into 
 every fibre of his brain, into every duct of his 
 blood. 
 
 There is no danger now that the sentiment of 
 patriotism will fail in the masses of the American 
 people. How suddenly in the hour of , need it 
 
in their Academic Years. 429 
 
 arose ! How it swelled from unsuspected foun- 
 tains ! The wisest statesman, the most sagacious 
 politician, did not predict or suspect the possibility 
 of such a surge. It came with a Bay of Fundy 
 sweep and speed ! Nay, more marvellous than that. 
 It was akin rather to an earthquake wave we read 
 of sometimes in a tropic country. Just at the 
 outbreak of treason there was, you know, a strange 
 stillness in the air, heavy and oppressive. The 
 sea was listless. The beaches were bare. It 
 seemed as though mammon-worship had paralyzed 
 manhood. And then the volcanic moment came, 
 the rumble, the roar, the upheaval of the very 
 bed of the sea under the flame of the country's 
 maddened heart. And the billow rose the 
 moral billow along the line of a continent ; and 
 it rolled from that calm ocean dark, massive, sub- 
 lime, till its edge whitened with sacred wrath, 
 and the track of its tremendous dash is marked 
 by the broken forts, the flying hosts, the sub- 
 merged banners, of the rebellion. Disloyalty to 
 the imperial republic will never care to tempt 
 again the anger of that sleeping deep. 
 
 You know the prophecies of a little more than 
 a year ago, the prophecies of foreign critics, and 
 of their emissaries here, that the national life was 
 dying. Our imperial bird was spiritless, they said, 
 and mortally sick. They did not see how Mil- 
 ton's wonderful passage had been waiting till now 
 for fulfilment : " Methinks I see in my mind a 
 noble and puissant nation rousing herself, like 
 
43O Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invin- 
 cible locks ; methinks I see her as an eagle 
 mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her un- 
 dazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging 
 and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fount 
 itself of heavenly radiance ; whilst the whole noise 
 of timorous and flocking birds, with those also 
 that love the twilight, flutter about amazed at 
 what she means, and in their envious gabble 
 would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms." 
 It has been no year of schism, but such an affir- 
 mation of national unity as will banish all future 
 dreams of conspiracy. 
 
 The heart of the nation is sound in patriotism. 
 But the time will soon pass when it will be stimu- 
 lated by public peril, and will be expressed through 
 powder, steel, and a gorgeous wilderness of ban- 
 ners. The scholars of the country must sustain 
 and chasten and direct it. We must not fall back 
 from our attainment. The academies, the col- 
 leges, the churches, must secrete the passion for 
 our country's honor and mission, and be ready 
 to pour inspiration at needed moments into the 
 popular soul. 
 
 Let the. students turn now with new zeal and 
 reverence to the pages of our national past, and fit 
 themselves to be intelligent centres of patriotic 
 fervor, guides and purifiers of the national pas- 
 sion. Let them learn more of the training of this 
 people in the last two centuries, the preparations 
 for the present instinct of unity and the sponta- 
 
in their Academic Years. 431 
 
 neously compacted patriotism to preserve it. Let 
 them arm themselves with the story of American 
 growth and the mysterious aids to it, and be 
 equipped with knowledge to guide and interpret, 
 as with sentiment to echo, the devotion of our 
 loyal millions to their intrusted land. 
 
 If there had been a deeper study of the history 
 of America in the last twenty years in the rebel- 
 lious districts, and a baptism in the spirit which 
 that study liberates, this war could not have been. 
 But rebel memories do not run back farther than 
 the vice-presidency of Calhoun. Before him, to 
 their vision, America was a blank, or if any- 
 thing existed worth recalling, it was the Resolu- 
 tions of 1798. 
 
 See what a difference in the motives and appeals 
 that incite and animate the hostile sections ! On 
 one side, self-will. No appeal to a principle, no 
 cry that a great truth is in danger, no rally around 
 a noble charter, no invocation of the memories 
 and service and advice of canonized fathers, no 
 geographical unity to guard, no invasion to avert, 
 no guaranteed rights trampled or wrested away, but 
 a schism entailing infinite mischief determined, 
 completed, and justified by pure hatred and self- 
 will. On the other side, history appealed to, 
 memories of a noble past recalled, a majestic 
 charter, never broken, put forward, the labors, 
 hopes, and prayers of great men from all sections 
 adjured, common battles and triumphs rekindled, 
 a majestic and symmetrical geography to guard, 
 
432 Intellectual Duties of Students 
 
 a great commission acknowledged and accepted, 
 the sentiment of freedom chanted in stirring 
 rhythms, and a cause whose success gives the 
 same blessing to vanquished as to victors ! 
 
 Drink of the fountains, young men, that are 
 pouring such power and nobility into the nation's 
 heart to-day. Make the history of your land part 
 of your mental substance. Resolve that every 
 year shall introduce you to some new department 
 or treasure of it. Fill up by some regular reading, 
 if it is only a chapter a week, the outline story of 
 the early colonization, the dotting of the surface 
 with various nuclei of Saxon energy, the early 
 passion for self-government, the sweeping away 
 of the French competition, the Revolution, the 
 controversies about the Mississippi, the wretched- 
 ness and dissolution of the early confederation, 
 the rise of the Constitution, the gathering of the 
 breadth of the continent under its aegis and ban- 
 ner, and the march of the nation, by strides un- 
 matched in the experience of ages, towards the 
 first rank in the synod of states. Make some 
 noble biography every year more familiar to your 
 heart. In this way the scholars of the country can 
 contribute more than tons of powder, more than 
 sheaves of steel, more than parks of Dahlgreens, 
 more than bombproof forts, a fleet of monitors, 
 to the defences of the republic. They contribute 
 power, the very core of power, inspiration to 
 the character of the land, energy that will use 
 the material forces to some noble purpose. Fit 
 
in their Academic Years. 433 
 
 yourselves to bear part in this mission of baptizing 
 the nation in its traditions through which God will 
 sustain its renewed vitality. 
 
 Lay the foundations of knowledge firm in the 
 years of your academic privilege ; follow your 
 bent if possible in seeking your profession ; learn 
 from your outlook over the field of knowledge 
 the lesson of mental tolerance and respect ; live 
 for your country by the patriotism of your studies 
 as of your feeling : thus much I have hinted to 
 you in fragmentary and incompetent pages, of the 
 duties of students in their academic years. And 
 here we must close. Yet to close here with no 
 further word would be to leave our walls, humble 
 as they are, unroofed. The elements and the 
 heights of knowledge are revelations to man of 
 the Infinite intellect, sparks and streams from the 
 insufferable brightness. The aptitudes of the 
 mind and soul are from him whose inspiration 
 giveth us understanding, and who supplies diver- 
 sities of gifts with his one Spirit. We are called 
 to toleration because all schools in science, phi- 
 losophy, and faith are classes which he is lead- 
 ing by various explorations towards the home of 
 light. And it is he whose dial marks the age 
 of states, and whose finger determines the times 
 before appointed and the bounds of their habita- 
 tions. Knowledge has its source and crown and 
 nobleness, its motive and vigor, in him and his 
 service and his blessing. 
 
 Him we discern in every star and in the mystic 
 
434 Intellectual Duties of Students. 
 
 fellowship of stars ; him and a word from him in 
 the laws and bounty of the world ; him in the 
 breadth of truth which no finite capacities can 
 drain ; him in man ; him in the head of humanity 
 and nations, " the Word made flesh." Knowledge 
 is dark and goodness discrowned that do not bow 
 before his light and consecrate themselves to his 
 will. I have spoken of patriotism, and the foster- 
 ing of it by scholars in their vocation. Hear 
 these words of an American patriot and scholar, 
 himself for years the head of the oldest university 
 of New England, a patriarch now, a connecting 
 link, almost the last, between this age and the 
 Revolution, born before the first continental Con- 
 gress, a youth of seventeen at the inauguration 
 of President Washington, now in the full pos- 
 session of his faculties at fourscore and ten, and 
 believing in the eloquent words which I am to 
 quote more devoutly as he steps nearer and 
 nearer the light which looks like shadow to our 
 fleshly eyes : " Human happiness hath no perfect 
 security but freedom ; freedom none but virtue ; 
 virtue none but knowledge ; and neither freedom 
 nor virtue nor knowledge has any vigor or immor- 
 tal hope except in the principles of the Christian 
 faith and the sanctions of the Christian religion." 
 
 1862. 
 
 Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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