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From¥ohe Evorary of
Dr. R. E. Hieronymus
1942
314
EmS3r
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By Ralph Waldo Emerson.
COMPLETE WORKS. Riverside Edition. With 2 Por-
traits, and papers hitherto unpublished. 11 vols., each,
12mo, gilt top, $1.75; the set, $19.25. ‘
1. Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (formerly known
as Miscellanies). 2. Essays. First Series. 3. Essays.
Second Series. 4. Representative Men. 5. English
Traits. 6. Conduct of Life. 7. Society and Solitude.
8. Letters and Social Aims. 9. Poems 1o. Lectures and
Biographical Sketches. 11. Miscellanies.
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NATURE, LECTURES, AND ADDRESSES; together
with REPRESENTATIVE MEN. Popular Edition.
Crown 8vo, $1.00.
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY,
Boston AND New York.
ae |
(We, E Sherarveg vised
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
NATURE, ADDRESSES. AND
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PECEU-RES :
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RALPH WALDO EMERSON tH .
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BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Che Riverside ress, Cambridge
Copyright, 1855 and 1876,
By PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO. anp RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Copyright, 1883,
By EDWARD W. EMERSON.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
- SEVEN LECTURES.
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CONTENTS.
—
PAGE
I. Uses or Great MEN u ; é ‘ : 7
II. ‘Prato; oR, THE PHILOSOPHER . 5 * : 39
— Prato: New Reapines . 5 ° es . as
VII. Swepenpore ; or, THe Mystic . é é : 89
“Le Mowrarens ; or, THE SKEPTIC , ‘ A ules
V. SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET ; ‘ : ‘ 179
VI.-Naroreon; or, Tur Man or tHe Wortp .. 211
‘Vie. Goetne: OR; Toe WRITER . 9.) 4 62). 247
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I.
USES OF GREAT MEN.
IT is natural to believe in great men. If the
companions of our childhood should turn out to be
heroes, and their condition regal, it would not sur-
prise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and
the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their
genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gau-
tama, the first men ate the earth and found it deli-
clously sweet.
Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The
world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they
make the earth wholesome. They who lived with
them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet
and tolerable only in our belief in such society ;
and, actually or ideally, we manage to live with
superiors. We call our children and our lands by
their names. Their names are wrought into the
verbs of language, their works and effigies are in
our houses, and every circumstance of the day re-
calls an anecdote of them.
The search after the great man is the dream of
10 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
youth and the most serious occupation of manhood.
We travel into foreign parts to find his works, —
if possible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are
put off with fortune instead. You say, the Eng-
lish are practical; the Germans are hospitable ; in
Valencia the climate is delicious ; and in the hills
of the Sacramento there is gold for the gathering.
Yes, but Ido not travel to find comfortable, rich
and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that
cost too much. But if there were any magnet that
would point to the countries and houses where are
the persons who are intrinsically rich and power-
ful, I would sell all and buy it, and put myself on
the road to-day.
, The race goes with us on their credit. The
)knowledge that in the city is a man who invented
‘the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens.
‘But enormous populations, if they be beggars, are
disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants or
‘of fleas, — the more, the worse.
Our religion is the love and cherishing of these
patrons. The gods of fable are the shining mo-
ments of great men. Werun all our vessels into
one mould. Our colossal theologies of Judaism,
Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the neces-
sary and structural action of the human mind.
The student of history is like a man going into a
warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he
USES OF GREAT MEN. ime
has a new article. If he go to the factory, he shall
find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and
rosettes which are found on the interior walls of
the pyramids of Thebes. Our theism is the purifi-
cation of the human mind. Man can paint, or
make, or think, nothing but man. He believes
that the great material elements had their origin
from his thought. And our philosophy finds one
essence collected or distributed.
If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of
service we derive from others, let us be warned of
the danger of modern studies, and begin low
enough. We must not contend against love, or
deny the substantial existence of other people. I
know not what would happen to us. We have so-
cial strengths. Our affection towards others cre-
ates a sort of vantage or purchase which nothing
will supply. I can do that by another which I can-
not do alone. I can say to you what I cannot first
say to myself. _ Other men are lenses through
which we read our own minds.{j Each man seeks
those of different quality from his own, and such
as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other
men, and the otherest. The stronger the nature, |
the more it is reactive. Let us have the quality
pure. A little genius let us leave alone. (A main
difference betwixt men is, whether they attend their
13 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
own. affair or not. | ‘Man is that noble endogenous
) plant which grows, like the palm, from within out-
ward. 7 His own affair, though impossible to others,
ae can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy
to sugar to be sweet and to nitre to be salt. We
take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap
that which of itself will fall into our hands. {1
count him a great man who inhabits a higher
\sphere of thought, into which other men rise with
jlabor and difficulty ; he has but to open his eyes to
dsee things in a true light and in large relations,
whilst they must make painful corrections and
keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. His
service to us is of like sort. It costs a beautiful
person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes ;
yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more
for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.
And every one can do his best thing easiest. ‘Pew
de moyens, beaucoup d’effét.” He is great who
is what he is from nature, and who never reminds
us of others.
But he must be related to us,and our life receive
from him some promise of explanation. I cannot
tell what I would know ; but I have observed there
/ are persons who, in their character and actions, an-
_swer questions which I have not skill to put. One
_man answers some question which none of his con-
| temporaries put, and is isolated. The past and
USES OF GREAT MEN. 13
passing religions and philosophies answer some
other question. Certain men affect us as rich pos-
sibilities, but helpless to themselves and to their
times, — the sport perhaps of some instinct that
rules in the air ;— they do not speak to our want.
But the great are near; we know them at sight.
They satisfy expectation and fall into place. What
is good is effective, generative; makes for itself
room, food and allies. A sound apple produces
seed, —a hybrid does not. Is a man in his place,
he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating ar-
mies with his purpose, which is thus executed.
The river makes its own shores, and each legiti-
mate idea makes its own channels and welcome, —
harvests for food, institutions for expression, weap-
ons to fight with and disciples to explain it: The ?
true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the ad- )
venturer, after years of strife, has nothing broader —
than his own shoes. :
Our common discourse respects two kinds of
use or service from superior men. Direct giving
is agreeable to the early belief of men; direct
giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health,
eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical
power and prophecy. The boy believes there is
a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches
believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we
are not much cognizant of direct serving. Man is
14 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
| endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The
aid we have from others is mechanical compared
_ with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus
learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect
remains. Right ethics are central and go from the
soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the
universe. Serving others is serving us. I must
absolve me to myself. ‘ Mind thy affair,’ says the
spirit: —‘coxcomb, would you meddle with the
skies, or with other people?’ Indirect service is
left. Men have a pictorial or representative quality,
and serve us in the intellect. Behmen and Sweden-
borg saw that things were representative. Men
_are also representative; first, of things, and sec-
ondly, of ideas.
As plants convert the minerals into food for
animals, so each man converts some raw material
in nature to human use.. The inventors of fire,
electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk,
cotton ; the makers of tools; the inventor of deci-
mal notation; the geometer; the engineer; the
musician, — severally make an easy way for all,
through unknown and impossible confusions. Each
man is by secret liking connected with some district
of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is; as
Linneus, of plants; Huber, of bees; Fries, of
lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton, of atomic
forms ; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions,
USES OF GREAT MEN. 15
A man is acentre for nature, running out threads
of relation through every thing, fluid and _ solid,
material and elemental. The earth rolls; every
clod and stone comes to the meridian: so every
organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its
relation to the brain. It waits long, but its turn
comes. Hach plant has its parasite, and each cre-
ated thing its lover and poet. Justice has already
been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to
loadstone, to iodine, to corn and cotton; but how
few materials are yet used by our arts! The mass
of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expec-
tant. It would seem as if each waited, like the
enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined
human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted and
walk forth to the day in human shape. In the
history of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems
to have fashioned a brain, for itself. A magnet
must be made man in some Gilbert, or Swedenborg,
or Oersted, before the general mind can come to
entertain its powers.
If we limit ourselves to the first advantages,
a sober grace adheres to the mineral and botanic
kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, comes
up as the charm of nature,—the glitter of the
spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity of angles.
Light and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and
food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid and gas, circle
|
16 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
us round in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their
agreeable quarrel, beguile the day of life. The
eye repeats every day the first eulogy on things, —
“‘ He saw that they were good.” We know where
to find them ; and these performers are relished all
the more, after a little experience of the pretending
races. We are entitled also to higher advantages.
Something is wanting to science until it has been
humanized. The table of logarithms is one thing,
and its vital play in botany, music, optics and archi-
tecture, another. There are advancements to num-
bers, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little sus-
pected at first, when, by union with intellect and
will, they ascend into the -life and reappear in
conversation, character and politics.
But this comes later. _ We speak now only of
our acquaintance with them in their own sphere
and the way in which they seem to fascinate and
draw to them some genius who occupies himself
with one thing, all his life long. The possibility
of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer
with the observed. Each material thing has its
celestial side ; has its translation, through humanity,
into the spiritual and necessary sphere where it
plays a part as indestructible as any other. And
to these, their ends, all things continually ascend.
The gases gather to the solid firmament: the
_chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows;
USES OF GREAT MEN. 17
arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives at \
‘the man, and thinks. But also the constituency
determines the vote of the representative. He is
not only representative, but participant. Like can
only be known by like. The reason why he knows
about them is that he is of them; he has just come
out of nature, or from being a part of that thing.
Animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate }
zine, of zinc. Their quality makes his career ; and
he can variously publish their virtues, because they’
compose him. Man, made of the dust of the world,
does not forget his origin ; and all that is yet inan-
imate will one day speak and reason. Unpublished |
nature will have its whole secret told. Shall we
say that quartz mountains will pulverize into innu-
merable Werners, Von Buchs and Beaumonts, and
the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution
I know not what Berzeliuses and Davys ?
Thus we sit by the fire and take hold on the
poles of the earth. This quasi omnipresence sup-
plies the imbecility of our condition. In one of
those celestial days when heaven and earth meet
and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we
can only spend it once: we wish for a thousand
heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate
its immense beauty in many ways and places. Is
this fancy? Well, in good faith, we are multiplied
by our proxies. How easily we adopt their labors!
VOL. Iv. 2
18 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Every ship that comes to America got its chart
from Columbus. Every novel is a debtor to Ho- |
mer. Every carpenter who shaves with a fore-
plane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor.
Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the
contributions of men who have perished to add
their point of light to our sky. Engineer, broker,
jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every
man, inasmuch as he has any science, — is a definer
and map-maker of the latitudes and longitudes of
our condition. These road-makers on every hand
enrich us. We must extend the.area of life and
multiply our relations. We are as much gainers
by finding a new property in the old earth as by
acquiring a new planet.
We are too passive in the reception of these ma-
terial or semi-material aids. We must not be sacks
and stomachs. ‘To ascend one step, — we are bet-
ter served through our sympathy. Activity is con-
tagious. Looking where others look, and convers-
ing with the same things, we catch the charm which
lured them. Napoleon said, ‘ You must not fight
(too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all
‘your art of war.” ‘Talk much with any man of
vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit
of looking at things in the same light, and on each
occurrence we anticipate his thought.
Men are helpful through the intellect and the
USES OF GREAT MEN. 19
affections. Other help I find a false appearance.
If you affect to give me bread and fire, I perceive
that I pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves
me as it found me, neither better nor worse: but
all mental and moral force is a positive good. It
goes out from you, whether you will or not, and
profits me whom you never thought of. I cannot
even hear of personal vigor of any kind, great
power of performance, without fresh resolution.
We are emulous of all that man can do. Cecil’s
saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, “I know that he
ean toil terribly,” is an electric touch. So are
Clarendon’s portraits, — of Hampden, “ who was
of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or
wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to
be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp,-and
of a personal courage equal to his best parts ;” —
of Falkland, “who was so severe an adorer of
truth, that he could as easily have given himself
leave to steal, as to dissemble.” We cannot read
Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I
accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: “ A sage
is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the
manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become in-
telligent, and the wavering, determined.”
This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard
for departed men to touch the quick like our own
companions, whose names mar not last as long.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
What is he whom I never think of? Whilst in
every solitude are those who succor our genius and
stimulate us in wonderful manners. There is a
power in love to divine another’s destiny better
than that other can, and, by heroic encouragements,
hold him to his task. What has friendship so sig-
nal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is
inus? We will never more think cheaply of our-
selves, or of life. We are piqued to some purpose,
and the industry of the diggers on the railroad will
not again shame us.
Under this head too falls that homage, very pure
as I think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the
day, from Coriolanus and Gracchus down to Pitt,
Lafayette, Wellington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear
the shouts in the street! The people cannot see him
enough. ‘They delight in a man. Here is a head
and a trunk! What a front! what eyes! Atlan-
tean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with
equal inward force to guide the great machine!
This pleasure of full expression to that which, in
their private experience is usually cramped and
obstructed, runs also much higher, and is the se-
eret of the reader’s joy in literary genius. Nothing
is kept back. There is fire enough to fuse the
mountain of ore. Shakspeare’s principal merit
/ may be conveyed in saying that he of all men best
\ understands the English language, and can say
USES OF GREAT MEN. 21
what he will. Yet these unchoked channels and )
floodgates of expression are only health or fortu-
nate constitution. Shakspeare’s name suggests
other and purely intellectual benefits.
Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with
their medals, swords and armorial coats, like the
addressing to a human being thoughts out of a
certain height, and presupposing his intelligence.
This honor, which is possible in personal intercourse
scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius perpetually
pays; contented if now and then in a century the
proffer is accepted. The indicators of the values of
matter are degraded to a sort of cooks and con-
fectioners, on the appearance of the indicators of
ideas. Genius is the naturalist or geographer of
the supersensible regions, and draws their map ;
and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity,
cools our affection for the old. These are at once
accepted as the reality, of which the world we have
conversed with is the show.
We go to the gymnasium and the swimming:
school to see the power and beauty of the body;
there is the like pleasure and a higher benefit from
witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as feats
of memory, of mathematical combination, great
power of abstraction, the transmutings of the imag-
ination, even versatility and concentration, — as
these acts expose the invisible organs an] members
22 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
of the mind, which respond, member for member,
to the parts of the body. For we thus enter a new
gymnasium, and learn to choose men by their truest
marks, taught, with Plato, “to choose those who
can, without aid from the eyes or any other sense,
proceed to truth and to being.” Foremost among
these activities are the summersaults, spells and
resurrections wrought by the imagination. When
this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or
a thousand times his force. It opens the delicious
sense of indeterminate size and inspires an auda-
cious mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas
_of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word
' dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and
instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and
our feet tread the floor of the Pit. And this bene-
fit is real because we are entitled to these enlarge-
ments, and once having passed the bounds shall
never again be quite the miserable pedants we were.
The high functions of the intellect are so allied
that some imaginative power usually appears in
all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the
first class, but especially in. meditative men of an
intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so
that they have the perception of identity and the
perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shak-
speare, Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either
of these laws. The perception of these laws is a
USES OF GREAT MEN. 20
kind of metre of the mind. Little minds are little /
through failure to see them.
Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our de-
light im reason degenerates into idolatry of the
herald. “Especially when a mind of powerful
method has instructed men, we find the examples
of oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the
Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of Ba-
con, of Locke ;— Jin religion the history of hie-
rarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken
the name of each founder, are in point. Alas!
every man is such a victim. The imbecility of men
is always inviting the impudence of power. It is
the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind
the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us
- from itself. True genius will not impoverish, but
will liberate, and add new senses. If a wise man
should appear in our village he would create, in |
those who conversed with him, a new consciousness
of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved ad- °
vantages; he would establish a sense of immovable
equality, calm us with assurances that we could not
be cheated ; as every one would discern the checks
and guaranties of condition. The rich would see
their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes
and their resources.
But nature brings all this about in due time.
Rotation is her remedy. The soul is impatient of
24 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
masters and eager for change. Housekeepers say
of a domestic who has been valuable, ‘“‘ She had
lived with me long enough.” We are tendencies,
Sor rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. We
touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Ro-
tation is the law of nature. When nature removes
a great man, people explore the horizon for a suc-
cessor; but none comes, and none will. His class
is extinguished with him. In some other and quite
different field the next man will appear; not Jef-
ferson, not Franklin, but now a great salesman,
then a road-contractor, then a student of fishes,
then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage
Western general. Thus we make a stand against
our rougher masters ; but against the best there is
a finer remedy. ‘The power which they communi-
| _3eate is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas,
| we do not owe this to Plato, but to the_idea, to
‘which also Plato was debtor.
I must not forget that we have a special debt
to a single class. Life is a scale of degrees.
Between rank and rank of our great men are
wide intervals. Mankind have in all ages attached
themselves to a few persons who either by the
quality of that idea they embodied or by the large-
ness of their reception were entitled to the posi-
tion of leaders and law-givers. These teach us the
qualities of primary nature, — admit us to the con
USES OF GREAT MEN. 95
stitution of things. We swim, day by day, on a
river of delusions and are effectually amused with
houses and towns in the air, of which the men
about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity. In
lucid intervals we say, ‘ Let there be an entrance
opened for me into realities; I have worn the fool’s
cap too long.’ We will know the meaning of our
economies and politics. Give us the cipher, and
if persons and things are scores of a celestial music,
let us read off the strains. We have been cheated
of our reason; yet there have been sane men, who
enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they
know, they know for us. With each new mind,
a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the
Bible be closed. until the last great man is born.
These men correct the delirium of the animal
spirits, make us considerate and engage us to
new aims and powers. ‘The veneration of man-
kind selects these for the highest place. Witness
the multitude of statues, pictures and memorials
which recall their genius in every city, village,
house and ship: —
“ Ever their phantoms arise before us,
- Our loftier brothers, but one in blood;
At bed and table they lord it o’er us
With looks of beauty and words of good.”
How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas,
the service rendered by those who introduce moral
26 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
truths into the general mind ?— I am _ plagued,
in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices.
If I work in my garden and prune an apple-tree,
I am well enough entertained, and could continue
indefinitely in the like occupation. But it comes
us mind that a day is gone, and I have got this
{precious nothing done. I go to Boston or New
York and run up and down on my affairs: they
are sped, but so is the day. I am vexed by the
recollection of this price I have paid for a trifling
advantage. J remember the peau d’dne on which
whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of
the skin was gone for every wish. I go to a con-
vention of philanthropists. Do what I can, I
cannot keep my eyes off the clock. Butif there
should appear in the company some gentle soul
who knows little of persons or parties, of Caro-
lina or Cuba, but who announces a law that dis-
poses these particulars, and so certifies me of
the equity which checkmates every false player,
bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of
my independence on any conditions of country,
or time, or human body, —that man liberates me ;
I forget the clock. I pass out of the sore relation
to persons. I am healed of my hurts. I am
made immortal by apprehending my possession
of incorruptible goods. Here is great competition
of rich and poor. We live in a market, where
USES OF GREAT MEN. 27
is only so much wheat, or wool, or land: and if
I have so much more, every other must have so
much less. I seem to have no good without
breach of good manners. Nobody is glad in the
gladness of another, and our system is one of
war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of
the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It
is our system; and a man comes to measure his
greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his
competitors. But in these new fields there is room:
here are no self-esteems, no exclusions.
IT admire great men of all classes, those who
stand for facts, and for thoughts; I like rough and
smooth, “‘Scourges of God,” and “ Darlings of the
human race.” I like the first Cresar; and Charles ,
V., of Spain; and Charles XII., of Sweden; Rich- )
ard Plantagenet; and Bonaparte, in France. I
applaud a sufficient man, an officer equal to his
office ; captains, ministers, senators. I like a master
standing firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich, hand-
some, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all
men by fascination into tributaries and supporters
of his power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-
like or staff-like, carry on the work of the world.
But I find him greater when he can abolish himself
and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason,
irrespective of persons, this subtilizer and irresist-
ible upward force, into our thought, destroying in-
28 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
dividualism ; the power so great that the potentate
is nothing. Then he is a monarch who gives a con-
stitution to his people; a pontiff who preaches the
equality of souls and releases his servants from
their barbarous homages; an emperor who can
spare his empire.
But I intended to specify, with a little minute.
ness, two or three points of service. Nature never
spares the opium or nepenthe, but wherever she
mars her creature with some deformity or defect,
lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, andthe
sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the
ruin and incapable of seeing it, though all the
world point their finger at it every day. The
worthless and offensive members of society, whose
existence is a social pest, invariably think them-
selves the most ill-used people alive, and never get
over their astonishment at the ingratitude and
selfishness of their contemporaries. Our globe
discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and
archangels, but in gossips and nurses. Is it not
a rare contrivance that lodged the due inertia in
every creature, the conserving, resisting energy,
the anger at being waked or changed? Altogether
independent of the intellectual force in each is the
pride of opinion, the security that we are right.
Not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot,
USES OF GREAT MEN. 29
but uses what spark of perception and faculty is
left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion
over the absurdities of all the rest. Difference
from me is the measure of absurdity. Not one
has a misgiving of being wrong. Was it not a
bright thought that made things eohere with this
bitumen, fastest of cements? But, in the midst
of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure
goes by which Thersites too can love and admire.
This is he that should marshall us the way we
were going. There is no end to his aid. With-
out Plato we should almost lose our faith in the
possibility of a reasonable book. We seem to
want but one, but we want one. We love to
associate with heroic persons, since our receptivity
is unlimited; and, with the great, our thoughts
and manners easily become great. ‘We are all
wise in capacity, though so few in energy. There
needs but one wise man in a company and all are
wise, so rapid is the contagion. |
Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes
from egotism and enable us to see other people and
their works. But there are vices and follies inci-
dent to whole populations and ages. Men resem-
ble their contemporaries even more than their pro-
genitors. It is observed in old couples, or in per-.
sons who have been housemates for a course of
years, that they grow like, and if they should live’
30 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
long enough we should not be able to know them
apart. Nature abhors these complaisances which
threaten to melt the world into a lump, and has-
tens to break up such maudlin agglutinations. The
like assimilation goes on between men of one town,
of one sect, of one political party ; and the ideas of
the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe
it. Viewed from any high point, this city of New
York, yonder city of London, the Western civiliza-
tion, would seem a bundle of insanities. We keep
each other in countenance and exasperate by emu-
lation the frenzy of the time. The shield against
the stinging of conscience is the universal practice,
or our contemporaries. Again, it is very easy to
be as wise and good as your companions. We
learn of our contemporaries what they know, with-
out effort, and almost through the pores of the
skin. We catch it by sympathy, or as a wife ar-
rives at the intellectual and moral elevations of her
husbanc. But we stop where they stop. Very
hardly can we take another step. The great, or
such as hold of nature and transcend fashions by
their fidelity to universal ideas, are saviors from
these federal errors, and defend us from our con-
temporaries. They are the exceptions which we
want, where all grows like. A foreign greatness is
the antidote for cabalism.
Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves
USES OF GREAT MEN. 81
from too much conversation with our mates, and ex-
ult in the depth of nature in that direction in which
he leads us. What indemnification is one great
man for populations of pigmies! Every mother
wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should
be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the ex-
cess of influence of the great man. His attractions
warp us from our place. We have become under-
lings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the
horizon is our help ;-— other great men, new quali-
ties, counterweights and checks on each other. We
cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Ev-
ery hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire
was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus,
even, “I pray you, let me never hear that man’s
name again.” They cry up the virtues of George
Washington, — “ Damn George Washington!” is
the poor Jacobin’s whole speech and confutation.
But it is human nature’s indispensable defence.
‘The centripetence augments the centrifugence. \
“We balance one man with his opposite, and the
health of the state depends on the see-saw.
There is however a speedy limit to the use of
heroes. Every genius is defended from approach
by quantities of unavailableness. They are very
attractive, and seem at a distance our own: but we
are hindered on all sides from approach. The
more we are drawn, the more we are repelled.
32 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
There is something not solid in the good that is
done for us. The best discovery the discoverer
makes for himself. It has something unreal for
his companion until he too has substantiated it.
It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul which he
sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not
communicable to other men, and sending it to per-
form one more turn through the circle of beings,
wrote “ Not transferable” and “ Good for this trip
only,” on these garments of the soul. There is
somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds.
The boundaries are invisible, but they are never
crossed. There is such good will to impart, and
such good will to receive, that each threatens to
become the other; but the law of individuality col-
lects its secret strength: you are you, and I am I,
\. and so we remain.
For nature wishes every thing to remain itself ;
and whilst every individual strives to grow and ex-
clude and to exclude and grow, to the extremities
of the universe, and to impose the law of its being
on every other creature, Nature steadily aims to
protect each against every other. Hach is self-
defended. Nothing is more marked than the
power by which individuals are guarded from indi-
viduals, in a world where every benefactor becomes
so easily a malefactor only by continuation of his
activity into places where it is not due; where chil.
USES OF GREAT MEN. Bo
dren seem so much at the mercy of their foolish
parents, and where almost all men are too social
and interfering. We rightly speak of the guar-
dian angels of children. How superior in their se-
curity from infusions of evil persons, from vulgar-
ity and second thought! They shed their own
abundant beauty on the objects they behold.
Therefore they are not at the mercy of such poor
educators as we adults. If we huff and chide them
they soon come not to mind it and get a self-reli-
ance ; and if we indulge them to folly, they learn
the limitation elsewhere.
We need not fear excessive influence. A more
generous trust is permitted. Serve the great.
Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no office thou
canst render. Be the limb of their body, the
breath of their mouth. Compromise thy egotism.
Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and
nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism : the
devotion may easily be greater than the wretched
pride which is guarding its own skirts. Be an-
other: not thyself, but a Platonist ; not a soul, but
a Christian; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian ; not
a poet, but a Shaksperian. In vain, the wheels of
tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces of in-
ertia, fear, or of love itself hold thee there. On,
and forever onward! The microscope observes a
monad or wheel-insect among the infusories circu-
VOL. Iv. 3
34 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
lating in water. Presently a dot appears on the
animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes
two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding detach-
ment appears uot less in all thought and in society.
Children think they cannot live without their par-
ents. But, long before they are aware of it, the
black dot has appeared and the detachment taken
place. Any accident will now reveal to them their
independence.
But great men : — the word is injurious. Is
there caste ? is there fate? What becomes of the
promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth laments
the superfcetation of nature. ‘Generous and hand-
some, he says, ‘is your hero; but look at yonder
poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow ;
look at his whole nation of Paddies.’ Why are
the masses, from the dawn of history down, food
for knives and powder? The idea dignifies a few
leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-de-
votion ; and they make war and death sacred ;—.
but what for the wretches whom they hire and
kill ? |The cheapness of man is every day’s trag-
edy.” It is as real a loss that others should be
low as that we should be low ; for we must have
’ society.
Is it a reply to these suggestions to say, Society
is a Pestalozzian school: all are teachers and pu
USES OF GREAT MEN. 85
pils in turn? We are equally served by receiving
and by imparting. Men who know the same things
are not long the best company for each other.
But bring to each an intelligent person of another
experience, and it is as if you let off water from a
lake by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechan-
ical advantage, and great benefit it is to each
speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to
himself. We pass very fast, in our personal
moods, from dignity to dependence. And if any
appear never to assume the chair, but always to
stand and serve, it is because we do not see the
company in a sufficiently long period for the whole-
rotation of parts to come about. As to what we
call the masses, and common men, — there are no
common men. All men are at last of a size; and
true art is only possible on the conviction that
every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair
play and an open field and freshest laurels to all
who have won them! But heaven reserves an
equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy
until he has produced his private ray unto the con-
cave sphere and beheld his talent also in its last
nobility and exaltation.
The heroes of the hour are relatively great; of
a faster growth ; or they are such in whom, at the
moment of success, a quality is ripe which is then
in request. Other days will demand other quali-
36 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
ties. Some rays escape the common observer, and
want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great man if
there be none greater. His companions are; and
not the less great but the more that society cannot
see them. Nature never sends a great man into
the planet without confiding the secret to another
soul.
One gracious fact emerges from these studies, —
that there is true ascension in our love. The rep-
)utations of the nineteenth century will one day be
‘quoted to prove its barbarism. The genius of hu-
manity is the real subject whose biography is writ-
ten in our annals. We must infer much, and sup-
ply many chasms in the record. The history of
the universe is symptomatic, and life is mnemoni-
cal. No man, in all the procession of famous men,
is reason or illumination or that essence we were
looking for ; but is an exhibition, in some quarter,
of new possibilities. Could we one day complete
the immense figure which these flagrant points com-
pose! The study of many individuals leads us to
an elemental region wherein the individual is lost,
or wherein all touch by their summits. Thought
and feeling that break out there cannot be im-
pounded by any fence of personality. This is the
key to the power of the greatest men, —their spirit
diffuses itself. A new quality of mind travels by
night and by day, in concentric circles from its ori-
USES OF GREAT MEN. 37
gin, and publishes itself by unknown methods: the
union of all minds appears intimate ; what gets ad-
mission to one, cannot be kept out of any other; the .
smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any
quarter, is so much good to_the commonwealth of
souls. If the disparities of talent and position van-
ish when the individuals are seen in the duration
which is necessary to complete the career of each,
even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears
when we ascend to the central identity of all the
individuals, and know that they are made of the
substance which ordaineth and doeth.
The genius of humanity is the right point of
view of history. The qualities abide; the men
who exhibit them have now more, now less, and
pass away; the qualities remain on another brow.
No experience is more familiar. Once you saw
pheenixes: they are gone; the world is not there-
fore disenchanted. The vessels on which you read
sacred emblems turn out to be common pottery ;
but the sense of the pictures is sacred, and you
may still read them transferred to the walls of the
world. For a time our teachers serve us personally,)
as metres or milestones of progress. Once they
were angcls of knowledge and their figures touched
the sky. Then we drew near, saw their means,
culture and limits; and they yielded their place
to other geniuses. Happy, if a few names remain
38 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
so high that we have not been able to read them
nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed
‘them of a ray. But at last we shall cease to look in
men for completeness, and shall content ourselves
with their social and delegated quality. AIl that
respects the individual is temporary and prospec-
tive, like the individual himself, whe is ascending
out of his limits into a catholic existence. We
have never come at the true and best benefit of any
genius so long as we believe him an original force.
In the moment when he ceases to help us as a
cause, he begins to help us more as an effect. Then
he appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and
will. The opaque self becomes transparent with
the light of the First Cause.
Yet, within the limits of human education and
| agency, we may say great men exist that there may
be greater men. The destiny of organized nature
is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? It is
for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst
he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song,
that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder,
and the germs of love and benefit may be multi-
plied.
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER.
i eiiauk ig ba eer, “i ae
_pogied tical bat 0
te <3 om ne bene ihe Riss a me pee:
a,
nak
a ae re jan me “ te
II.
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER.
Go
AmoneG secular books, Plato only is entitled to
Omar’s fanatical compliment to the Koran, when
he said, “ Burn the libraries; for their value is in ,
this book.” These sentences contain the culture
of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools;
these are the fountain-head of literatures. A dis-
cipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry,
poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals or prac-
tical wisdom. There was never such range of spec-
ulation. Out of Plato come all things that are
still written and debated among men of thought.
Great havoc makes he among our originalities. We ,
have reached the mountain from which all these
drift boulders were detached. The Bible of the
learned for twenty-two hundred years, every brisk.
young man who says in succession fine things to
each reluctant generation, — Boethius, Rabelais,
Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Cole-
ridge, —is some reader of Plato, translating into ,
the vernacular, wittily, his good things. Even the
(ee
42 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
men of grander proportion suffer some deduction
from the misfortune (shall I say?) of coming after
this exhausting generalizer. St. Augustine, Coper-
nicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg, Goethe, _are
likewise his debtors and must say after him. { For
it is fair to credit the broadest generalizer with all
-) the particulars deducible from his thesis. |
Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato, — at
once the glory and the shame of mankind, since
neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any
idea to his categories. No wife, no children had he,
and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his pos-
terity and are tinged with his mind. How many
great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of
night, to be his men,— Platonists! the Alexandri-
ans, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans,
not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John
Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor,
Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor; Mar-
cilius Ficinus and Picus Mirandola. Calvinism is
in his Phedo: Christianity is in it. Mahometan-
ism draws all its philosophy, in its hand-book of
morals, the Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mysti-
cism finds in Plato all its texts. This citizen of a
town in Greece is no villager nor patriot. An
Englishman reads and says, ‘ how English!’ a Ger-
man, —‘how Teutonic!’ an Italian, —‘how Ro-
man and how Greek!’ As they say that Helen
HEA TO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 43
of Argos had that universal beauty that every body
felt related to her, so Plato seems to a reader in
New England an American genius. His broad
humanity transcends all sectional lines.
This range of Plato instructs us what to think of
the vexed question concerning his reputed works,
—what are genuine, what spurious. It is singu-
lar that wherever we find a man higher by a whole
head than any of his contemporaries, it is sure to
come into doubt what are his real works. Thus)
Homer, Plato, Raffaelle, Shakspeare. For these
men magnetise their contemporaries, so that their
companions can do for them what they can never do
for themselves ; and the great man does thus live in
several bodies, and write, or paint or act, by many
hands; and after some time it is not easy to say
what is the authentic work of the master and what
is only of his school.
Plato, too, like every great man, consumed his
own times. What is a great man but one of great
affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sci-
ences, all knowables, as his food? He can spare
nothing ; he can dispose of every thing. What is
not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. Hence
his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism. But
the inventor only knows how to borrow; and so-
ciety is glad to forget the innumerable laborers
who ministered to this architect, and reserves all
44 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
its gratitude for him. When we are praising
Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from
Solon and Sophron and Philolaus. ‘Be it so. Every
© book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation
\out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and |
every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
/ And this grasping inventor puts all nations. under |
\ contribution. us F.
| Plato absorbed the learning of his times, — Phi-
lolaus, Timzeus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and what
else; then his master, Socrates; and finding him-
self still capable of a larger synthesis, — beyond all
example then or since, — he travelled into Italy,
to gain what Pythagoras had for him; then into
Egypt, and perhaps still farther East, to import the
other element, which Europe wanted, into the Euro-
pean mind. This breadth entitles him to stand as
the representative of philosophy. He says, in the
Republic, “Such a genius as philosophers must of
necessity have, is wont but seldom in all its parts
to meet in one man, but its different parts gener-
ally spring up in different persons.” {Every man
who would do anything well, must come to it from
a higher ground.) A philosopher must be more than
a philosopher. Plato is clothed with the powers of
a poet, stands upon the highest place of the poet,
and (though I doubt he wanted the decisive gift of
lyri¢ expression), mainly is not a poet because he
chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior purpose.
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. A5
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Their cousins can tell you nothing about them.
They lived in their writings, and so their house
and street life was trivial and commonplace. If
you would know their tastes and complexions, the
most admiring of their readers most resembles
them. Plato especially has no-external biography.
If he had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing
of them. He ground them all into paint. As a
good chimney burns its smoke, so a philosopher
converts the value of all his fortunes into his in-
tellectual performances.
He was born 427, A. C., about the time of the
death of Pericles; was of patrician connection in
his times and city, and is said to have had an early
inclination for war, but, in his twentieth year,
meeting with Socrates, was easily dissuaded from
this pursuit and remained for ten years his scholar,
until the death of Socrates. He then went to
Megara, accepted the invitations of Dion and of
Dionysius to the court of Sicily, and went thither
three times, though very capriciously treated. He
travelled into Italy; then into Egypt, where he
stayed a long time; some say three, —some say
thirteen years. It is said he went farther, into
Babylonia: this is uncertain. Returning to Athens,
he gave lessons in the Academy to those whom his
fame drew thither; and died, as we have received
it, in the act of writing, at eighty-one years.
46 REPRESENTATIVE MEN
But the biography of Plato is interior. We
zare to account for the supreme elevation of this
Sman in the intellectual history of our race, — how
it happens that in proportion to the culture of
men they become his scholars; that, as our Jewish
Bible has implanted itself in the table-talk and
household life of every man and woman in the
Huropean and American nations, so the writings of
Plato have preoccupied every school of learning,
every lover of thought, every church, every poet,
— making it impossible to think, on certain levels,
except through him. He stands between the trath
and every man’s mind, and has almost impressed
language and the primary forms of thought with
his name and seal. Jam struck, in reading him,
with the extreme modernness of his style and spirit.
Here is the germ of that Europe we know so well,
in its long history of arts and arms; here are all
its traits, already discernible in the mind of Plato,
—and in none before him. It has spread itself
since into a hundred histories, but has added no
new element. This perpetual modernness is the
measure of merit in every work of art; since the
author of it was not misled by any thing short-
lived or local, but abode by real and abiding traits.
/How Plato came thus to be Europe, and philoso-
phy, and almost literature, is the problem for us te
solve.
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 47
This could not have happened without a sound,
sincere and catholic man, able to honor, at the
same time, the ideal, or laws of the mind, and fate,
or the order of nature. The first period of a na-
tion, as of an individual, is the period of uncon-
scious strength. Children cry, scream and stamp
with fury, unable to express their desires. As
soon as they can speak and tell their want and
the reason of it, they become gentle. In adult life,
whilst the perceptiéns are obtuse, men and women
talk vehemently and superlatively, blunder and
quarrel: their manners are full of desperation ;
their speech is full of oaths. As socn as, with cul-
ture, things have cleared up a little, and they see
them no longer in lumps and masses but accurately
distributed, they desist from that weak vehemence
and explain their meaning in detail. If the tongue
had not been framed for articulation, man would
still be a beast in the forest. The same weakness
and want, on a higher plane, occurs daily in the
education of ardent young men and women. ‘ Ah!
you don’t understand me; I have never. met with
any one who comprehends me:’ and they sigh and
weep, write verses and walk alone, — fault of
power to express their precise meaning. In a
month or two, through the favor of their good gen-
ius, they meet some one so related as to assist their
voleanic estate, and, good communication being
48 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
once established, they are thenceforward good citi-
zens. It is ever thus. The progress is to accu-
racy, to skill, to truth, from blind force.
There is a moment in the history of every na-
tion, when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the
perceptive powers reach their ripeness and have
not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that
instant, extends across the entire scale, and, with
his feet still planted on the immense forces of
night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar
and stellar creation. That is the moment of adult
health, the culmination of power.
Such is the history of Europe, in all points; and
such in philosophy. Its early records, almost per-
ished, are of the immigrations from Asia, bringing
with them the dreams of: barbarians; a confusion
of crude notions of morals and of natural philos-
ophy, gradually subsiding through the partial in-
sight of single teachers.
Before Pericles came the Seven Wise Masters,
and we have the beginnings of geometry, meta-
physics and ethics: then the partialists, — deduc-
ing the origin of things from flux or water, or from
air, or from fire, or from mind. All mix with
these causes mythologic pictures. At last comes
Plato, the distributor, who needs no barbaric paint,
or tattoo, or whooping; for he can define. He
leaves with Asia the vast and superlative; he is
PLATO: OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 49
the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. “He
shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide
and define.”
This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is the (_
account which t. the human mind gives to itself of
the constitution ¢ of ‘the “world. Two cardinal facts
lie forever at the ‘base ; : the one, and the two. — /
1. Unity, or Identity; and, 2. Variety. We unite \
all things by perceiving the law which pervades
them ; by perceiving the superficial differences and
the profound resemblances. But every mental
act, — this very perception of identity or oneness,
recognizes the difference of things. Oneness and
otherness. It is impossible to tee or to ‘think
‘without embracing both. Rearras Reverie
The mind is urged to ask for one cause et many
effects ; then for the cause of that; and again the
cause, diving still into the profound: self-assured
that it shall arrive at an absolute and sufficient
one, —a one that shall be all. ‘In the midst of |
the sun is the light, in the midst of the light is_
truth, and in the midst of truth is the imperishable |
being,’ say the Vedas. All philosophy, of East
and West, has the same centripetence. Urged by “
an opposite necessity, the mind returns from the
one to that which is not one, but other or many ;
from cause to effect; and affirms the necessary
existence of variety, the self-existence of both, as
VOL. IV. 4
50 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
each is involved in the other. These strictly-
blended elements it is the problem of thought to
separate and to reconcile. Their existence is mu-
tually contradictory and exclusive; and each so
fast slides into the other that we can never say
what is one, and what it is not. The Proteus is as
nimble in the highest as in the lowest grounds ;
when we contemplate the one, the true, the good, —
as in the surfaces and extremities of matter.
In all nations there are minds which incline to
dwell in the conception of the fundamental Unity.
The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose
all being in one Being. This tendency finds its
highest expression in the religious writings of
the East, and chiefly in the Indian Scriptures, in
the Vedas, the Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu
Purana. Those writings contain little else than
this idea, and they rise to pure and sublime strains
in celebrating it.
The Same, the Same: friend and foe are of one
stuff; the ploughman, the plough and the furrow
are of one stuff; and the stuff is such and so much
that the variations of form are unimportant. ‘“ You
are fit’ (says the supreme Krishna to a sage ) “to
apprehend that you are not distinct from me. That
which I am, thou art, and that also is this world,
with its gods and heroes and mankind. Men con.
template distinctions, because they are stupefied
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 51
with ignorance.” ‘The words 7 and mine consti-
tute ignorance. What is the great end of all, you
shall now learn from me. It is sowl, —one in all
bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, preeminent
over nature, exempt from birth, growth and decay,
omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, indepen-
dent, unconnected with unrealities, with name,
species and the rest, in time past, present and to
come. The knowledge that this spirit, which is
essentially one, 1s in one’s own and in all other
bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity
of things. As one diffusive air, passing through
the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the
notes of a scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit
is single, though its forms be manifold, arising
from the consequences of acts. When the differ-
ence of the investing form, as that of god or the
rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction.” ‘ The
whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who
is identical with all things, and is to be regarded
by the wise as not differing from, but as the same
as themselves. I neither am going nor coming ;
nor is my dwelling in any one place ; nor art thou,
thou; nor are others, others; noram I, I.” As if
he had said, ‘ All is for the soul, and the soul is
Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient paint-
ings; and light is whitewash; and durations are
deceptive ; and form 1s imprisonment; and heaven
52 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
itself a decoy.’ That which the soul seeks is reso
lution into being above form, out of Tartarus and
out of heaven,.— liberation from nature.
If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in
which all things are absorbed, action tends directly
backwards to diversity. The first is the course
or gravitation of mind; the second is the power
of nature. Nature is the manifold. The unity
absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and
creates. These two principles reappear and inter-
penetrate all things, all thought; the one, the
many. One is being; the other, intellect: one is
\ necessity; the other, freedom : one, rest; the other,
\ motion : one, power; the other, distribution: one,
' strength; the other, pleasure: one, consciousness ;
the other, definition: one, genius; the other, talent:
one, earnestness ; the other, knowledge: one, pos-
session; the other, trade: one, caste; the other,
culture: one, king; the other, democracy: and, if
we dare carry these generalizations a step higher,
and name the last tendency of both, we might
say, that the end of the one is escape from organ-
ization, — pure science; and the end of the other
is the highest instrumentality, or use of means, or
executive deity.
Each student adheres, by temperament and by
habit, to the first or to the second of these gods of
the mind. By religion, he tends to unity; by in.
PLATOR Oh 1 i PHILOSOPHER. 53
tellect, or by the senses, to the many. A_ too
rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to
parts and particulars, are the twin dangers of spec-
ulation.
To this partiality the history of nations corre-
sponded. The country of unity, of immovable insti-
tutions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in ab-|
stractions, of men faithful in doctrine and in prac-|
tice to the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, immense \
fate, is Asia; and it realizes this faith in the social |
institution of caste. On the other side, the genius
of Europe is active and creative : it resists caste by
culture ; its philosophy was a discipline; it is a
i
land of arts, inventions, trade, freedom. If the >
East loved infinity, the West delighted in bounda-
ries. )
European civility is the triumph of talent, the
extension of system, the sharpened understanding,
adaptive skill, delight in forms, delight in manifes-
tation, in comprehensible results. Pericles, Athens,
Greece, had been working in this element with the
joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of
the detriment of an excess. They saw before them
no sinister political economy ; no ominous Malthus ;
no Paris or London; no pitiless subdivision of
classes, — the doom of the pin-makers, the doom of
the weavers, of dressers, of stockingers, of carders,
of spinners, of colliers; no Ireland; no Indian
54 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
caste, superinduced by the efforts of Europe to
throw it off. The understanding was in its health
and prime. Art was in its splendid novelty.
‘They cut the Pentelican marble as if it were snow, )
and their perfect works in architecture and sculp-
sure seemed things of course, not more difficult
than the completion of a new ship at the Medford
yards, or new mills at Lowell. These things are
in course, and may be taken for granted. The Ro-
man legion, Byzantine legislation, English trade,
the saloons of Versailles, the cafés of Paris, the
steam-mill, steamboat, steam-coach, may all be seen
in perspective; the town-meeting, the ballot-box,
the newspaper and cheap press.
Meantime, Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern pil-
erimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which
all things are absorbed. The unity of Asia and
the detail of Europe; the infinitude of the Asiatic
soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-mak-
ing, surface-seeking, opera-going Europe, — Plato
came to join, and, by contact, to enhance the en-
ergy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia
are in his brain. Metaphysics and natural philos-
ophy expressed the genius of Europe ; he substructs
the religion of Asia, as the base.
In short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of
the two elements. It is as easy to be great as to
be small. / The reason why we do not at once be
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 55
lieve in admirable souls is because they are not in
our experience. In actual life, they are so rare as
to be incredible ; but primarily there is not only no
presumption against them, but the strongest pre-
sumption in favor of their appearance. but
whether voices were heard in the sky, or not:
whether his mother or his father dreamed that the
infant man-child was the son of Apollo; whether
a swarm of bees settled on his lips, or not;—({a \,
man who could see two sides of a thing was. born.) |
The wonderful synthesis so familiar in nature ; the
upper and the under side of the medal of Jove
the union of impossibilities, which reappears in
every object ; ius real and its ideal power, — was
now also transferred entire to the consciousness of
a man. ij
The balanced soul came. If he loved abstract
truth, he saved himself by propounding the most
popular of all principles, the absolute good, which
rules rulers, and’ judges the judge. If he made
transcendental distinctions, he fortified himself by
drawing all his illustrations from sources disdained
by orators and polite conversers ; from mares and
puppies; from pitchers and soup-ladles ; from cooks
and criers; the shops of potters, horse-doctors,
butchers and fishmongers. He cannot forgive in
himself a partiality, but is resolved that the two
poles of thought shall appear in his statement.
56 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
His argument and his sentence are self-poised and
spherical. The two poles appear; yes, and be-
come two hands, to grasp and appropriate their
own.
Every great artist has been such by synthesis.
Our strength is transitional, alternating ; or, shall
I say, a thread of two strands. The sea-shore, sea
seen from shore, shore seen from sea; the taste of
two metals in contact; and our enlarged powers at
the approach and at the departure of a friend; the
experience of poetic creativeness, which is not
found in staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but
in transitions from one to the other, which must
therefore be adroitly managed to present as much
transitional surface as possible; this command of
two elements must explain the power and the
charm of Plato. Art expresses the one or the
same by the different. Thought seeks to know
unity in unity ; poetry to show it by variety ; that
is, always by an object or symbol. Plato keeps the
two vases, one of ether and one of pigment, at his
side, and invariably uses both. ‘Things added to
things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories.
Things used as language are inexhaustibly attrac-
tive. Plato turns incessantly the obverse and the
reverse of the medal of Jove.
To take an example: — The physical philoso-
pbers had sketched each his theory of the world;
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. or
the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit; the
ories mechanical and chemical in their genius.
Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all nat-
ural laws and causes, feels these, as second causes,
to be no theories of the world but bare inventories
and lists. To the study of nature he therefore
prefixes the dogma, —‘“ Let us declare the cause
which led the Supreme Ordainer to produce and
compose the universe. He was good; and he who
is good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy,
he wished that all things should be as much as
possible like himself. Whosoever, taught by wise
men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the
origin and foundation of the world, will be in the
truth.” “ All things are for the sake of the good,
and it is the cause of every thing beautiful.” This
dogma animates and impersonates his philosophy.
The synthesis which makes the character of his
mind appears in all his talents. Where there is
ereat compass of wit, we usually find excellencies
that combine easily in the living man, but in de-
scription appear incompatible. The mind of Plato
is not to be exhibited by a Chinese catalogue, but
is to be apprehended by an original mind in the),
exercise of its original power. In him the freest
abandonment is united with the precision of a
geometer. His daring imagination gives him the
more solid grasp of facts; as the birds of highest
58 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
flight have the strongest alar bones. His patrician
polish, his intrinsic elegance, edged by an irony
so subtle that it stings and paralyzes, adorn the
soundest health and strength of frame. According:
to the old sentence, “If Jove should descend to
the earth, he would speak in the style of Plato.”
With this palatial air there is, for the direct
aim of several of his works and: running through
the tenor of them all, a certain earnestness, which
mounts, in the Republic. and in the Phedo, to
piety. He has been charged with feigning sickness
at the time of the death of Socrates. But the anec-
dotes that have come down from the times attest
his manly interference before the people in his
master’s behalf, since even the savage ery of the
assembly to Plato is preserved; and the indigna-
tion towards popular government, in many of his
pieces, expresses a personal exasperation. He has
a probity, a native reverence for justice and honor,
and a humanity which makes him tender for the
superstitions of the people. Add to this, he be-
lieves that poetry, prophecy and the high insight
are from a wisdom of which man is not master;
that the gods never philosophize, but by a celestial
mania these miracles are accomplished. Horsed
on these winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions,
visits worlds which flesh cannot enter; he saw the
souls in pain, he hears the doom of the judge, he
ay
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 59
beholds the penal metempsychosis, the Fates, with
the rock and shears, and hears the intoxicating
hum of their spindle.
But his circumspection never forsook him. One
would say he had read the inscription on the gates
of Busyrane,— ‘“ Be bold;” and on the second
gate, —‘‘ Be bold, be bold,,and evermore be bold; ”
and then again had paused well at the third gate,
—‘“ Be not too bold.” His strength is like the
momentum of a falling planet, and his mee
the return of its due and perfect curve, —so excel-/
lent is his Greek love of boundary and his skill
in definition. In reading logarithms one is not
more secure than in following Plato in his flights. |
Nothing can be colder than his head, when the
lightnings of his imagination are playing in the
sky. He has finished his thinking before he;
brings it to the reader, and he abounds in the sur- }
prises of a literary master. He has that opulence
which furnishes, at every turn, the precise weapon
he needs. As the rich man wears no more gar-
ments, drives no more horses, sits in no more
chambers than the poor,— but has that one dress,
or equipage, or instrument, which is fit for the
hour and the need; so Plato, in his plenty, is never
restricted, but has the fit word. . There is indeed
no weapon in all the armory of wit which he did
not possess and use, — epic, analysis, mania, intul-
60 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
tion, music, satire and irony, down to the custom-
ary and polite. His illustrations are poetry and his
jests illustrations. Socrates’ profession of obstetric
art is good philosophy; and his finding that word
“cookery,” and “adulatory art,” for rhetoric, in
the Gorgias, does us a substantial service still.
No orator can measure in effect with him who can
give good nicknames.
What moderation and understatement and check-
ing his thunder in mid volley! He has good-na-
turedly furnished the courtier and citizen with all
that can be said against the schools. ‘* For philos-
ophy is an elegant thing, if any one modestly med-
dles with it; but if he is conversant with it more
than is becoming, it corrupts the man.” He could
well afford to be generous,—he, who from the
sunlike centrality and reach of his vision, had a
faith without cloud. Such as his perception, was
his speech: he plays with the doubt and makes the
most of it: he paints and quibbles; and by and by
comes a sentence that moves the sea and land.
The admirable earnest comes not only at intervals,
in the perfect yes and no of the dialogue, but in
bursts of light. “I, therefore, Callicles, am per-
suaded by these accounts, and consider how I may
exhibit my soul before the judge in a healthy con-
dition. Wherefore, disregarding the honors that
most men value, and looking to the truth, I shall
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 61
endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can;
and when [ die, to die so. And I invite all other
men, to the utmost of my power; and you too I
m turn invite to this contest, which, I affirm,
surpasses all contests here.”
He is a great average man; one who, to the best
thinking, adds a proportion and equality in his fac-
ulties, so that men see in him their own dreams and
glimpses made available and made to pass for what
they are. A great common-sense is his warrant
and qualification to be the world’s interpreter. He
has reason, as all the philosophic and poetic class
have: but he has also what they have not, — this
strong solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the
appearances of the world, and build a bridge from
the streets of cities to the Atlantis. He omits never
this graduation, but slopes his thought, however
picturesque the precipice on one side, to an access
from the plain. He never writes in ecstacy, or
catches us up into poetic raptures. at
Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could
prostrate himself on the earth and cover his eyes
whilst he adored that which cannot be numbered,
or gauged, or known, or named: that of which
every thing can be affirmed and denied: that
“which is entity and nonentity.” He called it
super-essential. He even stood ready, as in the
62 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Parmenides, to demonstrate that it was so,— that
this Being exceeded the limits of intellect. No
man ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable.
Having paid his homage, as for the human race,
to the Illimitable, he then stood erect, and for the
human race affirmed, ‘And yet things are know-
able!’ —that is, the Asia in his mind was first
heartily honored, —the ocean of love and power,
before form, before will, before knowledge, the
Same, the Good, the One; and now, refreshed and
empowered by this worship, the instinct of Eu-
rope, namely, culture, returns ; and he cries, ‘ Yet
things are knowable!’ They are knowable, be-
cause being _ from one, things correspond. ee
is a scale; and the ‘correspondence of heaven to
earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole,
is our guide. As there is a science of stars,
called astronomy; a science of quantities, called
' mathematics; a science of qualities, called chem-
(istry 3 so there is a science of sciences, —I call
(it Dialectic, — which is the Intellect discriminat-
= the false and the true. It rests on the obser-
,/ vation of identity and diversity; for to judge is
WY
/
to unite to an object the notion which belongs to
it. The sciences, even the best,— mathematics and
astronomy, — are like sportsmen, who seize what-
ever prey offers, even without being able to make
any use of it. Dialectic must teach the use of
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 63
them. ‘ This is of that rank that no intellectual
man will enter on any study for its own sake, but
only with a view to advance himself in that one
sole science which embraces all.” -
“The essence or peculiarity of man is to com-
prehend a whole; or that which in the diversity
of sensations can be comprised under a rational
unity.’ ‘The soul which has never perceived
the truth, cannot pass into the human form.” I
announce to men the Intellect. I announce the
good of being interpenetrated by the mind that
made nature: this benefit, namely, that it can
understand nature, which it made and maketh.
Nature is good, but intellect is better: as the law-
giver is before the law-receiver. I give you joy,
O sons of men! that truth is altogether whole-
some; that we have hope to search out what
might be the very self of everything. The mis-
ery of man is to be baulked of the sight of essence
and to be stuffed with conjectures; but the su-
preme good is reality; the supreme beauty is
reality ; and all virtue and all felicity depend on
this science of the real: for courage is nothing
else than knowledge; the fairest fortune that can
befall man is to be guided by his demon to that
which is truly his own. ‘This also is the essence
of justice, —to attend every one his own: nay,
the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at except
64 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
through direct contemplation of the divine essence.
Courage then! for “the persuasion that we must
search that which we do not know, will render
us, beyond comparison, better, braver and more
industrious than if we thought it impossible to
discover what we do not know, and useless to
search for it.” He secures a position not to be
commanded, by his passion for reality; valuing
philosophy only as it is the pleasure of conversing
with real being.
Thus, full of the genius of Europe, he said, Cul-
ture. He saw the institutions of Sparta and recog-
nized, more genially one would say than any since,
the hope of education. He delighted in every ac-
complishment, in every graceful and useful and
truthful performance; above all in the splendors
of genius and intellectual achievement. ‘ The
whole of life, O Socrates,” said Glauco, “ is, with
the wise, the measure of hearing such discourses as
these.” What a price he sets on the feats of tal-
ent, on the powers of Pericles, of Isocrates, of Par-
menides! What price above price on the talents
themselves! He called the several faculties, gods,
in his beautiful personation. What value he gives
to the art of gymnastic in education ; what to ge-
ometry ; what to music; what to astronomy, whose
appeasing and medicinal power he celebrates! In
the Timzus he indicates the highest employment
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 65
of the eyes. ‘“ By us it is asserted that God in-
vented and bestowed sight on us for this purpose,
— that on surveying the circles of intelligence in
the heavens, we might properly employ those of our
own minds, which, though disturbed when com-
pared with the others that are uniform, are still
allied to their circulations; and that having thus
learned, and being naturally possessed of a correct
reasoning faculty, we might, by imitating the uni-
form revolutions of divinity, set right our own wan-
derings and blunders.” And in the Republic, —
“ By each of these disciplines a certain organ of
the soul is both purified and reanimated which is
blinded and buried by studies of another kind ; an
organ better worth saving than ten thousand eyes,
since truth is perceived by this alone.” .
He said, Culture ; but he first admitted its basis,
and gave immeasurably the first place to advan-
tages of nature. His patrician tastes laid stress on
the distinctions of birth. In the doctrine of the
organic character and disposition is the origin of
caste. ‘Such as were fit to govern, into their com-
position the informing Deity mingled gold; into
the military, silver; iron and brass for husbandmen
and artificers.” The Kast confirms itself, in all
ages, in this faith. The Koran is explicit on this
point of caste. ‘ Men have their metal, as of gold
and silver. Those of you who were the worthy
VOL. Iv. 5
66 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
ones in the state of ignorance, will be the worthy
ones in the state of faith, as soon as you embrace
it.” Plato was not less firm. ‘Of the five orders
of things, only four can be taught to the generality
of men.” In the Republic he insists on the tem-
peraments of the youth, as first of the first.
A happier example of the stress laid on nature
is in the dialogue with the young Theages, Who
wishes to receive lessons from Socrates. Socrates
declares that if some have grown wise by asso-
ciating with him, no thanks are due to him; but,
simply, whilst they were with him they grew wise,
not because of him; he pretends not to know the
way of it. “Itis adverse to many, nor can those
be benefited by associating with me whom the De-
mon opposes ; so that it is not possible for me to
live with these. With many however he does not
prevent me from conversing, who yet are not at all
benefited by associating with me. Such, O The-
ages, is the association with me; for, if it pleases
the God, you will make great and rapid _profi-
ciency: you will not, if he does not please. Judge
whether it is not safer to be instructed by some
one of those who have power over the benefit which
they impart to men, than by me, who benefit or not,
just as it may happen.” As if he had said, ‘I have
no system. I cannot be answerable for you. You
will be what you must. If there is love between
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 67
us, inconceivably delicious and profitable will our
intercourse be; if not, your time is lost and you
will only annoy me. I shall seem to you stupid,
and the reputation I have, false. Quite above us,
beyond the will of you or me, is this secret affinity
or repulsion laid. All my good is magnetic, and
I educate, not by lessons, but by going about -my
business.’ |
He said, Culture; he said, Nature; and he faile
not to add, ‘ There is also the divine.’ There is
no thought in any mind but it quickly tends to
convert itself into a power and organizes a huge
instrumentality of means. Plato, lover of limits,
loved the illimitable, saw the enlargement and no-
bility which come from truth itself and good itself,
and attempted as if on the part of the human in-
tellect, once for all to do it adequate homage, —
homage fit for the immense soul to receive, and yet
homage becoming the intellect to render. He said
then ‘Our faculties run out into infinity, and re-
turn to us thence. We can define but a little way;
but here is a fact which will not be skipped, and
Which to shut our eyes upon is suicide. All things
are in a scale; and, begin where we will, ascend
and ascend. All things are symbolical; and what
we call results are beginnings.’
A key to the method and completeness of Plato
is his twice bisected line. After he has illustrated
68 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
the relation between the absolute good and true
and the forms of the intelligible world, he says :—
*“* Let there be a line cut in two unequal parts.
Cut again each of these two main parts, — one
representing the visible, the other the intelligible
world, — and let these two new sections represent
the bright part and the dark part of each of these
worlds. You will have, for one of the sections of
the visible world, images, that is, both shadows and
reflections ;—— for the other section, the objects of
these images, that is, plants, animals, and the works
of art and nature. Then divide the intelligible
world in like manner; the one section will be of
opinions and hypotheses, and the other section of
truths.” To these four sections, the four opera-
tions of the soul correspond, — conjecture, faith,
understanding, reason. As every pool reflects the
image of the sun, so every thought and thing re-
stores us an image and creature of the supreme
Good. The universe is perforated by a million
channels for his activity. All things mount and
mount.
All his thought has this ascension ; in Pheedrusy
teaching that beauty is the most lovely of all
things, exciting hilarity and shedding desire and
confidence through the universe wherever it en-
ters, and it enters in some degree into all things:
—but that there is another, which is as much
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 69
more beautiful than beauty as beauty is than
chaos ; namely, wisdom, which our wonderful organ
of sight cannot reach unto, but which, could it be
seen, would ravish us with its perfect reality. He
has the same regard to it as the source of excel-
lence in works of art. When an artificer, he says,
in the fabrication of any work, looks to that which
always subsists according to the same; and, em-
ploying a model of this kind, expresses its idea and
power in his work, —it must follow that his pro-
duction should be beautiful. But when he beholds
that which is born and dies, it will be far from
beautiful.
Thus ever: the Banquet is a teaching in the
same spirit, familiar now to all the poetry and to
all the sermons of the world, that the love of the
sexes is initial, and symbolizes at a distance the
passion of the soul for that immense lake of beauty
it exists to seek. This faith in the Divinity is
never out of mind, and constitutes the ground of
all his dogmas. Body cannot teach wisdom ; -—
God only. In the same mind he constantly affirms
that virtue cannot be taught; that it is not a sci-
ence, but an inspiration, that the greatest goods
are produced to us through mania and are as-
signed to us by a divine gift.
This leads me to that central figure which he
has established in his Academy as the organ
70 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
through which every considered opinion shall be
announced, and whose biography he has likewise se
labored that the historic facts are lost in the light
of Plato’s mind. [ Socrates and Plato are the dou-
(ble star which the most powerful instruments will
‘ not entirely separate.) Socrates again, in his traits
and genius, is the best example of that synthesis
which constitutes Plato’s extraordinary power.
_Socrates, a man of humble stem, but honest
enough ; of the commonest history; of a personal
homeliness so remarkable as to be a cause of wit
in others: — the rather that his broad good nature
and exquisite taste for a joke invited the sally,
which was sure to be paid. The players person-
ated him on the stage; the potters copied his ugly
face on their stone jugs. He was a cool fellow,
adding to his humor a perfect temper and a knowl-
edge of his man, be he who he might whom he
talked with, which laid the companion open to cer-
tain defeat in any debate, — and in debate he im-
moderately delighted. The young men are prodig-
iously fond of him and invite him to their feasts,
whither he goes for conversation. He can drink,
too; has the strongest head in Athens; and after
leaving the whole party under the table, goes away
as if nothing had happened, to begin new dialogues
with somebody that is sober. In short, he was
what our country-people call an old one.
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 71
He affected a good many citizen-like tastes, was
monstrously fond of Athens, hated trees, never
willingly went beyond the walls, knew the old
characters, valued the bores and philistines, thought
every thing in Athens a little better than anything
in any other place. He was plain as a Quaker in
habit and speech, affected low phrases, and illustra-
tions from cocks and quails, soup-pans and syca-
more-spoons, grooms and farriers, and unnameable
offices, — especially if he talked with any superfine
person. He had a Franklin-like wisdom. Thus
he showed one who was afraid to go on foot to
Olympia, that it was no more than his daily walk
within doors, if continuously extended, would easily
reach.
Plain old uncle as he was, with his great ears,
an immense talker, —the rumor ran that on one
or two occasions, in the war with Beeotia, he had
shown a determination which had covered the re-
treat of a troop; and there was some story that
under cover of folly, he had, in the city govern-
ment, when one day he chanced to hold a seat
there, evinced a courage in opposing singly the
popular voice, which had well-nigh ruined him.
He is very poor; but then he is hardy as a soldier,
and can live on a few olives ; usually, in the strict-
est sense, on bread and water, except when enter-
tained by his friends. His necessary expenses
ne REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
were exceedingly small, and no one could live as he
did. He wore no under garment; his upper gar-
ment was the same for summer and winter, and he
went barefooted ; and it is said that to procure the
- pleasure, which he loves, of talking at his ease all
day with the most elegant and cultivated young
men, he will now and then return to his shop and
earve statues, good or bad, for sale. However that
be, it is certain that he had grown to delight in
nothing else than this conversation; and that, un-
der his hypocritical pretence of knowing nothing,
he attacks and brings down all the fine speakers,
all the fine philosophers of Athens, whether natives
or strangers from Asia Minor and the islands.
Nobody can refuse to talk with him, he is so hon-
est and really curious to know; a man who was
willingly confuted if he did not speak the truth,
and who willingly confuted others asserting what
was false; and not less pleased when confuted than
when confuting ; for he thought not any evil hap-
pened to men of such a magnitude as false opinion
respecting the just and unjust. A pitiless dis-
putant, who knows nothing, but the bounds of
whose conquering intelligence no man had ever
reached ; whose temper was imperturbable ; whose
dreadful logic was always leisurely and sportive ;
so careless and ignorant as to disarm the wariest
and draw them, in the pleasantest manner, into
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 73
horrible doubts and confusion. But he always
knew the way out; knew it, yet would not tell it.
No escape; he drives them to terrible choices
by his dilemmas, and tosses the Hippiases and
Gorgiases with their grand reputations, as a boy
tosses his balls. The tyrannous realist !— Meno
has discoursed a thousand times, at length, on vir-
tue, before many companies, and very well, as it ap-
peared to him; but at this moment he cannot even
tell what it is, — this cramp-fish of a Socrates has
so bewitched him.
This hard-headed humorist, whose strange con-
eeits, drollery and bonhommie diverted the young
patricians, whilst the rumor of his sayings and
quibbles gets abroad every day, — turns out, in the
sequel, to have a probity as invincible as his logic,
and to be either insane, or at least, under cover
of this play, enthusiastic in his religion. When
accused before the judges of subverting the popu-
lar creed, he affirms the immortality of the soul,
the future reward and punishment; and refusing
to recant, in a caprice of the popular government
was condemned to die, and sent to the prison.
Socrates entered the prison and took away all
ignominy from the place, which could not be a
prison whilst he was there. .Crito bribed the
jailer; but Socrates would not go out by treach-
ery. ‘ Whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is
74 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
to be preferred before justice. These things I
hear like pipes and drums, whose sound makes me
deaf to every thing you say.” The fame of this
prison, the fame of the discourses there and the
drinking of the hemlock are one of the most prec-
ious passages in the history of the world.
The rare coincidence, in one ugly body, of the
droll and the martyr, the keen street and market
debater with the sweetest saint known to any his-
tory at that time, had forcibly struck the mind of
Plato, so capacious of these contrasts; and the fig-
ure of Socrates by a necessity placed itself in the
foreground of the scene, as the fittest dispenser of
the intellectual treasures he had to communicate.
It was a rare fortune that this Alsop of the mob
and this robed scholar should meet, to make each
other immortal in their mutual faculty. The
strange synthesis in the character of Socrates
capped the synthesis in the mind of Plato. More-
over by this means he was able, in the direct way
and without envy to avail himself of the wit and
weight of Socrates, to which unquestionably his
own debt was great; and these derived again their
principal advantage from the perfect art of Plato.
It remains to say that the defect of Plato in
power is only that which results inevitably from
his quality. He is intellectual in his aim; and
therefore, in expression, literary. Mounting inte
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 15
heaven, diving into the pit, expounding the laws
of the state, the passion of love, the remorse of
crime, the hope of the parting soul, — he is liter-
ary, and never otherwise. It is almost the sole de-
duction from the merit of Plato that his writings
have not, —what is no doubt incident to this reg-
nancy of intellect in his work, — the vital author-
ity which the screams of prophets and the sermons
of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. There is
an interval; and to cohesion, contact is necessary.
I know not what can be said in reply to this
criticism but that we have come to a fact in the
nature of things: an oak is not an orange. The
qualities of sugar remain with sugar, and those of
salt with salt. .
In the second place, he has not a system. The
dearest defenders and disciples are at fault. He
attempted a theory of the universe, and his theory
is not complete or self-evident. One man thinks
he means this, and another that; he has said one
thing in one place, and the reverse of it in another
place. He is charged with having failed to make
the transition from ideas to matter. Here is the
world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest
piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a
mark of haste, or botching, or second thought ; but
the theory of the world isa thing of shreds and
patches. |
The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.
76 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Plato would willingly have a Platonism, a known
and accurate expression for the world, and it should
be accurate. It shall be the world passed through
the mind of Plato, — nothing less. Every atom
shall have the Platonic tinge; every atom, every
relation or quality you knew before, you shall know
again and find here, but now ordered ; not nature,
but art. And you shall feel that Alexander in-
deed overran, with men and horses, some countries
of the planet; but countries, and things of which
countries are made, elements, planet itself, laws
of planet and of men, have passed through this
man as bread into his body, and become no longer
bread, but body: so all this mammoth morsel has
become Plato. He has clapped copyright on the
world. This is the ambition of individualism. But
the mouthful proves too large. Boa constrictor
has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. He falls
abroad in the attempt; and biting, gets strangled :
the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own
teeth. There he perishes: unconquered nature
lives on and forgets him. So it fares with all: so
must it fare with Plato. In view of eternal na-
ture, Plato turns out to be philosophical exercita-
tions. He argues on this side and on that. The
acutest German, the lovingest disciple, could never
\tell what Platonism was; indeed, admirable texts
/can be quoted on both sides of every great ques
tion from him.
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. TT
These things we are forced to say if we must
eonsider the effort of Plato or of any philosopher
to dispose of nature, — which will not be disposed
of. No power of genius has ever yet had the
smallest success in-explaining existence. The per-
fect enigma remains. But there is an. injustice in
assuming this ambition for Plato. Let us not
seem to treat with flippancy his venerable name.
Men, in preportion to their intellect, have admitted ;,
his transcendent claims. The way to know him is |
to compare him, not with nature, but with other /
men. How many ages have gone by, and he re-
mains unappreached! A chief structure of human
wit, like Karnac, or the mediwval cathedrals, or
the Etrurian remains, it requires all the breath of
human faculty to know it. I think it is trueliest
seen when seen with the most respect. His sense
deepens, his merits multiply, with study. When
we say, Here is a fine collection of fables; or when
we praise the style, or the common sense, or arith-
metic, we speak as boys, and much of our im-
patient criticism of the dialectic, I suspect, is ne
better.
The criticism is like our impatience of miles,
when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that
a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty
yards. The great-eyed Plato proportioned the
lights and shades after the genius of our life.
PLATO: NEW READINGS.
—
THe publication, in Mr. Bohn’s “Serial Libra:
ry,’ of the excellent translations of Plato, which
we esteem one of the chief benefits the cheap press
has yielded, gives us an occasion to take hastily a
few more notes of the elevation and bearings of
this fixed star; or to add a bulletin, like the jour-
nals, of Plato at the latest dates.
Modern science, by the extent of its generaliza-
tion, has learned to indemnify the student of man
for the defects of individuals by tracing growth
and ascent in races; and, by the simple expedient
of lighting up the vast background, generates a
feeling of complacency and hope. The human
being has the saurian and the plant in his rear.
His arts and sciences, the easy issue of his brain,
look glorious when prospectively beheld from the
distant brain of ox, crocodile and fish. Jt seems
as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind
her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned
out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu and
PLATO; NEW READINGS. 79
Columbus, was no wise discontented with the re-
sult. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.
These were a clear amelioration of trilobite and
saurus, and a good basis for further proceeding.
With this artist, time and space are cheap, and she
is insensible to what you say of tedious prepara-
tion. She waited tranquilly the flowing periods of
paleontology, for the hour to be struck when man
should arrive. Then periods must pass before the
motion of the earth can be suspected ; then before
the map of the instincts and the cultivable powers
can be drawn. But as of races, so the successicn
of individual men is fatal and beautiful, and Plato
has the fortune in the history of mankind to mark
an epoch.
Plato’s fame does not stand on a syllogism, or
on any masterpieces of the Socratic reasoning, or
on any thesis, as for example the immortality of
the soul. He is more than an expert, or a school-
man, or a geometer, or the prophet of a peculiar
message. He represents the privilege of the in-
tellect, the power, namely, of carrying up every
fact to successive platforms and so disclosing in
every fact a germ of expansion. ‘These expansions
are in the essence of thought. The naturalist
would never help us to them by any discoveries
of the extent of the universe, but is as poor when
cataloguing the resolved nebula of Orion, as when
80 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
measuring the angles of an acre. But the Repub-
lie of Plato, by these expansions, may be said to
require and so to anticipate the astronomy of
Laplace. The expansions are organic. ‘The mind
does not create what it perceives, any more than
the eye creates the rose. In ascribing to Plato the
merit of announcing them, we only say, Here was
a more complete man, who could apply to nature
the whole scale of the senses, the understanding
and the reason. These expansions or extensions
consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the
horizon falls on our natural vision, and by this
second sight discovering the long lines of law
which shoot in every direction. Everywhere he
stands on a path which has no end, but runs con-
tinuously round the universe. Therefore every
word becomes an exponent of nature. Whatever
he looks upon discloses a second sense, and ulterior
senses. His perception of the generation of con-
traries, of death out of life and life out of death, —
that law by which, in nature, decomposition is re-
composition, and putrefaction and cholera are only
signals of a new creation ; his discernment of the
little in the large and the large in the small;
studying the state in the citizen and the citizen
in the state; and leaving it doubtful whether he
exhibited the Republic as an allegory on the edu-
cation of the private soul; his beautiful definitions
PLATO; NEW READINGS. Si
of ideas, of time, of form, of figure, of the line,
sometimes hypothetically given, as his defining of
virtue, courage, justice, temperance; his love of
the apologue, and his apologues themselves ; the
eave of Trophonius ; the ring of Gyges; the char-
ioteer and two horses; the gelden, silver, brass and
iron temperaments; Theuth and Thamus ; and the
visions of Hades and the Fates,—fables which
have imprinted themselves in the human memory
like the signs of the zodiac; his soliform eye and
his boniform soul; his doctrine of assimilation; his
doctrine of reminiscence; his clear vision of the
laws of return, or reaction, which secure instant
justice throughout the universe, instanced every-
where, but specially in the doctrine, “ what comes
from God to us, returns from us to God,” and in
Socrates’ belief that the laws below are sisters of
the laws above.
More striking examples are his moral conclu-
sions. Plato affirms the coincidence of science
and virtue; for vice can never know itself and
virtue, but virtue knows both itself and _ vice.
The eye attested that justice was best, as long as
it was profitable ; Plato affirms that it is profitable
throughout ; that the profit is intrinsic, though the
just conceal his justice from gods and men; that
it is better to suffer injustice than to do it; that
the sinner ought to covet punishment; that the
WOL. Iv. 6
§2 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
lie was more hurtful than homieide; and that
ignorance, or the involuntary lie, was more calami-
tous than involuntary homicide; that the soul is
unwillingly deprived of true opinions, and that no
man sins willingly; that the order or proceeding
of nature was from the mind to the body, and,
though a sound body cannot restore an unsound
mind, yet a good soul can, by its virtue, render the
body the best possible. The intelligent have a
right over the ignorant, namely, the right of in-
structing them. The right punishment of one out
of tune is to make him play in tune; the fine
which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay,
is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards
shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be in-
structed that there is gold and silver in their souls,
which will make men willing to give them every
thing which they need.
This second sight explains the stress laid on
geometry. He saw that the globe of earth was
not more lawful and precise than was the super-
sensible; that a celestial geometry was in place
there, as a logic of lines and angles here below;
that the world was throughout mathematical; the
proportions are constant of oxygen, azote and lime;
there is just so much water and slate and magnesia;
not less are the proportions constant of the mora]
elements.
a
PLATO; NEW READINGS. 83
This eldest Goethe, hating varnish and false-
hood, delighted in revealing the real at the base
of the accidental; in discovering connection, con-
tinuity and representation everywhere, hating insu-
lation; and appears like the god of wealth among
the cabins of vagabonds, opening power and capa-
bility in everything he touches. Ethical science
was new and vacant when Plato could write thus:
—‘“QOf all whose arguments are left to the men
of the present time, no one has ever yet condemned
injustice, or praised justice, otherwise than as re-
spects the repute, honors and emoluments arising
therefrom ; while, as respects either of them in it-
self, and subsisting by its own power in the soul
of the possessor, and concealed both from gods
and men, no one has yet sufficiently investigated,
either in poetry or prose writings, — how, namely,
that injustice is the greatest of all the evils that
the soul has within it, and justice the greatest
good.”
His definition of ideas, as what is simple,)
permanent, uniform and self-existent, forever dis-)
criminating them from the notions of the under-/
standing, marks an era in the world. He was
born to behold the self-evolving power of spirit,
endless, generator of new ends; a power which is
the key at once to the centrality and the eva-
wescence of things. Plato is so centred that he
84 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
can well spare all his dogmas. Thus the fact of
knowledge and ideas reveals to him the fact of
eternity; and the doctrine of reminiscence he
offers as the most probable particular explication.
Call that fanciful,—it matters not: the connec-
tion between our knowledge and the abyss of
being is still real, and the explication must be
not less magnificent.
He has indicated every eminent point in spec-
ulation. He wrote on the scale of the mind
itself, so that all things have symmetry in his
tablet. He put in all the past, without weariness,
and descended into detail with a courage like
that he witnessed in nature.. One would say
that his forerunners had mapped out each a farm
or a district or an island, in intellectual geog-
raphy, but that Plato first drew the sphere. He
domesticates the soul in nature: man is the micro-
cosm. All the circles of the visible heaven repre-
sent as many circles in the rational soul. There
is no lawless particle, and there is nothing casual
in the action of the human mind. The names of
things, too, are fatal, following the nature of
things. All the gods of the Pantheon are, by
their names, significant of a profound sense. The
gods are the ideas. Pan is speech, or manifesta-
tion; Saturn, the contemplative; Jove, the regal
soul; and Mars, passion. Venus is proportion;
PLATO; NEW READINGS. 85
Calliope, the soul of the world; Aglaia, intellec-
tual illustration.
These thoughts, in sparkles of light, had ap-
peared often to pious and to poetic souls; but this
well-bred, all-knowing Greek geometer comes with
command, gathers them all up into rank and gra-
dation, the Euclid of holiness, and marries the
two parts of nature. Before all men, he saw the
intellectual values of the moral sentiment. He
describes his own ideal, when he paints, in Ti-
meus, a god leading things from disorder into
order. He kindled a fire so truly in the centre
that we see the sphere illuminated, and can dis-
tinguish poles, equator and lines of latitude,
every arc and node: a theory so averaged, so
modulated, that you would say the winds of ages
had swept through this rhythmic structure, and
not that it was the brief extempore blotting of
one short-lived scribe. Hence it lias happened
that a very well-marked class of souls, namely
those who delight in giving a spiritual, that is, an
ethico-intellectual expression to every truth, by
exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet legitimate
to it,— are said to Platonize. Thus, Michael An-
gelo is a Platonist in his sonnets: Shakspeare is
a Platonist when he writes,—
&
86 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
“ Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean,”
or,—
“He, that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fallen lord,
Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
And earns a place in the story.”
\ Hamlet is a pure Platonist, and ’tis the magnitude
_only of Shakspeare’s proper genius that hinders
him from being classed as the most eminent of
this school. Swedenborg, throughout his prose
poem of “ Conjugal Love,” is a Platonist.
His subtlety commended him to men of thought.
The secret of his popular success is the moral aim
which endeared him to mankind. ‘“ Intellect,” he
said, “is king of heaven and of earth;” but in
Plato, intellect is always moral. His writings
have also the sempiternal youth of poetry. For
their arguments, most of them, might have been
couched in sonnets: and poetry has never soared
higher than in the Timzus and the Phedrus. As
the poet, too, he is only contemplative. He did
not, like Pythagoras, break himself with an insti-
tution. All his painting in the Republic must be
esteemed mythical, with intent to bring out, some-
times in violent colors, his thought. You cannot
institute, without peril of charlatanism.
It was a high scheme, his absolute privilege
for the best (which, to make emphatic, he ex
PLATO; NEW READINGS. 87
pressed by community of women), as the premium
which he would set on grandeur. ‘There shall
be exempts of two kinds: first, those who by de-
merit have put themselves below protection,—
outlaws; and secondly, those who by eminence of
nature and desert are out of the reach of your
rewards. Let such be free of the city and above
the law. We confide them to themselves; let
them do with us as they will. Let none presume
to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo
and Socrates by village scales.
In his eighth book of the Republic, he throws a
little mathematical dust in our eyes. I am sorry
to see him, after such noble superiorities, permit-
ting the lie to governors. Plato plays Providence
a little with the baser sort, as people allow them-
selves with their dogs and cats. |
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SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC.
4 -
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‘
TI.
SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC.
AMONG eminent persons, those who are most
dear to men are not of the class which the econo-
mist calls producers: they have nothing in their
hands; they have not cultivated corn, nor made
bread ; they have not led out a colony, nor invented
a loom. A higher class, in the estimation and)
love of this city-building market-going race of man-
kind, are the poets, who, from the intellectual,
kingdom, feed the thought and imagination with |
ideas and pictures which raise men out of the
world of corn and money, and console them for the
short-comings of the day and the meanness of labor
and traffic. Then, also, the philosopher has his
value, who flatters the intellect of this laborer by
engaging him with subtleties which instruct him in
new faculties. Others may build cities; he is to
understand them and keep them in awe. But there
is a class who lead us into another region, — the
world of morals or of will. What is singular about
this region of thought is its claim. Wherever the
92 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
sentiment of right comes in, it takes precedence of
every thing else. For other things, I make poetry
\ of them ; but the moral sentiment makes poetry of
{ me.
I have sometimes thought that he would render
the greatest service to modern criticism, who
should draw the line of relation that subsists be-
tween Shakspeare and Swedenborg. The human
‘mind stands ever in perplexity, demanding intel-
lect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally of each
without the other. ‘The reconciler has not yet ap-
peared. If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is
our city of refuge. Yet the instincts presently
teach that the problem of essence must take pre-
cedence of all others ;— the questions of Whence ?
What? and Whither? and the solution of these_
must be in a life, and not ina book. A drama or
poem is a proximate or oblique reply; but Moses,
Menu, Jesus, work directly on this problem. The
atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grand-
eur which reduces all material magnificence to
toys, yet opens to every wretch that has reason the
doors of the universe. Almost with a fierce haste
it lays its empire on the man. In the language
of the Koran, “God said, the heaven and the
earth and all that is between them, think ye that
we created them in jest, and that ye shall not re-
turn tous?” Itis the kingdom of the will, and
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 93
by inspiring the will, which is the seat of personal.
ity, seems to convert the universe into a per:
son ; —
“The realms of being to no other bow,
Not only all are thine, but all are Thou.”
All men are commanded by the saint. The
Koran makes a distinct class of those who are by
nature good, and whose goodness has an influence
on others, and pronounces this class to be the aim
of creation: the other classes are admitted to the
feast of being, only as following in the train of
this. And the Persian poet exclaims to a soul of
this kind, —
“Go boldly forth, and feast on being’s banquet;
Thou art the called, — the rest admitted with thee.”
The privilege of this caste is an access to the
secrets and structure of nature by some ¢*higher
method than by experience. In common parlance,
what one man is said to learn by experience, a man
of extraordinary sagacity is said, without expe-
rience, to divine. The Arabians say, that Abul
Khain, the mystic, and Abu Ali Seena, the philos-
opher, conferred together; and, on parting, the
philosopher said, “ All that he sees, I know ;” and
the mystic said, “ All that he knows, I see.” If
one should ask the reason of this intuition, the
solution would lead us into that property which
94 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Plato denoted as Reminiscence, and which is im-
plied by the Bramins in the tenet of Transmigra-
tion. The soul having been often born, or, as the
Hindoos say, “travelling the path of existence
through thousands of births,” having beheld the
things which are here, those which are in heaven
and those which are beneath, there is nothing of
which she has not gained the knowledge: no won-
der that she is able to recollect, in regard to any
one thing, what formerly she knew. “For, all
things in nature being linked and related, and the
soul having heretofore known all, nothing hinders
but that any man who has recalled to mind, or ac-
cording to the common phrase has learned, one
thing only, should of himself recover all his ancient
knowledge, and find out again all the rest, if he
have but courage and faint not in the midst of his
researches. For inquiry and learning is reminis-
cence all.” How much more, if he that inquires
be a holy and godlike soul! For by being as-
similated to the original soul, by whom and after
whom all things subsist, the soul of man does then
easily flow into all things, and all things flow into
it: they mix; and he is present and sympathetic
with their structure and law.
This path is difficult, secret and beset with ter-
ror. The ancients called it ecstacy or absence, —
a getting out of their bodies to think. All relig.
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 95
ious history contains traces of the trance of saints,
—a beatitude, but without any sign of joy; ear-
nest, solitary, even sad; “ the flight,’ Plotinus
ealled it, “of the alone to the alone ;’’ Mvynors, the
closing of the eyes, — whence our word, J/ystic.
The trances of Socrates, Plotinus, Porphyry, Beh-
men, Bunyan, Fox, Pascal, Guyon, Swedenborg,
will readily come to mind. But what as readily
comes to mind is the accompaniment of disease.
This beatitude comes in terror, and with shocks to
the mind of the receiver.
“ It o’erinforms the tenement of clay,”
and drives the man mad; or gives a certain vio-
lent bias which taints his judgment. In the chief
examples of religious illumination somewhat mor-
bid has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable in-
erease of mental power. Must the highest good
drag after it a quality which neutralizes and dis-
eredits it ? —
“ Indeed, it takes
From our achievements, when performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.”
Shall we say, that the economical mother disburses
so much earth and so much fire, by weight and
meter, to make a man, and will not add a penny-
weight though a nation is perishing for a leader ?
Therefore the men of God purchased their science
\
96 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
by folly or pain. If you will have pure carbon,
carbunele, or diamond, to make the brain transpar-
ent, the trunk and organs shall be so much the
grosser: instead of porcelain they are potter’s
earth, clay, or mud.
In modern times no such remarkable example of
-.this introverted mind has occurred as in Kmanuel
_.Swedenborg, born in Stockholm, in_1688.. This
man, who appeared to his contemporaries a vision-
ary and elixir of moonbeams, no doubt led the most
real life of any man then im the world: and now,
when the royal and ducal Frederics, Christians and
Brunswicks of that day have slid into oblivion, he
begins to spread himself into the minds of thou
sands. As happens in great men, he seemed, by
the variety and amount of his powers, to be a com-
position of several persons, — like the giant fruits
which are matured in gardens by the union of four
or five single blossoms. His frame is on a larger
scale and possesses the advantages of size. As it
is easier to see the reflection of the great sphere
in large globes, though defaced by some crack or
blemish, than in drops of water, so.men_of large
calibre, though with some eccentricity or madness,
like Pascal or Newton, help us more than balanced
mediocre minds.
His youth and training could not fail to be ex-
traordinary. Such a boy could not whistle or
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. O97
dance, but goes grubbing into mines and moun-
tains, prying into chemistry and optics, physiology,
mathematics and astronomy, to find images fit for
the measure of his versatile and capacious brain.
He was a scholar from a child, and was educated
at Upsala. At the age of twenty-eight he was
made Assessor of the Board of Mines by Charles
XII. In 1716, he left home for four years and
visited the universities of England, Holland,
France and Germany. He performed a notable
feat of engineering in 1718, at the siege of Fred-
erikshald, by hauling two galleys, five boats and a
sloop, some fourteen English miles overland, for
the royal service. In 1721 he journeyed over Eu-
rope to examine mines and smelting works. He
published in 1716 his Daedalus Hyperboreus, and
from this time for the next thirty years was em-
ployed in the composition and publication of his
scientific works. With the like force he threw
himself into theology. In 1743, when he was fifty-
four years old, what is called his illumination be-
gan. All his metallurgy and transportation of
ships overland was absorbed into this ecstasy. He
ceased to publish any more scientific books, with-
drew from his practical labors and devoted himself
to the writing and publication of his voluminous
theological works, which were printed at his own
expense, or at that of the Duke of Brunswick or
VOL. IV. z .
98 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
other prince, at Dresden, Leipsic, London, or Am:
sterdam. Later, he resigned his office of Assessor :
the salary attached to this office continued to be
paid to him during his life. His duties ‘had
brought him into intimate acquaintance with King
Charles XI1., by whom he was much consulted and
honored. The like favor was continued to him by
his successor. At the Diet of 1751, Count Hop-
ken says, the most solid memorials on finance were
from his pen. in Sweden he appears to have at-
tracted a marked regard. His rare science and
practical skill, and the added fame of second sight.
and extraordinary religious knowledge and gifts,
drew to him queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters
and people about the ports through which he was
wont to pass in his many voyages. The clergy in-
terfered a little with the importation and publica-
tion of his religious works, but he seems to have
kept the friendship of men in power. He was
| never married. He had great modesty and gentle-
ness of bearing. His habits were simple; he lived
on bread, milk and vegetables ; he lived in a house
situated in a large garden; he went several times
to England, where he does not seem to have at-
tracted any attention whatever from the learned
or the eminent; and died at London, March 29,
1772, of apoplexy, in his eighty-fifth year. He is
described, when in London, as a man of a quiet,
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 99
elerical habit, not averse to tea and coffee, and
kind to children. He wore a sword when in full
velvet dress, and, whenever he walked out, carried
a gold-headed cane. There is a common portrait
of him in antique coat and wig, but the face has a
wandering or vacant air.
The genius which was to penetrate the science
of the age with a far more subtle science; to pass
the bounds of space and time, venture into the dim
spirit-realm, and attempt to establish a new relig-
ion in the world, — began its lessons in quarries
and forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in
ship-yards and dissecting-rooms. No one man is
perhaps able to judge of the merits of his works on
so many subjects. One is glad to learn that his
books on mines and metals are held in the highest
esteem by those who understand these matters. It
seems that he anticipated much science of the nine-
teenth century ; anticipated, in astronomy, the dis-
covery of the seventh planet, — but, unhappily, not
also of the eighth ; anticipated the views of mod-
ern astronomy in regard to the generation of earths
by the sun; in magnetism, some important experi-
ments and conclusions of later students ; in chemis-
try, the atomic theory; in anatomy, the discoveries
of Schlichting, Monro and Wilson ; and first de-
monstrated the office of the lungs. His excellent
English editor magnanimously lays no stress on his
100 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
discoveries, since he was too great to care to be
original; and we are to judge, by what he caa
spare, of what remains.
A colossal soul, he lies -vast abroad on his times,
uncomprehended by them, and requires a long fo-
cal distance to be seen; suggests, as Aristotle, Ba-
con, Selden, Humboldt, that a certain vastness of
learning, or guasi omnipresence of the human soul
in nature, is possible. His superb speculation, as
from a tower, over nature and arts, without ever
losing sight of the texture and sequence of things,
almost realizes his own picture, in the “ Principia,”
of the original integrity of man. Over and above
the merit of his particular discoveries, is the capi-
tal merit of his self-equality. A drop of water has
the properties of the sea, but cannot exhibit a
storm. There is beauty of a concert, as well as of
a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero ;
and, in Swedenborg, those who are best acquainted
with modern books will most admire the merit of
mass. One of the missouriums and mastodons of
literature, he is not to be measured by whole col-
leges of ordinary scholars. His stalwart presence
would flutter the gowns of an university. Our
books are false by being fragmentary; their sen-
tences are bonmots, and not parts of natural dis-
course ; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure
in nature; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 101
their petulance, or aversion from the order of na-
ture ; — being some curiosity or oddity, designedly
not in harmony with nature and purposely framed
to excite surprise, as jugglers do by concealing
their means. But Swedenborg is systematic.and
respective of the world in every sentence ; all the
means are orderly given; his faculties work with
astronomie punctuality, and this admirable writing
is pure from all pertness or egotism.
Swedenborg was born into an atmosphere of
great ideas. Itis hard to say what was his own:
yet his life was dignified by noblest pictures of the
universe. The robust Aristotelian method, with
its breadth and adequateness, shaming our sterile
and linear logic by its genial radiation, conversant
with series and degree, with effects and ends, skil-
ful to discriminate power from form, essence from
accident, and opening, by its terminology and defi-
nition, high roads into nature, had trained a race of
athletic philosophers. Harvey had shown the cir-
culation of the blood; Gilbert had shown that the
earth was a magnet; Descartes, taught by Gilbert’s
magnet, with its vortex, spiral and polarity, had
filled Europe with the leading thought of vortical
motion, as the secret of nature. Newton, in the
year in which Swedenborg was born, published the
“ Principia,” and established the universal gravity.
Malpighi, following the high doctrines of Hippo-
102 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
erates, Leucippus and Lucretius, had given em-
phasis to the dogma that nature works in leasts,
—“tota in minimis existit natura.” Unrivalled
dissectors, Swammerdam, Leuwenhoek, Winslow,
Eustachius, Heister, Vesalius, Boerhaave, had left
nothing for scalpel or microscope to reveal in human
or comparative anatomy: Linnzeus, his contempo-
rary, was affirming, in his beautiful science, that
“ Nature is always like herself:” and, lastly, the
nobility of method, the largest application of prin-
ciples, had been exhibited by Leibnitz and Chris-
tian Wolff, in cosmology ; whilst Locke and Gro-
tius had drawn the moral argument. What was
left for a genius of the largest calibre but to go
over their ground and verify and unite? It is easy
to see, in these minds, the origin of Swedenborg’s
studies, and the suggestion of his problems. He
had a capacity to entertain and vivify these volumes
of thought. Yet the proximity of these geniuses,
one or other of whom had introduced all his lead-
ing ideas, makes Swedenborg another example of
the difficulty, even in a highly fertile genius, of
proving originality, the first birth and annunciation
of one of the laws of nature.
He named his favorite views the doctrine of
Forms, the doctrine of Series and Degrees, the
deetrine of Influx, the doctrine of Correspondence.
His statement of these doctrines deserves to be
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 103
studied in his books. Not every man can read
them, but they will reward him who can. His
theologic works are valuable to illustrate these.
His writings would be a sufficient library to a
lonely and athletic student; and the “ Economy
of the Animal Kingdom” is one of those books
which, by the sustained dignity of thinking, is an
honor to the human race. He had studied spars
and metals to some purpose. His varied and solid
knowledge makes his style lustrous with points
and shooting spicule of thought, and resembling
one of those winter mornings when the air sparkles
with ecystals. The grandeur of the topics makes
the grandeur of the style. He was apt. for cosmol-
ogy, because of that native perception of identity
which made mere size of no account-to-him. In
the atom of magnetic iron he saw the quality which
would generate the spiral motion of sun and planet.
The thoughts in which he lived were, the univer-
sality of each law in nature ; the Platonic doctrine
of the scale or degrees; the version or conversion
of each into other, and so the correspondence of
all the parts; the fine secret that little explains
large, and large, little; the centrality of man in
nature, and the connection that subsists through-
out all things: he saw that the human body was
strictly universal, or an instrument through which
the soul feeds and is fed by the whole of matter ;
104. REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
so that he held, in exact antagonism to the skeptics,
that “the wiser a man is, the more will he be a wor-
shipper of the Deity.”” In short, he was a believer
in the Identity-philosophy, which he held not idly,
as the dreamers of Berlin or Boston, but which he
experimented with and established through years
of labor, with the heart and strength of the rudest
Viking that his rough Sweden ever sent to battle.
This theory dates fromthe oldest. philosophers,
and derives perhaps its best illustration from the
newest. It is this, that Nature iterates her means
perpetually on successive planes. In the old aphor-
ism, nature is always self-similar. In the plant,
the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to
another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf
into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed.
The whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on
leaf without end, the more or less of heat, light,
moisture and food determining the form it shall
assume. In the animal, nature makes a vertebra, or
a spine of vertebre, and helps herself still by a new
spine, with a limited power of modifying its form,—
spine on spine, to the end of the world. A poetic
anatomist, in our own day, teaches that a snake,
(being a horizontal line, and man, being an erect
line, constitute a right angle ; and between the
lines of this mystical quadrant all animated beings
find their place: and he assumes the hair-worm,
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 105
the span-worm, or the snake, as the type or predic-
tion of the spine. Manifestly, at the end of the
spine, Nature puts out smaller spines, as arms ; at
the end of the arms, new spines, as hands; at the
other end, she repeats the process, as legs and feet.
At the top of the column she puts out another
spine, which doubles or loops itself over, as a span-
worm, into a ball, and forms the skull, with extrem.
ities again: the hands being now the upper jaw,
the feet the lower jaw, the fingers and toes being
represented this time by upper and lower teeth.
This new spine is destined to high uses. It is a
new man on the shoulders of the last. It can al-
most shed its trunk and manage to live alone, ac-
cording to the Platonic idea in the Timeus.
Within it, on a higher plane, all that was done in
the trunk repeats itself. Nature recites her lesson
once more in a higher mood. The mind is a finer
body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digest-
ing, absorbing, excluding and generating, in a new
and ethereal element. Here in the brain is all the
process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring,
comparing, digesting and assimilating of experi-
ence. Here again is the mystery of generation re-
peated. In the brain are male and female facul-
ties ; here is marriage, here is fruit. And_ there is
no limit to this ascending scale, but series on se-
ries. Every thing, at the end of one use, is taken
106 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
up into the next, each series punctually repeating
every organ and process of the last. We are
adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and
love nothing which ends; and in nature is no end,
but every thing at the end of one use is lifted into
a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs
into demonic and celestial natures. Creative force,
like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly re-
peating a simple air or theme, now high, now low,
in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated,
till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.
Gravitation, as explained by Newton, is geod,
but grander when we find chemistry only an exten-
sion of the law of masses into particles, and that
the atomic theory shows the action of chemistry to
be mechanical also. Metaphysics shows us a sort
of gravitation operative also in the mental phenom-
ena; and the terrible tabulation of the French sta-
tists brings every piece of whim and humor to be
reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one
man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats
shoes or marries his grandmother, then in every
twenty thousand or thirty thousand is found one
man who eats shoes or marries his grandmother.
What we call gravitation, and fancy ultimate, is
one fork of a mightier stream for which we have
yet no name. Astronomy is excellent; but it must
come up into life to have its full value, and not re
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 107
main there in globes and spaces. The globule of
blood gyrates around its own axis in the human
veins, as the planet in the sky; and the circles of
intellect relate to those of the heavens. Each law
of nature has the like universality; eating, sleep or
hybernation, rotation, generation, metamorphosis,
vortical motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets.
These grand rhymes or returns in nature, — the
dear, best-known face startling us at every turn,
under a mask so unexpected that we think it the
face of a stranger, and carrying up the semblance
into divine forms, — delighted the prophetic eye of
Swedenborg; and he must be reckoned a leader in
that revolution, which, by giving to science an idea,
has given to an aimless accumulation of experi-
ments, guidance and form and a beating heart.
I own with some regret that his printed works
amount to about fifty stout octavos, his scientific
works being about half of the whole number; and
it appears that a mass of manuscript still unedited
remains in the royal library at Stockholm. The
scientific works have just now been translated into
English, in an excellent edition.
Swedenborg printed these scientific books in the
ten years from 1734 to 1744, and they remained
from that time neglected; and now, after their
century is complete, he has at last found a pupil
in Mr. Wilkinson, in London, a philosophic critic,
108 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
with a coequal vigor of understanding and imagi-
nation comparable only to Lord Bacon’s, who has
restored his master’s buried books to the day, and
transferred them, with every advantage, from their
forgotten Latin into English, to go round the world
in our commercial and conquering tongue. This
startling reappearance of Swedenborg, after a hun-
dred years, in his pupil, is not the least remarkable
fact in his history. Aided it is said by the munifi-
cence of Mr. Clissold, and also by his literary slxiil,
this piece of poetic justice is done. The admirable
preliminary discourses with which Mr. Wilkinson
has enriched these* volumes, throw all the contem-
porary philosophy of England into shade, and leave
me nothing to say on their proper grounds.
The “ Animal Kingdom” is a book of wonder-
ful merits. It was written with the highest end, —
to put science and the soul, long estranged from
each other, at one again. It was an anatomist’s
account of the human body, in the highest style
of poetry. Nothing can exceed the bold and brill-
iant treatment of a subject usually so dry and
repulsive. He saw nature “wreathing through
an everlasting spiral, with wheels that never dry,
on axles that never creak,’ and sometimes sought
‘to uncover those secret recesses where Nature is
sitting at the fires in the depths of her labora
tory;” whilst the picture comes recommended by
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 109
the hard fidelity with which it is based on practical
anatomy. It is remarkable that this sublime genius
decides peremptorily for the analytic, against the
synthetic method ; and, in a book whose genius is
a daring poetic synthesis, claims to confine himself
to a rigid experience.
He knows, if he only, the flowing of nature, and
how wise was that old answer of Amasis to him
who bade him drink up the sea, — “ Yes, willingly, )”
if you will stop the rivers that flow in.” Few
knew as much about nature and her subtle man-
ners, or expressed more subtly her goings. He
thought as large a demand is made on our faith by
nature, as by miracles. ‘“ He noted that in her
proceeding from first principles through her several
subordinations, there was no state through which
she did not pass, as if her path lay through all
things.” “For as often as she betakes herself
upward from visible phenomena, or, in other words,
withdraws herself inward, she instantly as it were
disappears, while no one knows what has become
of her, or whither she is gone: so that it is necessary
to take science as a guide in pursuing her steps.”
The pursuing the inquiry under the light of an
end or final cause gives wonderful animation, a
sort of personality to the whole writing. This
book announces his favorite dogmas. The ancient
doctrine of Hippocrates, that the brain isa gland ;
1106 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
and of Leucippus, that the atom may be known by
the mass; or, in Plato, the macrocosm by the
microcosm; and, in the verses of Lucretius, —
Ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis
Ossibus sic et de pauxillis atque minutis
Visceribus viscus gigni, sanguenque creari
Sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibus guttis ;
Ex aurique putat micis consistere posse
Aurum, et de terris terram concrescere parvis ;
Tgnibus ex igneis, humorem humoribus esse.
. Lis. I. 835.
“ The principle of all things, entrails made
Of smallest entrails ; bone, of smallest bone ;
Blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one ;
Gold, of small grains ; earth, of small sands compacted ;
Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted :”
and which Malpighi had summed in his maxim
that “‘ nature exists entire in leasts,’’— is a favorite
thought of Swedenborg. “It is a constant law of
the organic body that large, compound, or visible
forms exist and subsist from smaller, simpier and
ultimately from invisible forms, which act similarly
to the larger ones, but more perfectly and more
universally ; and the least forms so perfectly and
universally as to involve an idea representative of
their entire universe.” The unities of each organ
are so many little organs, homogeneous with their
compound: the unities of the tongue are little
tongues; those of the stomach, little stomachs,
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. EE
those of the heart are little hearts. This fruitful
idea furnishes a key.to.every.secret. What was
too small for the eye to detect was read by the
aggregates; what was too large, by the units.
There is no end to his application of the thought.
“ Hunger is an aggregate of very many little hun-
gers, or losses of blood by the little veins all over
the body.” It isa key to his theology also. ‘Man
is a kind of very minute heaven, corresponding to
the world of spirits and to heaven. Every partic-
ular idea of man, and every affection, yea, every
smallest part of his affection, is an image and
effigy of him. and he
part of his mind, not as to the will part; ’
affirms that “he sees, with the internal sight, the
things that are in another life, more clearly than
he sees the things which are here in the world.”
Having adopted the belief that certain books of
the Old and New Testaments were exact allegories,
or written in the angelic and eestatic mode, he em
116 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
ployed his remaining years in extricating from the
literal, the universal sense. He had borrowed from
Plato the fine fable of “‘a most ancient people, men
better than we and dwelling nigher to the gods ;~
and Swedenborg added that they used the earth
symbolically ; that these, when they saw terrestrial
objects, did not think at all about them, but only
about those which they signified. The correspond-
ence between. thoughts and things henceforward oc-
eupied him. ‘The very organic form resembles
the end inscribed on it.” A man is in general and
in particular an organized justice or injustice, sel-
fishness or gratitude. And the cause of this har-
mony he assigned in the Arcana: ‘The reason
why all and single things, in the heavens and on
earth, are representative, is: because they exist from
an influx of the Lord, through heaven.” This de-
sion of exhibiting such correspondences, which, if
adequately executed, would be the poem of the
world, in which all history and science would play
an essential part, was narrowed and defeated by
the exclusively theologic direction which his in-
quiries took. His perception of nature is not hu-
man and universal, but is mystical and Hebraic.
He fastens each natural object to a theologic no-
tion ;—a horse signifies carnal understanding ; a
tree, perception ; the moon, faith; a cat means
this; an ostrich that; an artichoke this other ;—
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 117
and poorly tethers every symbol to a several ec-
clesiastic sense. The slippery Proteus is not so
easily caught. In nature, each individual symbol
plays innumerable parts, as each particle of matter
circulates in turn through every system. ‘The cen-
tral identity enables any one symbol to express suc-
cessively all the qualities and shades of real being.
In the transmission of the heavenly waters, every
hose fits every hydrant. Nature avenges herself
speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her
waves. $he is no literalist. Every thing must be
taken genially, and we must be at the top of our
condition to understand any thing rightly.
His_ theological bias. thus fatally narrowed. his
interpretation of nature, and the dictionary of sym-
bols is yet to be written. But the interpreter
whom mankind must still expect, will find no pre-
decessor who has approached so near to the true
problem.
Swedenborg styles himself in the title-page of
his books, “Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ ; ”
and by force of intellect, and in effect, he is the
last Father in the Church, and is not likely to have
a successor. No wonder that his depth of ethical
wisdom should give him influence as a teacher.
‘To the withered traditional church, yielding dry
catechisms, he let in nature again, and the worship-
per, escaping from the vestry of verbs and texts, is
118 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
surprised to find himself a party to the whole of
his religion. His religion thinks for him and is of
universal application. He turns it on every side ;
it fits every part of life, interprets and dignifies
every circumstance. Instead of a religion which
visited him diplomatically three or four times, —
when he was born, when he married, when he fell
sick and when he died, and, for the rest, never in-
terfered with him,— here was a teaching which
accompanied him all day, accompanied him even
into sleep and dreams; into his thinking, and
showed him through what a long ancestry his
thoughts descend ; into society, and showed by
what affinities he was girt to his equals and his
counterparts ; into natural objects, and showed
their origin and meaning, what are friendly, and
what are hurtful; and opened the future world
by indicating the continuity of the same laws.
His disciples allege that their intellect is invigor-
ated by the study of his books.
There is no such problem for criticism as his
theological writings, their merits are so command-
ing, yet such grave deductions must be made.
Their immense and sandy diffuseness is like the
prairie or the desert, and their meongruities are
like the last deliration. He is superfluously explan-
atory, and his feeling of the ignorance of men,
strangely exaggerated. Men take truths of this
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 119
nature very fast. Yet he abounds in assertions, he
is a rich discoverer, and of things which most im-
port us to know. His thought dwells in essential
resemblances, like the resemblance of a house to
the man who built it. He saw things in their law,
in likeness of function, not of structure. There is
an invariable method and order in his delivery of
his truth, the habitual proceeding of the mind from
inmost to outmost. What earnestness and weight-
iness, — his eye never roving, without one swell of
vanity, or one look to self in any common form of
literary pride! a theoretic or speculative man, but
whom no practical man in the universe could affect
to scorn. Plato is a gownsman; his garment,
though of purple, and almost sky-woven, is an
academic robe and hinders action with its volumi-
nous folds. But this mystic is awful to Cesar.
Lycurgus himself would bow.
The moral insight of Swedenborg, the correction
of popular errors, the announcement of ethical
laws, take him out of comparison with any other
modern writer and entitle him to a place, vacant
for some ages, among the lawgivers of mankind.
That slow but commanding influence which he has
acquired, like that of other religious geniuses, must
be excessive also, and have its tides, before it sub-
sides into a permanent amount. Of course what is
real and universal cannot be confined to the circle
120 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
of those who sympathize strictly with his genius,
but will pass forth into the common stock of wise
and just thinking. The world has a sure chemistry,
by which it extracts what is excellent in its chil-
dren and lets fall the infirmities and limitations of
the grandest mind. .
That metempsychosis which is familiar in the
old mythology of the Greeks, collected in Ovid
and in the Indian Transmigration, and is there
objective, or really takes place in bodies by alien
will,— in Swedenborg’s mind has a more philo-
sophie character. It is subjective, or depends
entirely upon the thought of the person. All
things in the universe arrange themselves to each
person anew, according to his ruling love. Man
is such as his affection and thought are. Man is
man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of know-
ing and understanding. As he is, so he sees.
The marriages of the world are broken up. In-
teriors associate all in the spiritual world. What-
ever the angels looked upon was to them celestial.
Each Satan appears to himself a man; to those
as bad as he, a comely man; to the purified, a
heap of carrion. Nothing can. resist states: every
thing gravitates: like will to like: what we call
poetic justice takes effect on the spot. We have
come into a world which is a living poem. Every
thing isas Iam. JBird and beast is not bird and
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 121
beast, but emanation and effluvia of the minds
and wills of men there present. Every one makes
his own house and state. The ghosts are tor-
mented with the fear of death and cannot remem-
ber that they have died. |They who are in evil |
and falsehood. are afraid of all others.| Such as
have deprived themselves of charity, wander and
flee: the societies which they approach discover
their quality and drive them away. The covet-
ous seem to themselves to be abiding in cells
where their money is deposited, and these to be
infested with mice. They who place merit in
good works seem to themselves to cut wood. “I
asked such, if they were not wearied? They re-
plied, that they have not yet done work enough
to merit heaven.”
He delivers golden sayings which express with
singular beauty the ethical laws; as when he
uttered that famed sentence, that “In heaven the
angels are advancing continually to the spring-
time of their youth, so that the oldest angel ap-
29
pears the youngest:” ‘The more angels, the
more room:” “* The perfection of man is the love
of use:” “ Man, in his perfect form, is heaven: ”’
“ What is from Him, is Him:” “ Ends always
ascend as nature descends.” And the truly poetic
account of the writing in the inmost heaven, which,
as it consists of inflexions according to the form
192 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
of heaven, can be read without instruction. He
almost justifies his claim to preternatural vision,
by strange insights of the structure of the human
body and mind. “It is never permitted to any
one, in heaven, to stand behind another and look
at the back of his head; for then the influx which
is from the Lord is disturbed.” The angels, from
the sound of the voice, know a man’s love; from
the articulation of the sound, his wisdom; and
from the sense of the words, his science.
In the “Conjugal Love,” he has unfolded the
science of marriage. Of this book one would say
that with the highest elements it has failed of
success. It came near to be the Hymn of Love,
which Plato attempted in the “ Banquet;” the
love, which, Dante says, Casella sang among the
angels in Paradise; and which, as rightly cele-
brated, in its genesis, fruition and effect, might
well entrance the souls, as it would lay open the
genesis of all institutions, customs and manners.
The book had been grand if the Hebraism had
been omitted and the law stated without Gothi-
cism, as ethics, and with that scope for ascension
of state which the nature of things requires. It
is a fine Platonic development of the science of
marriage; teaching that sex is universal, and
not local; virility in the male qualifying every
organ, act, and thought; and the feminine in
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 123
woman. Therefore in the real or spiritual world
the nuptial union is not momentary, but inces-
sant and total; and chastity not a local, but a
universal virtue; unchastity being discovered as
much in the trading, or planting, or speaking, or
philosophizing, as in generation; and that, though
the virgins he saw in heaven were beautiful, the
Wives were incomparably more beautiful, and went
on increasing in beauty evermore.
Yet Swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his\
theory to a temporary form. He exaggerates the \
circumstance of marriage; and though he finds
false marriages on earth, fancies a wiser choice in
heaven. But of progressive souls, all loves and
friendships are momentary. Do you love me? |
means, Do you see the same truth? If you do,
we are happy with the same happiness: but pres-
ently one of us passes into the perception of new
truth ;— we are divorced, and no tension in na-
ture can hold us to each other. I know how deli-
cious is this cup of love,— I existing for you, you
existing for me; but it is a child’s clinging to his
toy; an attempt to eternize the fireside and nup-
tial chamber ; to keep the picture-alphabet through
which our first lessons are prettily conveyed.
The Eden of God is bare and grand: like the out-
door landscape remembered from the evening’ fire-
side, it seems cold and desolate whilst you cower
124 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
over the coals, but once abroad again, we pity
those who can forego the magnificence of nature
for candle-light and cards. Perhaps the true
subject of the “ Conjugal Love” is Conversation,
whose laws are profoundly set forth. It is false,
if literally applied to marriage. For God is the
bride or bridegroom of the soul. {Heaven is not
/ the pairing of two, but the communion of all souls,
We meet, and dwell an instant under the temple
of one thought, and part, as though we parted
not, to join another thought in other fellowships
of joy. So far from there being anything divine
in the low and proprietary sense of Do you love
me? it is only when you leave and lose me by
casting yourself on a sentiment which is_ higher
than both of us, that I draw near and find myself
at your side; and I am repelled if you fix your
eye on me and demand love. In fact, in the spir-
itual world we change sexes every moment. You
love the worth in me; then [ am your husband:
but it is not me, but the worth, that fixes the
love; and that worth is a drop of the ocean of
worth that is beyond me. Meantime I adore the
greater worth in another, and so become his wife.
He aspires to a higher worth in another spirit,
and is wife or receiver of that influence.
Whether from a self-inquisitorial habit that he
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 125
erew into from jealousy of the sins to which men
of thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentan-
gling and demonstrating that particular form of
moral disease, an acumen which no conscience can
resist. I refer to his feeling of the profanation of
thinking to what is good, “ from scientifies.” ‘‘ To
reason about faith, is to doubt and deny.” He 7
was painfully alive to the difference between know-
ing and doing, and this sensibility is incessantly
expressed. Philosophers are, therefore, vipers,
cockatrices, asps, hemorrhoids, presters, and flying
serpents ; literary men are conjurors and charla-
tans. |
But this topic suggests a sad afterthought, that
here we find the seat of his own pain. Possibly
Swedenborg paid the penalty of introverted fac-
ulties. Success, or a
—
depend on on a happy adjustment: of heart and brain fi ;
on a due proportion, hard to hit, of. ‘moral and
mental power, which perhaps obeys the law of |
those chemical ratios which make a proportion in
volumes necessary to combination, as when gases !
will combine in certain fixed rates, but not at any
rate. It is hard to carry a full cup ; and this man,
profusely endowed in heart and mind, early fell
into dangerous discord with himself, In his Ani-
mal Kingdom he surprised us by declaring that he
loved analysis, and ne* synthesis; and now, after
a_fortunate genius, seems to ’
126 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
his fiftieth year, he falls into jealousy of his intel:
lect ; and though aware that truth is not solitary
nor is goodness solitary, but both must ever mix
and marry, he makes war_on his mind, takes the
part of the conscience against it, and, on all occa-
sions, traduces and blasphemes it. The violence
is instantly avenged. Beauty is disgraced, love
is unlovely, when truth, the half part of heaven,
is denied, as much as when a bitterness in men
of talent leads to satire and destroys the judgment.
He is wise, but wise in his own despite. There is
an air of infinite grief and the sound of wailing all
over and through this lurid universe. A vampyre
sits in the seat of the prophet and turns with
gloomy appetite to the images of pain. Indeed, a
bird does not more readily weave its nest, or a
mole bore into the ground, than this seer of the
souls substructs a new hell and pit, each more
abominable than the last, round every new crew
of offenders. He was let down through a column
that seemed of brass, but it was formed of angelic
spirits, that he might descend safely amongst the
unhappy, and witness the vastation of souls and
hear there, for a long continuance, their lamenta-
tions: he saw their tormentors, who increase and
strain pangs to infinity; he saw the hell of the
jugglers, the hell of the assassins, the hell of the
lascivious; the hell of robbers, who kill and boil
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 127
men; the infernal Jtun\of the deceitful; the excre-
mentitious hells ; the hell of the revengeful, whose
faces resembled a round, broad cake, and their
arms rotate like a wheel. Except Rabelais and 2 /
Dean Swift nobody ever had such science of filth }
and. corruption.
These books should be used with caution. It is
dangerous to sculpture these evanescing images of
thought. True in transition, they become false if
fixed. It»requires, for his just apprehension, al-|
most a genius equal to his own. But when his
visions become the stereotyped language of multi-\
tudes of persons of all degrees of age and capacity,
they are perverted. The wise people of the Greek
race were accustomed to lead the most intelligent
and virtuous young men, as part of their education,
through the Eleusinian mysteries, wherein, with
much pomp and graduation, the highest truths
known to ancient wisdom were taught. An ar-
dent and contemplative young man, at eighteen or
twenty years, might read once these books of
Swedenborg, these mysteries of love and conscience,
and then throw them aside for ever. Genius is
ever haunted by similar dreams, when the hells
and the heavens are opened to it. But these pic-
tures are to be held as mystical, that is, as a quite
arbitrary and accidental picture of the truth, — not
as the truth. Any other symbol would be as good ;
then this is safely seen.
128 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Swedenborg’s system of the world wants central
spontaneity : it is dynamic, not vital, and lacks
power to generate life. There is no individual in
it. The universe is a gigantic crystal, all whose
atoms and lamin lie in uninterrupted order and
with unbroken unity, but cold and still. What
seems an individual and a will, is none. There is
an immense chain of intermediation, extending from
centre to extremes, which bereaves every agency
of all freedom and character. The universe, in his
poem, suffers under a magnetic sleep, and only re-
flects the mind of the magnetizer. Every thought
comes into each mind. by influence from a society
of spirits that surround it, and into these from a
higher society, and so on. All his types mean the
same few things. All his figures speak one speech.
All his interlocutors Swedenborgize. Be they who
they may, to this complexion must they come at
last. This Charon ferries them all over in his boat ;
kings, counsellors, cavaliers, doctors, Sir Isaac New-
ton, Sir Hans Sloane, King George II., Mahomet,
or whomsoever, and all gather one grimness of hue
and style. Only when Cicero comes by, our gentle
seer sticks a little at saying he talked with Cicero,
and with a touch of human relenting remarks, “ one
whom it was given me to believe was Cicero” ; and
when the sot disunt Roman opens his mouth,
Rome and eloquence have ebbed away, — it is plain
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 129
theologic Swedenborg like the rest. His heavens
and hells are dull; fault of want of individualism.
The thousand -fold relation of men is not there.
The interest that attaches in nature to each man,
because he is right by his wrong, and wrong by his
right ; because he defies all dogmatizing and classi-
fication, so many allowances and contingences and
futurities are to be taken into account; strong by
his vices, often paralyzed by his virtues ;— sinks
into entire sympathy with his society. This want
reacts to the centre of the system. Though the
agency of “the Lord” is in every line referred to
by name, it never becomes alive. There is no lustre
in that eye which gazes from the centre and which
should vivify the immense dependency of beings.
The vice of Swedenborg’s mind. is its theologic
determination. Nothing with him has the liberal-
ity of universal wisdom, but we are always in a
church. That Hebrew muse, which taught the lore
of right and wrong to men, had the same excess of
influence for him it has had for the nations. The
mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine
is ever the more valuable as a chapter in universal
\ustory, and ever the less an available element in
education. The genius of Swedenborg, largest of
all modern souls in this department of thought,
wasted itself in the endeavor to reanimate and con-
serve what had already arrived at its natural term,
VOL. IV. 9
130 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
and, in the great secular Providence, was retiring
from its prominence, before Western modes of
thought and expression. Swedenborg and Behmen
both failed by attaching themselves to the Christian
_ symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which
carries innumerable christianities, humanities, di-
vinities, in its bosom.
The excess of influence shows itself in the incon-
gruous importation of a foreign rhetoric. ‘ What
have I to do’ asks the impatient reader, ‘ with Jas-
per and sardonyx, beryl and chalcedony ; what with
arks and passovers, ephahs and ephods; what with
lepers and emerods ; what with heave-offerings and
unleavened bread, chariots of fire, dragons crowned
and horned, behemoth and unicorn? Good for
Orientals, theseare nothing to me. The more learn-
ing you bring to explain them, the more glaring
the impertinence. The more coherent and elabo-
rate the system, the less I like it. I say, with the
Spartan, “ Why do you speak so much to the pur-
pose, of that which is nothing to the purpose?”
My learning is such as God gave me in my birth
and habit, in the delight and study of my eyes and
not of another man’s. Of all absurdities, this of
some foreigner proposing to take away my rhetoric
and substitute his own, and amuse me with peli-
ean and stork, instead of thrush and robin ; palm-
trees and shittim-wood, instead of sassafras and
hickory, — seems the most needless.’
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 181
Locke said, “ God, when he makes the prophet,\”
does not unmake-the man.” Swedenborg’s history
points the remark. The parish disputes in the
Swedish church between the friends and foes of
Luther and Melancthon, concerning “ faith alone v
and ‘works alone,” intrude themselves into his
speculations upon the economy of the universe, and
of the celestial societies. The Lutheran bishop’s
son, for whom the heavens are opened, so that he
sees with eyes and in the richest symbolic forms
the awful truth of things, and utters again in his
books, as under a heavenly mandate, the indisputa-
ble secrets of moral nature, — with all these grand-
eurs resting upon him, remains the Lutheran bish-
op’s son; his judgments are those of a Swedish
polemic, and his vast enlargements purchased by
adamantine limitations. He carries his controver-
sial memory with him in his visits to the souls. He
is like Michael Angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the
cardinal who had offended him to roast under a
mountain of devils; or like Dante, who avenged, in
vindictive melodies, all his private wrongs; or per-
haps still more like Montaigne’s parish priest, who,
if a hail-storm passes over the village, thinks the
day of doom is come, and the cannibals already
have got the pip. Swedenborg confounds us not
less with the pains of Melancthon and Luther and
Wolfius, and his own books, which he advertises
among the angels.
132 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Under the same theologic cramp, many of his
dogmas are bound. His cardinal position in
morals is that evils should be shunned as sins.
But he does not know what evil is, or what good
is, who thinks any ground remains to be occupied,
alter saying that evil is to be shunned as evil. I
doubt not he was led by the desire to insert the
element of personality of Deity. But nothing is
added. One man, you say, dreads erysipelas, —
show him that this dread ‘is evil: or, one dreads
hell, — show him that dread is evil. He who
‘loves goodness, harbors angels, reveres reverence
and lives with God. The less we have to do with
our sins the better. No man can afford to waste
his moments in compunctions. “That is active
duty,” say the Hindoos, “which is not for our
bondage ; that is knowledge, which is for our lib-
eration: all other duty is good only unto weari-
ness.” |
Another dogma, growing out of this pernicious
theologic limitation, is his Inferno. Swedenborg
has devils. Evil, according to old philosophers,
is good in the making. That pure malignity can
exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It
is not to be entertained by a rational agent; it is
atheism; it is the last profanation. Euripides
rightly said, —
“Goodness and being in the gods are one ;
He who imputes ill to them makes them none.”
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 133
To what a painful perversion had Gothic theology
arrived, that Swedenborg admitted no conversion
for evil spirits! But the divine effort is never
relaxed ; the carrion in the sun will convert itself
to grass and flowers ; and man, though in brothels,
or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is
good and true. Burns, with the wild humor of his
apostrophe to poor “ auld Nickie Ben,”
“O wad ye tak a thought, and mend !”
has the advantage of the vindictive theologian.
Every thing is superficial and—perishes..but love _
and truth only. The largest is always the truest
‘sentiment, and we feel the more generous spirit
of the Indian Vishnu, — ‘I am the same to all
mankind. There is not one who is worthy of my
love or hatred. They who serve me with adora-
tion, —I am in them, and they in me. If one
whose ways are altogether evil serve me alone, he
is as respectable as the just man; he is altogether
well employed; he soon becometh of a virtuous
spirit and obtaineth eternal happiness.”
For the anomalous pretension of Revelations
of the other world, —only his probity and genius
ean entitle it to any serious regard. His revela-
tions destroy their credit by running into detail.
If a man say that the Holy Ghost has informed
him that the Last Judgment (or the last of the
134 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
judgments), took place in 1757; or that the
Dutch, in the other world, live in a heaven by
themselves, and the English in a heaven by them-
selves; I reply that the Spirit which is holy is
reserved, taciturn, and deals in laws. The rumors
of ghosts and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes.
The teachings of the high Spirit are abstemious,
and, in regard to particulars, negative. Socrates’s
Genius did not advise him to act or to find, but if
he purposed to do somewhat not advantageous, it
dissuaded him. ‘* What God is,” he said, “I know
not; what he is not, I know.” The Hindoos have
denominated the Supreme Being, the “ Internal
Check.” The illuminated Quakers explained their
Light, not as somewhat which leads to any action,
but it appears as an obstruction to any thing unfit.
But the right examples are private experiences,
which are absolutely at one on this point. Strictly
speaking, Swedenborg’s revelation is a confounding
_ of planes, — a capital offence in so learned a cate-
gorist.. This is to carry the law of surface into
the plane of substance, to carry individualism and
its fopperies into the realm of essences and gen-
erals, — which is dislocation and chaos.
_” The secret of heaven is kept from age to age.
No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an
early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the
fears of mortals. We should have listened on our
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 135
knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience,
had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the
celestial currents and could hint to human ears the
scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.
But it is certain that it must tally with what is best
in nature. It must. not be inferior in tone to the
already known works of the artist who sculptures
the globes of the firmament and writes the moral
law. It must be fresher than rainbows, stabler
than mountains, agreeing with flowers, with tides
and the rising and setting of autumnal stars.
Melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads
when once the penetrating key-note of nature and
spirit is sounded, — the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-
beat, which makes the tune to which the sun rolls,
and the globule of blood, and the sap of trees. _,
In this mood we hear the rumor that the seer
has arrived, and his tale is told. But there is no
beauty, no heaven: for angels, goblins. The sad
muse loves night and death and the pit. His In-
ferno is mesmeric. His spiritual world bears the
same relation to the generosities and joys of truth
of which human souls have already made us cogni-
zant, as a man’s bad dreams bear to his ideal life.
It is indeed very like, in its endless power of lurid
pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming, which
nightly turns many an honest gentleman, benevo-
lent but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulking like a
136 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
dog about the outer yards and kennels of creation.
When he mounts into the heaven, I do not hear
its language. A man should not tell me that he
has walked among the angels; his proof is that his
eloquence makes me one. Shall the archangels be
less majestic and sweet than the figures that have
actually walked the earth? These angels that
Swedenborg paints give us no very high idea of
their discipline and culture: they are all country
parsons: their heaven is a féte champétre, an
evangelical picnic, or French distribution of prizes
to virtuous peasants. Strange, scholastic, didactic,
passionless, bloodless man, who denotes classes of
souls as a botanist disposes of a carex, and visits
doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende !
He has no sympathy. He goes up and down the
world of men, a modern Rhadamanthus in gold-
headed cane and peruke, and with nonchalance
and the air of a referee, distributes souls. The
warm, many-weathered, passionate-peopled world
is to him a grammar of hieroglyphs, or an emblem-
atic freemason’s procession. How different is
Jacob Behmen! he is tremulous with emotion and
listens awe-struck, with the gentlest humanity, to
the Teacher whose lessons he conveys; and when
he asserts that, “‘in some sort, love is greater than
God,” his heart beats so high that the thumping
against his leathern coat is audible across the cen-
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. Lae
turies. “Tis a great difference. Behmen is health-
ily and beautifully wise, notwithstanding the mys-
tical narrowness and incommunicableness. Swed-
enborg is disagreeably wise, and with all his accu-
mulated gifts, paralyzes and repels.
It is the best sign of a great nature that it opens
a foreground, and, like the breath of morning
landscapes, invites us onward. Swedenborg is re-
trospective, nor can we divest him of his mattock
and shroud. Some minds are for ever restrained
from descending into nature; others are for ever
prevented from ascending out of it. With a force
of many men, he could never break the umbilical
cord which held him to nature, and he did not rise
to the platform of pure genius.
It is remarkable that this man, who, by his _per-
ception of symbols, saw the poetic construction of
things and the primary relation of mind to matter,
remained entirely devoid of the whole apparatus of
poetic expression, which that perception creates.
He knew the grammar and rudiments of the
Mother-Tongue, — how could he not read off one
strain into music? Was he like Saadi, who, in
his vision, designed to fill his lap with the celestial
flowers, as presents for his friends; but the fra-
grance of the roses so intoxicated him that the
skirt dropped from his hands? or is reporting 2
breach of the manne.s of that heavenly society ?
138 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
or was it that he saw the vision intellectually, and
hence that chiding of the intellectual that pervades
his books? Be it as it may, his books have no
melody, no emotion, no humor, no relief to the
dead prosaic level. In his profuse and accurate
imagery is no pleasure, for there is no beauty.
We wander forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No
bird ever sang in all these gardens of the dead.
The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a
mind betokens the disease, and like a hoarse voice
in a beautiful person, is a kind of warning. I
think, sometimes, he will not be read longer. His
great name will turn a sentence. His books have
become a monument. His laurel so largely mixed
with cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with the
temple incense, that boys and maids will shun the
spot.
Yet in this immolation of genius and fame at
the shrine of conscience, is a merit sublime beyond
praise. He lived to purpose: he gave a verdict.
He elected goodness as the clue to which the soul
must cling in all this labyrinth of nature. Many
opinions conflict as to the true centre. In the
shipwreck, some cling to running rigging, some to
cask and barrel, some to spars, some to mast ; the
pilot chooses with science, —I plant myself here;
all will sink before this; ‘“‘he comes to land who
sails with me.” Do not rely on heavenly favor, or
on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 139
sense, the old usage and main chance of men: noth-
ing can keep you, —not fate, nor health, nor ad-
mirable intellect ; none can keep you, but rectitude
only, rectitude for ever and ever! And with a
tenacity that never swerved in all his studies, in-
ventions, dreams, he adheres to this brave choice.
I think of him as of some transmigrating votary of
Indian legend, who says ‘Though I be dog, or
jackal, or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature,
under what integument or ferocity, I cleave to
right, as the sure ladder that leads up to man and
to God.’
Swedenborg has rendered a double service to
mankind, which is now only beginning to be known.
By the science of experiment and use, he made his
first steps: he observed and published the laws of
nature ; and ascending by just degrees from events
to their summits and causes, he was fired with piety
at the harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to
his joy and worship. This was his first service. If
the glory was too bright for his eyes to bear, if he
staggered under the trance of delight, the more ex-
cellent is the spectacle he saw, the realities of being
which beam and blaze through him, and which no in-
firmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure ;
and he renders a second passive service to men,
not less than the first, perhaps, in the great circle
of being, — and, in the retributions of spiritual na-
ture, not less glorious or less beautiful to himself.
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ings of others at discretion. Thought is the proper: >
ty of him who can entertain it and of him who can ’
adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks>\
the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we S
have learned what to do with them they become our °
own.
Thus all originality 1s relative. Every thinker is
190 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
retrospective. The learned member of the legisla.
ture, at Westminster or at Washington, speaks and
votes for thousands. Show us the constituency, and
the now invisible channels by which the senator is
made aware of their wishes; the crowd of practical .
and knowing men, who, by correspondence or con-
versation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes
and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude
and resistance of something of their impressiveness.
As Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Webster vote, so
Locke and Rousseau think, for thousands; and so
there were fountains all around Homer, Menu,
\ Saadi, or Milton, from which they drew; friends,
} lovers, books, traditions, proverbs, —all perished
»— which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder.
Did the bard speak with authority? Did he feel
himself overmatched by any companion? The ap-
peal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there
at last in his breast a Delphi whereof to ask con-
cerning any thought or thing, whether it be verily
so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on
that? All the debts which such a man could con-
tract to other wit would never disturb his conscious-
ness of originality; for the ministrations of books
and of other minds are a whiff of smoke to that
most private reality with which he has conversed.
It is easy to see that what is best written or
done by genius in the world, was no man’s work,
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 191
but came by wide social labor, when a thousand -
wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. .Our| °
English. Bible is a wonderful specimen of the
strength and music of the English language. But
it was not made by one man, or at one time; but
centuries and churches brought it to perfection. |
There never was a time when there was not some |
translation existing. The Liturgy, admired for its
energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of
ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and
forms of the Catholic church, — these collected,
too, in long periods, from the prayers and medita-
tions of every saint and sacred writer all over the
world. Grotius makes the like remark in respect
to the Lord’s Prayer, that the single clauses of
which it is composed were already in use in the
time of Christ, in the Rabbinical forms. He
picked out the grains of gold. The nervous lan-
guage of the Common Law, the impressive forms
of our courts and the precision and substantial
truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution
of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who
have lived in the countries where these laws gov-
ern. The translation of Plutarch gets its excel-|/
lence by being translation on translation. There
never was a time when there was none. All the
truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and
all others successively picked out and thrown away.
192 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Something like the same process had gone on, long
before, with the originals of these books. The
world takes liberties with world- books. Vedas,
Esop’s Fables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, li-
ad, Robin Hood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the
work of single men. In the composition of such
works the time thinks, the market thinks, the ma-
son, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the
fop, all think for us. Every book supplies its time
with one good word ; every municipal law, every
trade, every folly of the day? and the generic cath-
olic genius who is not afraid or ashamed to owe his
originality to the originality of all, stands with the
next age as the recorder and embodiment of his
own.
We have to thank the researches of antiquaries,
and the Shakspeare Society, for ascertaining the
steps of the English drama, from the Mysteries
celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the
final detachment from the church, and the comple-
tion of secular plays, from Ferrex and Porrex, and
Gammer Gurton’s Needle, down to the possession
of the stage by the very pieces which Shakspeare
altered, remodelled and finally made his own.
Elated with success and piqued by the growing
interest of the problem, they have left no book-
stall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened,
no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 193
damp and worms, so keen was the hope to dis-
cover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or not,
whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether
he kept school, and why he left in his will only his
second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, his wife.
There is somewhat touching in the madness with
which the passing age mischooses the object on
which all candles shine and all eyes are turned ;
the care with which it registers every trifle touch-
ing Queen Elizabeth and King James, and the
Essexes, Leicesters, Burleighs and Buckinghams ;
and lets pass without a single valuable note the
founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause
the Tudor dynasty to be remembered, — the man
who carries the Saxon race in him by the inspira-
tion which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the
foremost people of the world are now for some ages
to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not
another bias. A popular player ;— nobody sus-
pected he was the poet of the human race; and the
secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intel-
lectual men as from courtiers and frivolous people.
Bacon, who took the inventory of the human un-/
derstanding for his times, never mentioned his
name. Ben Jonson, though we have strained his
few words of regard and panegyric, had no suspi-
cion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he
was attempting. He no doubt thought the praise
VOL. Iv. 13
194 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
he has conceded to him generous, and esteemed
himself, out of all question, the better poet of the
two.
If it need wit to know wit, according to the prov-
erb, Shakspeare’s time should be capable of recog-
nizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years
after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after
him; and I find, among his correspondents and
acquaintances, the following persons: Theodore
Beza, Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip Sidney, the
Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh,
John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr.
Donne, Abraham Cowley, Bellarmine, Charles
Cotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Al-
bericus Gentilis, Paul Sarpi, Arminius; with all
of whom exists some token of his having commu-
nicated, without enumerating many others whom
doubtless he saw, —Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson,
Beaumont, Massinger, the two Herberts, Marlow,
Chapman and the rest. “Since the constellation of
great men who appeared in Greece in the time of
Pericles, there was never any such society )}— yet
their genius failed them to find out the best head
in the universe. Our poet’s mask was impenetra-
ble. You cannot see the mountain near. It took
-a century to make it suspected ; and not until two
centuries had passed, after his death, did any criti-
‘cism which we think adequate begin to appear. It
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 195
was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare
till now; for he is the father of German literature :
it was with the introduction of Shakspeare into
German, by Lessing, and the translation of his
works by Wieland and Schlegel, that the rapid ,
burst of German literature was most intimately )
connected. It was not until the nineteenth cen-
tury, whose speculative genius is a sort of living
Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find
such wondering readers. Now, literature, philoso-
phy and thought, are Shakspearized. His mind
is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do
not see. Our ears are educated to music by his
rhythm. (Coleridge and Goethe are the only crit-
ics who have expressed our convictions with any
adequate fidelity): but there is in all cultivated
minds a silent appreciation of his superlative power
and beauty, which, like Christianity, qualifies the
period.
The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all di-
rections, advertised the missing facts, offered money
for any information that will lead to proof, — and
with what result? Beside some important illustra-
tion of the history of the English stage, to which I
have adverted, they have gleaned a few facts
touching the property, and dealings in regard to
property, of the poet. It appears that from year
to year he owned a larger share in the Blackfriars’
196 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Theatre: its wardrobe and other appurtenances
were his: that he bought an estate in his native vil-
lage with his earnings as writer and shareholder ;
that he lived in the best house in Stratford ; was
intrusted by his neighbors with their commissions
in London, as of borrowing money, and the like ;
that he was a veritable farmer. About the time
when he was writing Macbeth, he sues Philip Rog-
ers, in the borough-court of Stratford, for thirty-
five shillings, ten pence, for corn delivered to him
at different times; and in all respects appears as a
good husband, with no reputation for eccentricity
or excess. He was a good-natured sort of man,
an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in any
striking manner distinguished from other actors
and managers. I admit the importance of this in-
formation. It was well worth the pains that have
been taken to procure it.
But whatever scraps of information concerning
his condition these researches may have rescued,
they can shed no light upon that infinite invention
which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for
us. We are very clumsy writers of history. We
tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birth-place,
schooling, school-mates, earning of money, mar-
riage, publication of books, celebrity, death ; and
when we have come to an end of this gossip, no
ray of relation appears between it and the goddess
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POE’ 197
born ; and it seems as if, had we dipped at random
into the ‘‘ Modern Plutarch,” and read any other
life there, it would have fitted the poems as well.
It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rain-
bow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to
abolish the past and refuse all history. Malone,
Warburton, Dyce and Collier, have wasted their oil.
The famed theatres, Covent Garden, Drury Lane,
the Park and Tremont have vainly assisted. Bet-
terton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean and Macready ded-
icate their lives to this genius; him they crown,
elucidate, obey and express. The genius knows
them not. ‘The recitation begins; one golden word
leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry
and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own
inaccessible homes. JI remember I went once to
see the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of
the English stage ; and all I then heard and all I
now remember of the tragedian was that in which | /
the tragedian had no part; simply Hamlet’s ques-
tion to the ghost : —
“What may this mean, |
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel |
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon ? ”
That imagination which dilates the closet he writes
in to the world’s dimension, crowds it with agents
in rank and order, as quickly reduces the big real-
ity to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks
198 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-
room. Can any biography shed light on the local-
ities into which the Midsummer Night’s Dream ad-
mits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary
or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate in Strat-
ford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The
forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle,
the moonlight of Portia’s villa, “‘ the antres vast
and desarts idle” of Othello’s captivity, — where
is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancel-
lor’s file of accounts, or private letter, that has
kept one word of those transcendent secrets? In
fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art, —
in the Cyclopezan architecture of Egypt and India,
in the Phidian sculpture, the Gothic minsters, the
Italian painting, the Ballads of Spain and Scot-
land, — the Genius draws up the ladder after him,
when the creative age goes up to heaven, and gives
way to a new age, which sees the works and asks
in vain for a history.
Shakspeare_is__the only _biographer—of Shak.
/) speare ; and even he can tell nothing, except to the
Shakspeare in us, that is, to our most apprehen-
sive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from
off his tripod and give us anecdotes of his inspi-
rations. Read the antique documents extricated,
analyzed and compared by the assiduous Dyce
and Collier, and now read one of these skyey
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. q 199
sentences, — aerolites, — which seem to have fallen
out of heaven, and which not your experience but
the man within the breast has accepted as words
of fate, and tell me if they match; if the former
account in any manner for the latter; or which
gives the most historical insight into the man.
Hence, though our external history is so meagre,
yet, with Shakspeare for biographer, instead of
Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the information
which is material ; that which deseribes character
and fortune, that which, if we were about to meet
the man and deal with him, would most import
us to know. We have his recorded convictions
on those questions which knock for answer at every
heart, —on life and death, on love, on wealth and
poverty, on the prizes of life and the ways whereby
we come at them; on the characters of men, and
the influences, occult and open, which affect their
fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal
powers which defy our science and which yet in-
terweave their malice and their gift in our bright-
est hours. Who ever read the volume of the
Sonnets without finding that the poet had there
revealed, under masks that are no masks to the
intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the
confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible,
and, at the same time, the most intellectual of
men? What trait of his private mind has he
200 « REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
hidden in his dramas? One can discern, in his
ample pictures of the gentleman and the king,
what forms and humanities pleased him; his de-
light in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in
cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let
Antonio the merchant answer for his great heart.
_So far from Shakspeare’s being the least known,
he is the one person, in all modern history, known
to us. What point of morals, of manners, of
economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of
the conduct of life, has he not settled? What
mystery has he not signified his knowledge of?
What office, or function, or district of man’s
work, has he not remembered? What king has
he not taught state,as Talma taught Napoleon ?
What maiden has not found him finer than her
delicacy? What lover has he not outloved?
What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman
has he not instructed in the rudeness of his be-
havior ?
Some able and appreciating critics think no
eriticism on Shakspeare valuable that does not
rest purely on the dramatic merit; that he is
falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I think
p28 highly as these critics of his dramatic merit,
,2but still think it _secondary. He was a full man,
(who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and
images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 201
at hand. Had he been less, we should have had
to consider how well he filled his place, how good
a dramatist he was,—and he is the best in the
world. But it turns out that what he has to
say is of that weight as to withdraw some attention
from the vehicle; and he is like some saint whose
history is to be rendered into all languages, into
verse and prose, into songs and pictures, and cut
up into proverbs ; so that the occasion which gave
the saint’s meaning the form of a conversation, or
of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is immaterial,
compared with the universality of its application.’
So it fares with the wise Shakspeare and his book
of life. He wrote the airs for all our modern’
music: he wrote the text of modern life; the text
of manners: he drew the man of England and
Europe; the father of the man in America; he
drew the man, and described. the day, and what is
done in it: he read the hearts of men and women,
their probity, and their second thought and wiles ;
the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by
which virtues and vices slide into their contraries :
he could divide the mother’s part from the father’s
part in the face of the child, or draw the fine
demareations of freedom and of fate: he knew
the laws of repression which make the police of
nature: and all the sweets and all the terrors of
human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly .
202 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
as the landscape lies on the eye. And the impor-
tance of this wisdom of life sinks the form, as of
Drama or Epic, out of notice. * Tis like making
a question concerning the paper on which a king’s
message is written.
Shakspeare is as much out of the category of
eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. He
is inconceivably wise ; the others, conceivably. A
‘good reader can, in a sort, nestle into Plato’s brain
dand think from thence ; but not into Shakspeare’s.
We are still out of doors. For executive faculty,
for creation, Shakspeare is unique. No man can
imagine it better. He was the farthest reach of
subtlety compatible with an individual self,— the
subtilest of authors, and only just within the pos-
sibility of authorship. With this wisdom of ‘of _life_
is the equal endowment of imaginative ive and of
lyric power. He clothed the creatures of his
legend with form and sentiments as if they were
people who had lived under his roof; and few
real men have left such distinct characters as these
fictions. And they spoke in language as sweet
as it was fit. Yet his talents never seduced him ,
into an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string.)|
An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his fac-
\ulties. Give a man of talents a story to tell, and
‘his partiality will presently appear. He has cer:
‘tain observations, opinions, topics, which have
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 2038
some accidental prominence, and which he dis-\
poses all to exhibit. He crams this part and
starves that other part, consulting not the fitness |
of the thing, but his fitness and strength. But |!
Shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate |
topic; but all is duly given; no veins, no curiosi-_
ties; no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no manner-,
ist is he: he has no discoverable egotism: the’
creat he tells greatly; the small subordinately. |
He is wise without emphasis or assertion; he is/
strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the land into |
mountain slopes without effort and by the same,
rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as
well to do the one as the other. This makes that
equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative and
love-songs; a merit so incessant that each reader;
is incredulous of the perception of other readers.
This power of expression, or of transferring the
inmost truth of things into music and verse, makes
him the type of the poet and has added a new
problem to metaphysics. This is that which throws
him into natural history, as a main production of
the globe, and as announcing new eras and amelio-
rations. Things were mirrored in his poetry with-
out loss or blur: he could paint the fine with pre-
cision, the great with compass, the tragic and the
comic indifferently and without any distortion or
favor. He carried his powerful execution inte
204 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
minute details, to a hair point; finishes an eyelash
or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain; and
yet these, like nature’s, will bear the scrutiny of
the solar microscope.
In short, he is the chief example to prove that
more or less of production, more or fewer pictures,
is a thing indifferent. He had the power to make
one picture. Daguerre learned how to let one
flower etch its image on his plate of iodine, and
then proceeds at leisure to etch a million. There
are always objects; but there was never represen-
tation. Here is perfect representation, at last; and
now let the world of figures sit for their portraits.
No recipe can be given for the making of a Shaks-
‘peare ; but the possibility of the translation of
‘things into song is demonstrated.
His lyric power lies in the genius of the piece.
The sonnets, though their excellence is lost in the
splendor of the dramas, are as inimitable as they;
and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit of
the piece; like the tone of voice of some incom-
parable person, so is this a speech of poetic beings,
and any clause as unproducible now as a whole
poem.
Though the speeches in the plays, and single
lines, have a beauty which tempts the ear to pause
on them for their euphuism, yet the sentence is
so loaded with meaning and so linked with its
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 205
foregoers and followers, that the logician is satis-
fied. His means are as admirable as his ends;
every subordinate invention, by which he helps
himself to connect some irreconcilable opposites,
is a poem too. He is not reduced to dismount and
walk because his horses are running off with him
in some distant direction : he always rides.
The finest poetry was first experience; but the
thought has suffered a transformation since it was
anexperience. Cultivated men often attain a good
degree of skill in writing verses; but it is easy to
read, through their poems, their personal history :
any one acquainted with the parties can name every
figure ; this is Andrew and that is Rachel. The
sense thus remains prosaic. It is a caterpillar
with wings, and not yet a butterfly. In the poet’s
mind the fact has gone quite over into the new
element of thought, and has lost all that is exuvial.
This generosity abides with Shakspeare. We say, °
from the truth and closeness of his pictures, that he
knows the lesson by heart. Yet there is not a
trace of egotism.
One more royal trait properly belongs to the
poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no
man can be a poet, — for beauty is his aim. He
loves virtue, not for its obligation but for its grace:
he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the
lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the
206 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the uni-
verse. Epicurus relates that poetry hath such
charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to
partake of them. And the true bards have been
noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer
lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and
Saadi says, “It was rumored abroad that I was
penitent ; but what had I to do with repentance ? ”
Not less sovereign and cheerful, — much more sov-
ereign and cheerful, is the tone of Shakspeare.
His name suggests joy and emancipation to the
heart of men. If he should appear in any com-
pany of human souls, who would not march in his
troop? He touches nothing that does not borrow
health and longevity from his festal style.
And now, how stands the account of man with
this bard and benefactor, when, in solitude, shut-
ting our ears to the reverberations of his fame, we
seek to strike the balance? Solitude has austere
lessons ; it can teach us to spare both heroes and
poets; and it weighs Shakspeare also, and finds him
to share the halfness and imperfection of humanity.
| Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the
\splendor of meaning that plays over the visible
‘world ; knew that a tree had another use than for
( apples, and corn another than for meal, and the
/ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: thas
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 207
these things bore a second and finer harvest to the
mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and convey-
ing in all their natural history a certain mute
commentary on human life. Shakspeare employed
them as colors to compose his picture. He rested
in their beauty ; and never took the step which
seemed inevitable to such genius, namely to explore
the virtue which resides in these symbols and im-
parts this power : — what is that which they them-
selves say? He converted the elements which
waited on his command, into entertainments. He
was master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as
if one should have, through majestic powers of
science, the comets given into his hand, or the
planets and their moons, and should draw them
from their orbits to glare with the municipal fire-
works on a holiday night, and advertise in all
towns, “ Very superior pyrotechny this evening ”’ ?
Are the agents of nature, and the power to under-
stand them, worth no more than a street serenade,
or the breath of a cigar? One remembers again
the trumpet-text in the Koran,— ‘The heavens
and the earth and all that is between them, think
ye we have created them in jest?” As long as the
question is of talent and mental power, the world
of men has not his equal to show. But when the
question is, to life and its materials and its auxili-
aries, how does he profit me? What does it sig
208 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
nify? Itis but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-
Night’s Dream, or Winter Evening’s Tale: what sig-
nifies another picture more or less? The Egyptian
verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to mind ;
that he was a jovial actor and. manager. I can not
marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men
have led lives in some sort of keeping with their
thought; but this man, in wide contrast. Had he
been less, had he reached only the common measure
of great authors, of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes,
we might leave the fact in the twilight of human
. fate: but that this man of men, he who gave to the
| science of mind a new and larger subject than had
_) ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity
Ssome furlongs forward into Chaos,— that he should
‘not be wise for himself ;— it must even go into the
world’s history that the best poet led an obscure
and profane life, using his genius for the public
amusement.
Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite,
German and Swede, beheld the same objects: they
also saw through them that which was contained.
And to what purpose? The beauty straightway
vanished ; they read commandments, all-excluding
mountainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of
piled mountains, fell on them, and life became
ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim’s progress, a probation,
beleaguered round with doleful histories of Adam’s
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 209
fall and curse behind us; with doomsdays and pur-
gatorial and penal fires before us; and the heart
of the seer and the heart of the listener sank in
them.
It must be conceded that these are half-views of
half-men. The world still wants its poet-priest, a
reconciler, who shall not trifle,with Shakspeare the
player, nor shall grope in graves,with Swedenborg
the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with
equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten
‘the sunshine ; right is more beautiful than private
affection; and love is compatible with universal
wisdom.
VOL. IV. 14
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE
WORLD.
VL
NAPOLEON: OR, THE MAN OF THE
WORLD.
AmoneG the eminent persons of the nineteenth
century, Bonaparte is far the best known and the
most powerful; and owes his predominance to
the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of
thought and belief, the aims of the masses of
active and cultivated men. It is Swedenborg’s
theory that every organ is made up of homogene-
ous particles; or as it is sometimes expressed,
every whole is made of similars; that is, the lungs
are composed of infinitely small lungs; the liver,
of infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little
kidneys, &c. Following this analogy, if any man
is found to carry with him the power and affec-
tions of vast numbers, if Napoleon is France, if
Napoleon is Europe, it is because the people whom
he sways are little Napoleons.
In our society there is a standing antagonism
between the conservative and the democratic
classes; between those who have made their
914 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
fortunes, and the young and the poor who have
fortunes to make; between the interests of dead
labor, — that is, the labor of hands long ago still
in the grave, which labor is now entombed in
money stocks, or in land and buildings owned by
idle capitalists, — and the interests of living labor,
which seeks to possess itself of land and buildings
and money stocks. The first class is timid, self-
ish, illiberal, hating innovation, and continually
losmg numbers by death. The second class is
selfish also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, always
outnumbering the other and recruiting its num-
bers every hour by births. It desires to keep
open every avenue to the competition of all, and
to multiply avenues: the class of business men in
America, in England, in France and throughout
Europe; the class of industry and skill. Napo-
leon is its representative. The instinct of ac-
tive, brave, able men, throughout the middle class
every where, has pointed out Napoleon as the in-
carnate Democrat. He had their virtues and their
vices; above all, he had their spirit or aim. That
tendency is material, pointing at a sensual suc-
cess and employing the richest and most various
means to that end; conversant with mechanical
powers, highly intellectual, widely and accurately
learned and skilful, but subordinating all intel.
lectual and spiritual forces into means to a mate-
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 215
rial suecess. To be the rich man, is the end.
“God has granted,” says the Koran, “to every
people a prophet in its own tongue.” Paris and
London and New York, the’ spirit of commerce, of
money and material power, were also to have their
prophet; and Bonaparte was qualified and sent.
Every one of the million readers of anecdotes
or memoirs or lives of Napoleon, delights in the
page, because he studies in it his own history.
Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the high-
est point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of
the newspapers. He is no saint,—-to use his
?
own word, “no capuchin,” and he is no hero, in
the high sense. The man in the street finds in
him the qualities and powers of other men in the
street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a
citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived
at such a commanding position that he could in-
dulge all those tastes which the common man
possesses but is obliged to conceal and deny:
good society, good books, fast travelling, dress,
dinners, servants without number, personal weight,
the execution of his ideas, the standing in the
attitude of a benefactor to all persons about him,
the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues, music,
palaces and conventional honors, — precisely what
is agreeable to the heart of every man in the nine-
teenth century, this powerful man possessed.
216 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
It is true that a man of Napoleon’s truth of
adaptation to the mind of the masses around him,
becomes not merely representative but actually a
monopolizer and usurper of other minds. / Thus
Mirabeau plagiarized every good thought, every
good word that was spoken in France. |) Dumont
relates that he sat in the gallery of the Conven-
tion and heard Mirabeau make a speech. It
struck Dumont that he could fit it with a pero-
ration, which he wrote in pencil immediately, and
showed it to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. Lord
Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the evening,
showed it to Mirabeau. Mirabeau read it, pro-
nounced it admirable, and declared he would in-
corporate it into his harangue to-morrow, to the
Assembly. ‘It is impossible,” said Dumont, “as,
unfortunately, I have shown it to Lord Elgin.”
“Tf you have shown it to Lord Elgin and to fifty
persons beside, I shall still speak it to-morrow: ”
and he did speak it, with much effect, at the next
day’s session. For Mirabeau, with his overpower-
ing personality, felt that these things which his
presence inspired were as much his own as if he
had said them, and that his adoption of them
gave them their weight. Much more absolute and
centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau’s popu-
larity and to much more than his predominance
in France. Indeed, a man of Napoleon’s stamp
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 217
almost ceases to have a private speech and opin-
ion. He is so largely receptive, and is so placed, .
that he comes to be a bureau for all the intelli-)
gence, wit and power of the age and country. He
gains the battle; he makes the code; he makes
the system of weights and measures; he levels the
Alps; he builds the road. All distinguished en-
gineers, savans, statists, report to him: so likewise
do all good heads in every kind: he adopts the
best measures, sets his stamp on them, and not
these alone, but on every happy and memorable
expression. Every sentence spoken by Napoleon |
and every line of his writing, deserves reading, |
as it is the sense of France. |
Bonaparte was the idol of common men because
he had in transcendent degree the qualities and
powers of common men. There is a certain satis-
faction in coming down to the lowest ground of
politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.
Bonaparte wrought, in common with that great
class he represented, for power and wealth, — but
Bonaparte, specially, without any scruple as to the
means. All the sentiments which embarrass men’s
pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The senti-
ments were for women and children. Fontanes, in
1804, expressed Napoleon’s own sense, when in be-
half of the Senate he addressed him, — “ Sire, the
desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever
218 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
afflicted the human mind.” The advocates of lib-
erty and of progress are ‘“ ideologists ;’’ —a word
of contempt often in his mouth ; — “ Necker is an
ideologist:”’ “* Lafayette is an ideologist.”’ |
An Italian proverb, too well known, declares
that “if you would succeed, you_must not be too
\, good.” It is an advantage, within certain limits, to
have renounced the dominion of the sentiments of
piety, gratitude and generosity : since what was an
impassable bar to us, and still is to others, becomes
a convenient weapon for our purposes ; just as the
river which was a formidable barrier, winter trans-
forms into the smoothest of roads.
Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and
affections, and would help himself with his hands
and his head. With him is no miracle and no
magic. He is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood,
in earth, in roads, in buildings, in money and in
troops, and a very consistent and wise master-work-
man. He is never weak and literary, but acts with
the solidity and the precision of natural agents.
He has not lost his native sense and sympathy with
things. Men give way before such a man, as be-
fore natural events. To be sure there are men
enough who are immersed in things, as farmers,
smiths, sailors and mechanics generally; and we
know how real and solid such men appear in the
presence of scholars and grammarians: but these
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 219
men ordinarily lack the power of arrangement, and
are like hands without a head. But Bonaparte su-
peradded to this mineral and animal force, insight
and generalization, so that men saw in him com-
bined the natural and the intellectual power, as if
the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to ci-
pher. Therefore the land and sea seem to presup-
pose him. He came unto his own and they re-
ceived him. This ciphering operative knows what
he is working with and what is the product. He
knew the properties of gold and iron, of wheels and
ships, of troops and diplomatists, and required that
each should do after its kind.
The art of war was the game in which he exerted
his arithmetic. It consisted, according to him, in
having always more forces than the enemy, on the
point where the enemy is attacked, or where he at-
tacks: and his whole talent is strained by endless
mancuvre and evolution, to march always on the
enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in detail.
It is obvious that a very small force, skilfully and
rapidly maneuvring so as always to bring two men
against one at the point of engagement, will be an
overmatch for a much larger body of men.
The times, his constitution and his early circum-
stances combined to develop this pattern democrat.
He had the virtues of his class and the conditions
for their activity. That common-sense which no
220 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
sooner respects any end than it finds the means te
effect it; the delight in the use of means; in the
choice, simplification and combining of means; the
directness and thoroughness of his work; the pru-
dence with which all was seen and the energy with
which all was done, make him the natural organ
and head of what I may almost call, from its ex-
tent, the modern party.
Nature must have far the greatest share in every
success, and so in his. Such a man was wanted,
and such a man was born; aman of stone and
iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or sev-
enteen hours, of going many days together without
rest or food except by snatches, and with the speed
and spring of a tiger in action; a man not embar-
rassed by any scruples; compact, instant, selfish,
prudent, and of a perception which did not suffer
itself to be baulked or misled by any pretences of
others, or any superstition or any heat or haste of
his own. ‘My hand of iron” he said, “was not at
the extremity of my arm, it was immediately con-
nected with my head.” He respected the power
of nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his su-
periority, instead of valuing himself, like inferior
men, on his opinionativeness, and waging war with
nature. His favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his
star ; and he pleased himself, as well as the people,
when he styled himself the “Child of Destiny.”
’
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 221
“They charge me,” he said, “ with the commission
of great crimes: men of my stamp do not commit
erimes. Nothing has been more simple than my
elevation, tis in vain to ascribe it to intrigue or
crime ; it was owing to the peculiarity of the times
and to my reputation of having fought well against
the enemies of my country. I have always marched
with the opinion of great masses and with events.
Of what use then would crimes be to me?” Again
he said, speaking of his son, “ My son can not re-
place me; I could not replace myself. I am the
creature, of circumstances.”
He had a directness of action never before com-
bined with so much comprehension. He is a real-
ist, terrific to all talkers and confused truth-obscur-
ing persons. He sees where the matter hinges,
throws himself on the precise point of resistance,
and slights all other considerations. He is strong
in the right manner, namely by insight. He never
blundered into victory, but won his battles in his
head before he won them on the field. His prin-
cipal means are in himself. He asks counsel of no
other. In 1796 he writes to the Directory: “I
have conducted the campaign without consulting
any one. [should have done no good if I had been
under the necessity of conforming to the notions of
another person. I have gained some advantages
over superior forces and when totally destitute of
99? REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
every thing, because, in the persuasion that your
confidence was reposed in me, my actions were as
prompt as my thoughts.” |
History is full, down to this day, of the imbecil-
ity of kings and governors. They are a class of
persons much to be pitied, for they know not what
they should do. The weavers strike for bread, and
the king and his ministers, knowing not what to
do, meet them with bayonets. But Napoleon un-
derstood his business. Here was a man who in
each moment and emergency knew what to do next.
It is an immense comfort and refreshment to the
spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens. Few
men have any next; they live from hand to mouth,
without plan, and are ever at the end of their line,
and after each action wait for an impulse from
abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of the
world, if his ends had been purely public. As he
is, he inspires confidence and vigor by the extraor-
dinary unity of his action. He is firm, sure, self-
denying, self-postponing, sacrificing every thing, —
money, troops, generals, and his own safety also,
to his aim; not misled, like common adventurers,
by the splendor of his own means. ‘“ Incidents
ought not to govern policy,” he said, “ but policy,
incidents.” ‘To be hurried away by every event
is to have no political system at all.” His vic
torles were only so many doors, and he never for a
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 223
moment lost sight of his way onward, in the daz
zle and uproar of the present circumstance. He
knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He
would shorten a straight line to come at his object.
Horrible anecdotes may no doubt be collected from
his history, of the price at which he bought his suc.
cesses ; but he must not therefore be set down as
cruel, but only as one who knew no impediment to
his will; not bloodthirsty, not cruel, — but woe to
what thing or person stood in his way! Not blood-
thirsty, but not sparing of blood,— and pitiless.
He saw only the object: the obstacle must give
way. ‘Sire, General Clarke can not combine with
General Junot, for the dreadful fire of the Aus-
trian battery.” — ‘Let him carry the battery.”
— ‘Sire, every regiment that approaches the heavy
artillery is sacrificed : Sire, what orders ?””— “ For-
ward, forward!” Seruzier, a colonel of artillery,
gives, in his ‘¢ Military Memoirs,” the following
sketch of a scene after the battle of Austerlitz. —
* At the moment in which the Russian army was
making its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on
the ice of the lake, the Emperor Napoleon came
riding at full speed toward the artillery. “You
are losing time,” he cried; “fire upon those masses ;
they must be engulfed: fire upon the ice!” The
order remained unexecuted for ten’ minutes. In
vain several officers and myself were placed on the
Q24 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
slope of a hill to produce the effect: their balls and
mine rolled upon the ice without breaking it up.
Seeing that, I tried a simple method of elevating
light howitzers. The almost perpendicular fall of
the heavy projectiles produced the desired effect.
My method was immediately followed by the ad-
joining batteries, and in less than no time we bur-
ied”’ some ! “thousands of Russians and Austrians
under the waters of the lake.”
In the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle
seemed to vanish. ‘There shall be no Alps,” he
said ; and he built his perfect roads, climbing by
graded galleries their steepest precipices, until Italy
was as open to Paris as any town in France. He
laid his bones to, and wrought for his crown. Hav-
ing decided what was to be done, he did that with
might and main. He put out all his strength. He
risked every thing and spared nothing, neither am-
munition, nor money, nor troops, nor generals, nor
himself.
We like to see every thing do its office after its
{ ‘kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattle-snake ;
and if fighting be the best mode of adjusting
national differences, (as large majorities of men
seem to agree, ) certainly Bonaparte was right in
making it thorough. The grand principle of war,
1 As I quote at second hand, and cannot procure Seruzier,
{ dare not adopt the high figure I find.
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 225
he said, was that an army ought always to be ready,
by day and by night and at all hours, to make all
the resistance it is capable of making. He never
economized his ammunition, but, on a hostile posi-
tion, rained a torrent of iron, — shells, balls, grape.
shot, — to annihilate all defence. On any point
of resistance he concentrated squadron on squad-
ron in overwhelming numbers until it was swept
out of existence. To a regiment of horse-chas-
seurs at Lobenstein, two days before the battle of
Jena, Napoleon said, ‘“‘ My lads, you must not fear
death ; when soldiers brave death, they drive him
into the enemy’s ranks.” In the fury of assault,
he no more spared himself. He went to the edge
of his possibility. It is plain that in Italy he did
what he could, and all that he could. He came,
several times, within an inch of ruin; and his own
person was all but lost. He was flung into the
marsh at Arcola. The Austrians were between him
and his troops, in the mélée, and he was brought
off with desperate efforts. At Lonato, and at other
places, he was on the point of being taken prisoner.
He fought sixty battles. He had never enough.
Each victory was a new weapon. ‘My power
would fall, were I not to support it by new achieve-
ments. Conquest has made me what I am, and
| conquest must maintain me.” He felt, with every
wise man, that as much life is needed for conserva
VOL. IV. 15
226 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
tion as for creation. We are always in peril,
always in a bad plight, just on the edge of destruc-
tion and only to be saved by invention and courage.
This vigor was guarded and tempered by the
coldest prudence and punctuality. A thunderbolt
in the attack, he was found invulnerable in his
intrenchments. His very attack was never the in-
spiration of courage, but the result of calculation.
His idea of the best defence consists in being still
the attacking party. “My ambition,” he says,
“was great, but was of a cold nature.” In one
of his conversations with Las Casas, he remarked,
“As to moral courage, I have rarely met with the
two-o’clock-in-the-morning kind: I mean unpre-
pared courage; that which is necessary on an un-
expected occasion, and which, in spite of the most
unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment
and decision:” and he did not hesitate to declare
that he was himself eminently endowed with this
two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, and that he
had met with few persons equal to himself in this
respect. . oT ak
Every thing depended on the nicety of his com-
binations, and the stars were not more punctual
than his arithmetic. His personal attention de-
scended to the smallest particulars. ‘ At Monte-
bello, I ordered Kellermanu to attack with eight
hundred horse, and with these he separated the
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN CF THE WORLD. 227
six thousand Hungarian grenadiers, before the very
eyes of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was
half a league off and required a quarter of an
hour to arrive on the field of action, and I have
observed that it is always these quarters of an hour
that decide the fate of a battle.” “ Before he
fought a battle, Bonaparte thought little about
what he should do in case of success, but a great
deal about what he should do in case of a reverse
of fortune.’ The same prudence and good sense
mark all his behavior. His instructions to his
secretary at the Tuileries are worth remembering.
“ During the night, enter my chamber as seldom as)
possible. Do not awake me when you have any
good news to communicate; with that there is no
hurry. But when you bring bad news, rouse me
instantly, for then there is not a moment to be
lost.” It was a whimsical economy of the same
kind which dictated his practice, when general in
Italy, in regard to his burdensome correspondence.
He directed Bourrienne to leave all letters unopened)
for three weeks, and then observed with satisfac-
tion how large a part of the correspondence had
thus disposed of itself and no longer required an _
answer. His achievement of business was immense,
and enlarges the known powers of man. There
have been many working kings, from Ulysses to
William of Orange, but none who accomplished a
tithe of this man’s performance.
228 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
To these gifts of nature, Napoleon added the ad-
vantage of having been born toa private and hum-
ble fortune. In his later days he had the weakness
of wishing to add to his crowns and badges the pre-
scription of aristocracy ; but he knew his debt to
his austere education, and made no secret of his
contempt for the born kings, and for “ the heredi-
tary asses,” as he coarsely styled the Bourbons.
He said that “in their exile they had learned noth-
ing, and forgot nothing.” Bonaparte had passed
through all the degrees of military service, but also
was citizen before he was emperor, and so has
the key to citizenship. His remarks and estimates
discover the information and justness of measure-
ment of the middle class. ‘Those who had to deal
with him found that he was not to be imposed
upon, but could cipher as well as another man.
This appears in all parts of his Memoirs, dictated
at St. Helena. When the expenses of the empress,
of his household, of his palaces, had accumulated
great debts, Napoleon examined the bills of the
creditors himself, detected overcharges and errors,
and reduced the claims by considerable sums.
His grand weapon, namely the millions whom he
directed, he owed to the representative character
which clothed him. He interests us as he stands
for France and for Europe; and he exists as cap-
tain and king only as far as the Revolution, or the
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 229
interest of the industrious masses, found an organ
and a leader in him. In the social interests, he
knew the meaning and value of labor, and threw
himself naturally on that side. I like an incident
mentioned by one of his biographers at St. He-
lena. ‘ When walking with Mrs. Balcombe, some
servants, carrying heavy boxes, passed by on the
road, and Mrs. Balcombe desired them, in rather
an angry tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered,
saying ‘ Respect the burden, Madam.’” In the
time of the empire he directed attention to the im-
provement and embellishment of the markets of
the capital. ‘“ The market-place,” he said, “is the
Louvre of the common people.” The principal
works that have survived him are his magnificent
roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a
sort of freedom and companionship grew up be-
tween him and them, which the forms of his court
never permitted between the officers and himself.
They performed, under his eye, that which no
others could do. The best document of his relation
to his troops is the order of the day on the morn-
ing of the battle of Austerlitz, in which Napoleon
promises the troops that he will keep his person
out of reach of fire. This declaration, which is the
reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and
sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently ex:
plains the devotion of the army to their leader.
230 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
But though there is in particulars this identity
between Napoleon and the mass of the people, his
real strength lay in their conviction that he was
their representative in his genius and aims, not only
when he courted, but when he controlled, and even
when he decimated them by‘his conscriptions. He
knew, as well as any Jacobin in France, how to phi-
losophize on liberty and equality ; and when allusion
was made to the precious blood of centuries, which
was spilled by the killing of the Due d’Enghien,
he suggested, ‘“ Neither is my blood ditch-water.”
The people felt that no longer the throne was oc-
eupied and the land sucked of its nourishment, by
a small class of legitimates, secluded from all com-
munity with the children of the soil, and holding
the ideas and superstitions of a long-forgotten
state of society. Instead of that vampyre, a man
of themselves held, in the Tuileries, knowledge and
ideas like their own, opening of course to them and
their children all places of power and trust. The
day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever narrowing the
means and opportunities of young men, was ended,
and a day of expansion and demand was come. A
market for all the powers and productions of man
was opened ; brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes
of youth and talent. The old, iron-bound, feudal
France was changed into a young Ohio or New
York ; and those who smarted under the immediate
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 231
rigors of the new monarch, pardoned them as the
necessary severities of the military system which
had driven out the oppressor. And even when the
majority of the people had begun to ask whether
they had really gained any thing under the exhaust-
ing levies of men and money of the new master,
the whole talent of the country, in every rank and
kindred, took his part and defended him as its nat-
ural patron. In 1814, when advised to rely on the
higher classes, Napoleon said to those around him,
‘“ Gentlemen, in the situation in which I stand, my
only nobility is the rabble of the Faubourgs.”
Napoleon met this natural expectation. The
necessity of his position required a hospitality to
every sort of talent, and its appointment to trusts ;
and his feeling went along with this policy. Like
every superior person, he undoubtedly felt a desire
for men and compeers, and a wish to measure his
power with other masters, and an impatience of
fools and underlings. In Italy, he sought for men
and found none. “Good God!” he said, “how, |
rare men are! There are eighteen millions in¢ |
Italy, and I have with difficulty found two, — '
Dandolo and Melzi.” In later years, with larger
experience, his respect for mankind was not in-
creased. In a moment of bitterness he said to
one of his oldest friends, “‘ Men deserve the con-
tempt with which they inspire me. I have only to
os
232 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
put some gold-lace on the coat of my virtuous re-
publicans and they immediately become just what
I wish them.” This impatience at levity was, how-
ever, an oblique tribute of respect to those able
persons who commanded his regard not only when
he found them friends and coadjutors but’ also
when they resisted his will. He could-not con-
found Fox and Pitt, Carnot, Lafayette and Berna-
dotte, with the danglers of his court; and in spite
of the detraction which his systematic egotism dic-
tated toward the great captains who conquered
with and for him, ample acknowledgments are
made by him to Lannes, Duroc, Kleber, Dessaix,
Massena, Murat, Ney and Augereau. If he felt
himself their patron and the founder of their for-
tunes, as when he said “‘ | made my generals out of
mud,” —he could not hide his satisfaction in re-
ceiving from them a seconding and support com-
mensurate with the grandeur of his enterprise. In
the Russian campaign he was so much impressed by
the courage and resources of Marshal Ney, that he
said, “I have two hundred millions in my coffers,
/ and I would give them all for Ney.” The charac-
ters which he has drawn of several of his marshals
are discriminating, and though they did not con-
tent the insatiable vanity of French officers, are no
doubt substantially just. And in fact every species
of merit was sought and advanced under his gov-
=
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 238
ernment. “I know” he said, “the depth and
draught of water of every one of my generals.”
Natural power was sure to be well received at his
court. Seventeen men in his time were raised from
common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal,
duke, or general; and the crosses of his Legion of
Honor were given to personal valor, and not to
family connexion. ‘‘ When soldiers have been bap-
tized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one
rank in my eyes.”
When a natural king becomes a titular king,
every body is pleased and satisfied. The Revolu-
tion entitled the strong populace of the Faubourg
St. Antoine, and every horse-boy and powder-
monkey in the army, to look on Napoleon as flesh
of his flesh and the creature of Ais party: but
there is something in the success of grand talent
which enlists an universal sympathy. For in the
prevalence of sense and spirit over stupidity and
malversation, all reasonable men have an interest ;
and as intellectual beings we feel the air purified
by the electric shock, when material force is over-
thrown by intellectual energies. As soon as we
are removed out of the reach of local and acciden-
tal partialities, Man feels that Napoleon fights for
him ; these are honest victories; this strong steam-
engine does our work. Whatever appeals to the
imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of
234 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
human ability, wonderfully encourages and liber:
ates us. This capacious head, revolving and dis-
posing sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating
such multitudes of agents; this eye, which looked
through Europe; this prompt invention; this inex-
haustible resource : — what events! what romantic
pictures! what strange situations !— when spying
the Alps, by a sunset in the Sicilian sea; drawing
up his army for battle in sight of the Pyramids,
and saying to his troops, “‘ From the tops of those
) pyramids, forty centuries look down on you;” ford-
“ing the Red Sea; wading in the gulf of the Isth-
mus of Suez. On the shore of Ptolemais, gigantic
projects agitated him. “ Had Acre fallen, I should
have changed the face of the world.” His army,
on the night of the battle of Austerlitz, which was
the anniversary of his inauguration as Emperor,
presented him with a bouquet of forty standards
taken in the fight. Perhaps it is a little puerile,
the pleasure he took in making these contrasts
glaring ; as when he pleased himself with making
kings wait in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris
and at Erfurt.
We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecis-
ion and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate
ourselves on this strong and ready actor, \who took
occasion by the beard, jand showed us how much
may be accomplished by the mere force of such vir-
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 2385,
tues as all men possess in less degrees; namely, by
punctuality, by personal attention, by courage and
thoroughness. “ The Austrians” he said, ‘ do not
know the value of time.” I should cite him, in his
earlier years, as a model of prudence. His power
does not consist in any wild or extravagant force ;
in any enthusiasm like Mahomet’s, or singular
power of persuasion; but in the exercise of com-
mon-sense on each emergency, instead of abiding
by rules and customs. The lesson he teaches is
that which vigor always teaches ;— that there is
always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly
doubts is not that man’s life an answer. When he
appeared it was the belief of all military men that
there could be nothing new in war ; as it is the be-
* lief of men to-day that nothing new can be under-
taken in politics, or in church, or in letters, or in
trade, or in farming, or in our social manners and_
customs ; and as it is at all times the belief of S0-,
ciety that the world is used up. But Bonaparte
knew better than society; and moreover knew that
he knew better. I think all men know better than)
they do; know that the institutions we so volublys
commend are go-carts and baubles; but they dare,
not trust their presentiments. Bonaparte relied on
his own sense, and did not care a bean for other
people’s. The world treated his novelties just as it
treats everybody’s novelties, — made infinite objec-
236 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
tion, mustered all the impediments; but he snapped
his finger at their objections. ‘“ What creates great
difficulty’ he remarks, “in the profession of the
land-commander, is the necessity of feeding so
many men and animals. If he allows himself to be
guided by the commissaries he will never stir, and
all his expeditions will fail.” An example of his
common-sense is what he says of the passage of the
Alps in winter, which all writers, one repeating
after the other, had described as impracticable.
“‘The winter,” says Napoleon, “is not the most
unfavorable season for the passage of lofty moun-
tains. The snow is then firm, the weather settled,
and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, the
real and only danger to be apprehended in the
Alps. On those high mountains there are often
very fine days in December, of a dry cold, with ex-
treme calmness in the air.” Read his account, too,
of the way in which battles are gained. “In all
battles a moment occurs when the bravest troops,
after having made the greatest efforts, feel inclined
torun. That terror proceeds from a want of con-
fidence in their own courage, and it only requires a
slight opportunity, a pretence, to restore confidence
to them. The art is, to give rise to the opportu-
| nity and to invent the pretence. At Arcola I won
the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I seized that
moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet,
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 237
and gained the day with this handful. You see»
that two armies are two bodies which meet and en-
deavor to frighten each other; a moment of panic
occurs, and that moment must be turned to advan-
tage. When a man has been present in many ac-
tions, he distinguishes that moment without diffi-
culty: it is as easy as casting up an addition.”
This deputy of the nineteenth century added
to his gifts a capacity for speculation on general
topics. He delighted in running through the
range of practical, of literary and of abstract ques-
tions. His opinion is always original and to the
purpose. On the voyage to Egypt he liked,
after dinner, to fix on three or four persons to
support a proposition, and as many to oppose it.
-He gave a subject, and the discussions turned on
questions of religion, the different kinds of gov-
ernment and the art of war. One day he asked
whether the planets were inhabited? On another,
what was the age of the world? Then he pro-
posed to consider the probability of the destruction
of the globe, either by water or by fire: at an-
other time, the truth or fallacy of presentiments,
and the interpretation of dreams. He was very
fond of talking of religion. In 1806 he conversed
with Fournier, bishop of Montpellier, on matters
of theology. There were two points on which they
could not agree, viz. that of hell, and that of salva
938 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
tion out of the pale of the church. The Emperor
told Josephine that he disputed like a devil on
these two points, on which the bishop was inexora-
ble. To the philosophers he readily yielded all
that was proved against religion as the work of
men and time, but he would not hear of material-
ism. One fine night, on deck, amid a clatter of
»materialism, Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and
/ gsaid, “ You may talk as long as you please, gen-
/ (tlemen, but who made all that?” He delighted
in the conversation of men of science, particularly
of Monge and Berthollet; but the men of let-
ters he slighted; they were “manufacturers of
phrases.” Of medicine too he was fond of talk-
ing, and with those of its practitioners whom he
most esteemed, — with Corvisart at Paris, and
with Antonomarchi at St. Helena. ‘ Believe me,”
he said to the last, ““we had better leave off all
these remedies: life is a fortress which neither you
nor I know anything about. Why throw obsta-
cles in the way of its defence? Its own means
are superior to all the apparatus of your labora-
tories. Corvisart candidly agreed with me that all
your filthy mixtures are good for nothing. Medi-
cine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the
results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal
than useful to mankind. Water, air and cleanli-
ness are the chief articles in my pharmacopeia.’’
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 239
His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon and
General Gourgaud at St. Helena, have great value,
after all the deduction that it seems is to be made
from them on account of his known disingenuous-
ness. He has the good-nature of strength and
conscious superiority. I admire his simple, clear
narrative of his battles;—good as Cesar’s; his
good-natured and sufficiently respectful account of .
Marshal Wurmser and his other antagonists ; and
his own equality as a writer to his varying sub-
ject. The most agreeable portion is the Campaign
in Egypt.
He had hours of thought and wisdom. In in-
tervals of leisure, either in the camp or the palace,
Napoleon appears as a man of genius directing
on abstract questions the native appetite for truth
and the impatience of words he was wont to show
in war. He could enjoy every play of invention,
a romance, a bon mot, as well as a stratagem in a
campaign. He delighted to fascinate Josephine
and her ladies, in a dim-lighted apartment, by
the terrors of a fiction to which his voice and
dramatic power lent every addition.
I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the mid-
dle class of modern society ; of the throng who fill
the markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories,
ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He
was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the
QAO REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the in-
ventor of means, the opener of doors and markets,
the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course
the rich and aristocratic did not like him. Eng-
land, the centre of capital, and Rome and Austria,
centres of tradition and genealogy, opposed him.
The consternation of the dull and conservative
classes, the terror of the foolish old men and old
women of the Roman conclave, who in their de-
spair took hold of any thing, and would cling to
red-hot iron, — the vain attempts of statists to
amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of Austria
to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent
and active men every where, which pointed him
out as the giant of the middle class, make his his-
tory bright and commanding. He had the virtues
of the masses of his constituents: he had also their
vices. Iam sorry that the brilliant picture has its
reverse. But that is the fatal quality which we
discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is treach-
erous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening
of the sentiments; and it is inevitable that we
should find the same fact in the history of this
champion, who proposed to himself simply a brill-
lant career, without any stipulation or scruple con-
cerning the means.
Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous
\//sentiments. The highest-placed individual in the
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 241
most cultivated age and population of the world, —'
he has not the merit of common truth and honesty.
He is unjust to his generals; egotistic and monop-
olizing; meanly stealing the credit of their great
actions from Kellermann, from Bernadotte ; in-
triguing to involve his faithful Junot in hopeless
bankruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance
from Paris, because the familiarity of his man-
ners offends the new pride of his throne. He is a
boundless liar. The official paper, his “‘ Moniteur,”
and all his bulletins, are proverbs for saying what
he wished. to be believed ; and worse, — he sat, in
his premature old age, in his lonely island, coldly
falsifying facts and dates and characters, and giv-
ing to history a theatrical éclaét. Like all French-
men he has a passion for stage effect. Every ac-
tion that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this
calculation. His star, his love of glory, his doc-
trine of the immortality of the soul, are all French.
“TI must dazzle and astonish. If I were to give
the liberty of the press, my power could not last
three days.” To make a great noise is his favorite
design. “A great reputation is a great noise: the
more there is made, the farther off it is heard.
Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall ;
but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages.”
His doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His
theory of influence is not flattermg. ‘There are
VOL. Iv. 16
242, REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
/two levers for moving men, —interest and fear.
Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. Friend-
ship is but a name. I love nobody. I do not even
love my brothers: perhaps Joseph a little, from
habit, and because he is my elder; and Duroc, I
love him too; but why ?—because his character
pleases me: he is stern and resolute, and I believe
the fellow never shed a tear. For my part I know
very well that I have no true friends. As long as
I continue to be what I am, I may have as many
pretended friends as I please. Leave sensibility
to women; but men should be firm in heart and
purpose, or they should have nothing to do with
war and government.” He was thoroughly unscru-
pulous. He would steal, slander, assassinate, drown
and poison, as his interest dictated. He had no
generosity, but mere vulgar hatred; he was in-
tensely selfish; he was perfidious; he cheated at
cards ; he was a prodigious gossip, and opened let-
ters, and delighted in his infamous police, and
rubbed his hands with joy when he had intercepted
some morsel of intelligence concerning the men and
women about him, boasting that “he knew every
thing ;” and interfered with the cutting the dresses
of the women ; and listened after the hurrahs and
the compliments of the street, incognito. His man-
ners were coarse. He treated women with low
familiarity. He had the habit of pulling their ears
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 248
and pinching their cheeks when he was in good
humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of
men, and of striking and horse-play with them, to
his last days. It does not appear that he listened
at key-holes, or at least that he was caught at it.
In short, when you have penetrated through all the
circles of power and splendor, you were not deal-
ing with a gentleman, at last; but with an impostor
and a rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of
Jupiter Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter.
In describing the two parties into which modern
society divides itself, — the democrat and the con-
servative, — I said, Bonaparte represents the Dem-
ocrat, or the party of men of business, against the
stationary or conservative party. I omitted then
to say, what is material to the statement, namely
that these two parties differ only as young and old.
The democrat is a young conservative ; the conser- )
vative is an. old democrat. The aristocrat_is ‘the.
democrat ripe “and gone to to seed ; ; — because both |
parties stand on the one » ground of the supreme
value of property, which one endeavors to get, and.
the other to keep. Bonaparte may be said to rep-
resent the whole history of this party, its youth and
its age ; yes, and with poetic justice its fate, in his
own. The counter-revolution, the counter-party,
still waits for its organ and representative, in a
244 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
lover and a man of truly public and universal
aims.
Here was an experiment, under the most favora-
ble conditions, of the powers of intellect without
conscience. Never was such a leader so endowed
and so weaponed; never leader found such aids
and followers. And what was the result of this vast
talent and power, of these immense armies, burned
cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of
men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to no
result. All passed away like the smoke of his ar-
tillery, and left no trace. He left France smaller,
poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole
contest for freedom was to be begun again. The
attempt was in principle suicidal. France served
him with life and limb and estate, as long as it
could identify its interest with him ; but when men
saw that after victory was another war; after the
destruction of armies, new conscriptions ; and they
who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to
the reward, — they could not spend what they had
earned, nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in
their chateaux, — they deserted him. Men found
that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other
men. It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a
succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of
it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of
the hand, so that the man can not open his fingers ;
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 245
and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, °
until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So this ex-
orbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished and ab-
sorbed the power and existence of those who served
him ; and the universal cry of France and of Eu-_ ,
rope in 1814 was, “ Enough of him;” “ Assez de V
Bonaparte.”
It was not Bonaparte’s fault. He did all that
in him lay to live and thrive without moral princi- .
ple. It was the nature of things, the eternal law
of man and of the world which baulked and ruined
him; and the result, in a million experiments, will
be the same. Every experiment, by multitudes or by,
individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will
fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient, as
the pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civiliza-
tion is essentially one of property, of fences, of ex-
clusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our
riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in
our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth.
Only that good profits which we can_taste with _
all doors open, and which serves all men.
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GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER.
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GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER.
I FIND a provision in the constitution of the
world for the writer, or secretary, who is to report
the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that every-
where throbs and works. His office is a reception
of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of
the eminent and characteristic experiences.
Nature will bereported. All things are engaged
in writing their history. The planet, the pebble,
goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock
leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river its
channel in the soil; the animal its bones in the
stratum ; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in.
the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in
the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the’
snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters!
more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every
act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of
his fellows and in his own manners and face. The
air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the
ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every
250 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
object covered over with hints which speak to the
intelligent.
In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and
the narrative is the print of the seal. It neither
exceeds nor comes short of the fact. But nature
strives upward ; and, in man, the report is some-
thing more than print of the seal. It is a new and
finer form of the original. The record is alive, as
that which it recorded is alive. In man, the mem-
ory is a kind of looking-glass, which, having received
the injages of surreunding objects, is touched with
life, and disposes them in a new order. The facts
do not lie in it inert; but some subside and others
shine; so that soon we have a new picture, com-
posed of the eminent experiences. The man co-
operates. He loves to communicate; and that
which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart
until it is delivered. But, besides the universal
joy of conversation, some men are born with exalted
powers for this second creation. Men are born to
write. The gardener saves every slip and seed and
peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of
plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair.
Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him
as a model and sits for its picture. He counts
it all nonsense that they say, that some things are
undescribable. He believes that all that can be
thought can be written, first or last ; and he would
i
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 951
report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing
so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes therefore
commended to his pen, and he will write. In his
eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, and the
universe is the possibility of being reported. In
conversation, in calamity, he finds new materials ;
as our German poet said, “Some god gave me the
power to paint what I suffer.” He draws his rents
from rage and pain. By acting rashly, he buys the
power of talking wisely. Vexations and a tempest
of passion only fill his sail; as the good Luther
writes,/“* When I am angry, I can pray well and |
preach well pa and, if we knew the genesis of fine
strokes of eloquence, they might recall the complai-
sance of Sultan Amurath, who struck off some
Persian heads, that his physician, Vesalius, might
see the spasms in the muscles of the neck. His
failures are the preparation of his victories. A
new thought or a crisis of passion apprises him
that all that he has yet learned and written is ex-
oteric, —is not the fact, but some rumor of the
fact. What then? Does he throw away the pen?
No; he begins again to describe in the new light
which has shined on him,— if, by some means, he
may yet save some true word. Nature conspires.
rises for utterance, though to rude and stammering
organs. If they cannot compass it, it waits and
952 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
works, until at last it moulds them to its perfect
will and is articulated.
This striving after imitative expression, which
one meets every, where, is significant of the aim of
nature, but is mere stenography. ‘There are higher
degrees, and nature has more splendid endowments
for those whom she elects to a superior office ; for
»the class of scholars or writers, who see connection
where the multitude tude see fragments, and who are
‘impelled to exhibit the facts in order, and so to
supply the axis on which the frame of things turns.
Nature has dearly at heart the formation of the
speculative man, or scholar. It is an end never lost
sight of, and is prepared in the original casting of
things. He is no permissive or accidental appear-
ance, but an organic agent, one of the estates of
the realm, provided and prepared from of old and
from everlasting, in the knitting and contexture
of things. Presentiments, impulses, cheer him.
There is a certain heat in the breast which attends
the perception of a primary truth, which is the
shining of the spiritual sun down into the shaft of
the mine. Every thought which dawns on the
mind, in the moment of its emergence announces
its own rank,— whether it is some whimsy, or
whether it is a power.
If he have his incitements, there is, on the other
side, invitation and need enough of his gift. Soci
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 953
etyh has,-at-all times, the same want, 1 namely. of one
“sane. man. smasiteA h adequate powers of _expression_ to.
hold up each object of f monomanta in in its right rela-_
tions. — ~The ambitious and ‘mercenary bring their
last new mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, Texas, rail-
road, Romanism, mesmerism, or California; and, by
detaching the object from its relations, easily suc-
ceed in making it seen in a glare; and a multitude
go mad about it, and they are not to be reproved
or cured by the opposite multitude who are kept
from this particular insanity by an equal frenzy on
another crotchet. But let one man have the com-
prehensive eye that can replace this isolated prodigy
in its right neighborhood-and—bearings, —the illu-
sion vanishes, and the returning reason of the com-
munity thanks the reason of the monitor.
The scholar is the man of the ages, but he must
also wish with other men to stand well with his con-
temporaries. But there is a certain ridicule, among
superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy,
which is of no import unless the scholar heed it.
In this country, the emphasis of conversation and
of public opinion commends the practical man ;
and the solid portion of the community is named
with significant respect in every circle. Our peo-
ple are of Bonaparte’s opinion concerning ideolo-
gists. Ideas are subversive of social order and
eomfort, and at last make a fool of the possessor.
254 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
It is believed, the ordering a cargo of goods from
New York to Smyrna, or the running up and
down to procure a company of subscribers to set
a-going five or ten thousand spindles, or the ne-
gotiations of a caucus and the practising on the
prejudices and facility of country-people to secure
their votes in November, —is practical and com-
mendable.
If I were to compare action of a much higher
strain with a life of contemplation, I should not
venture to pronounce with much confidence in fa-
vor of the former. Mankind have such a deep
stake in inward illumination, that there is much to
be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his
life of thought and prayer. A certain partiality,
a headiness and loss of balance, is the tax which
all action must pay. Act, if you like, — but you
do it at_your-peril. Men’s actions are too strong
for them. Show me aman who has acted and who
has not been the victim and slave of his action.
What they have done commits and enforces them to
)do the same again. The first act, which was to be
an experiment, becomes a sacrament. The fiery re-
former embodies his aspiration in some rite or cov-
enant, and he and his friends cleave to the form and
lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established
Quakerism, the Shaker has established his monas-
tery and his dance; and although each prates of
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 200
spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is
anti-spiritual. But where are his new things of to-
day? In actions of enthusiasm this drawback ap-
pears, but in those lower activities, which have no
higher aim than to make us more comfortable and
more cowardly ; in actions of cunning, actions that
steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative
from the practical faculty and put a ban on reason
and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback
and negation. The Hindoos write in their sacred
books, ‘* Children only, and not the learned, speak
of the speculative and the practical faculties as two.
They are but one, for both obtain the selfsame
end, and the place which is gained by the followers
of the one is gained by the followers of the other.
That man seeta, who seeth that the speculative and
the practical doctrines are one.” For great action
must draw on the spiritual nature. The measure
of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds.
The greatest action may easily be one of the most
private circumstance.
This disparagement will not come from the lead-
ers, but from inferior persons. The robust gentle-
men who stand at the head of the practical class,
share the ideas of the time, and have too much
sympathy with the speculative class. It is not
from men excellent in any kind that disparage-
ment of any other is to be looked for. With such,
256 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Talleyrand’s question is ever the main one; not, is
he rich? is he committed ? is he well-meaning? has
he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is
he of the establishment ?— but, Js he-any body ?
does he stand. for-something? He must be good
of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand, all that
State-street, all that the common-sense of mankind
asks. Be real and admirable, not as we know, but
as you know. Able men do not care in what kind
a man is able, so only that he is able. A master
likes a master, and does not stipulate whether it be
orator, artist, craftsman, or king.
'§ Societyhas really no graver interest than the
“well-being of the literary class. And it is not to
‘be denied that men are cordial in their recognition
and welcome of intellectual accomplishments. Still
the writer does not stand with us on any command-
ing ground. I think this to be his own fault. A
pound passes for a pound. ‘There have been times
when he was a sacred person: he wrote Bibles,
the first hymns, the codes, the epics, tragic songs,
Sibylline verses, Chaldean oracles, Laconian sen-
tences, inscribed on temple walls. Every word was
true, and woke the nations to new life. He wrote
without levity and without choice. Every word
was carved before his eyes into the earth and the
sky ; and the sun and stars were only letters of the
same purport and of no more necessity. But how
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. rai
ean he be honored when he does not honor himself ;
when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no
longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to
the giddy opinion of a reckless public; when he
must sustain with shameless advocacy some bad
government, or must bark, all the year round, in
opposition ; or write conventional criticism, or prof-
ligate novels; or at any rate write without thought,
and without recurrence by day and by night to the
sources of inspiration ?
Some reply to these questions may be furnished
by looking over the list of men of literary gen-
ius in our age. Among these no more instructive
name occurs than that of Goethe to represent the
powers and duties of the scholar or writer.
I described Bonaparte as a representative of the
popular external life and aims of the nineteenth
century. Its other half, its poet, is Goethe, a man
quite domesticated in the century, breathing its air,
enjoying its fruits, impossible at any earlier time,
and taking away, by his colossal parts, the reproach
of weakness which but for him would lie on the
intellectual works of the period. He appears at a
time when a general culture has spread itself and
has smoothed down all sharp individual traits;
when, in the absence of heroic characters, a social
eomfort and co-operation have come in. There is
no poet, but scores of poetic writers; no Colum-
VOL, IV 17
~,
258 REPRESENTATIVE. MEN.
bus, but hundreds of post-captains, with transit-
telescope, barometer and concentrated soup and
pemmican ; no Demosthenes, no Chatham, but any
number of clever parliamentary and forensic de-
baters ; no prophet or saint, but colleges of divin-
ity ; no learned man, but learned societies, a cheap
press, reading-rooms and book-clubs without num-
ber. There was never such a miscellany of facts.
The world extends itself like American trade. We
conceive Greek or Roman life, life in the Middle
Ages, to be a simple and comprehensible affair; but
modern life to respect a multitude of things, which
is distracting.
Goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity ;
/hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to
‘cope with this rolling miscellany of facts and sci-
ences, and by his own versatility to dispose of them
with ease; a manly mind, unembarrassed by the
variety of coats of convention with which life had
got encrusted, easily able by his subtlety to pierce
these and to draw his strength from nature, with
which he lived in full communion. What is
strange too, he lived in a small town, in a petty
state, in a defeated state, and in a time when Ger-
/ many played no such leading part in the world’s
affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons with any
metropolitan pride, such as might have cheered a
French, or English, or once, a Roman or Attic
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 259
genius. Yet there is no trace of provincial limita-
tion in his muse. He is not’a debtor to his position,
but was born with a free and controlling genius.
The Helena, or the second part of Faust, is a \
philosophy of literature ; set in poetry ; the work of ©
one who found himself the master of histories, my-
thologies, philosophies, sciences and national litera-
tures, in the encyclopedical manner in which mod-
ern erudition, with its international intercourse of
the whole earth’s population, researches into In-
dian, Etruscan and all Cyclopean arts; geology,
chemistry, astronomy ; and every one of these king-
doms assuming a certain aerial and poetic charac-
ter, by reason of the multitude. One looks at a
king with reverence ; but if one should chance to
be at a congress of kings, the eye would take liber-|
ties with the peculiarities of each. These are not
wild miraculous songs, but elaborate forms to which
the poet has confided the results of eighty years of
observation. This reflective and critical wisdom
makes the poem more truly the flower of this time.
It dates itself. Still he is a poet, — poet of a
prouder laurel than any contemporary, and, under
this plague of microscopes (for he seems to see out
of every pore of his skin), strikes the harp with a
hero’s strength and grace.
The wonder of the book is its superior intelli-
gence. In tke menstruum of this man’s wit, the -
260 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
past and the present ages, and. their religions, pol:
itics and modes of thinking, are dissolved into
archetypes and ideas. What new mythologies sail
through his head! The Greeks said that Alexan-
der went as far as Chaos; Goethe went, only the
other day, as far ; and one step farther he hazarded,
and brought himself safe back.
There is a heart-cheering freedom in his specula-
tion. The immense horizon which journeys with
us lends its majesty to trifles and to matters of
convenience and necessity, as to solemn and festal
performances. He was the soul of his century. If
that was learned, and had become, by population,
compact organization and drill of parts, one great
Exploring Expedition, accumulating a glut of facts
and fruits too fast for any hitherto-existing savans
to classify, — this man’s mind had ample chambers
for the distribution of all. He had a power te
unite the detached atoms again by their own law.
He has clothed our modern existence with poetry.
Amid littleness and detail, he detected the Genius
of life, the old cunning Proteus, nestling close
beside us, and showed that the dulness and prose
we ascribe to the age was only another of his
masks : —
“His very flight is presence in disguise :”
— that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 261
dress, and was not a whit less vivacious or rich in
Liverpool or the Hague than once in Rome or An-
tioch. He sought him in public squares and main
streets, in boulevards and hotels; and, in the solid-
est kingdom of routine and the senses, he showed
the lurking dzmonic power ; that, in actions of
routine, a thread of mythology and fable spins it-
self: and this, by tracing the pedigree of every
usage and practice, every institution, utensil and
means, home to its origin in the structure of man.
He had an extreme impatience of conjecture and
of rhetoric. “I have guesses enough of my own;
if a man write a book, let him set down only what
he knows.” He writes in the plainest and lowest
tone, omitting a great.deal-more than he writes,
and putting ever a thing for a word. He has ex-
plained the distinction between the antique and
the modern spirit and art. He has defined art, its
scope and laws. He has said the best things about
nature that ever were. said. He treats nature as
the old philosophers, as the seven wise masters did,
—and, with whatever loss of French tabulation
and dissection, poetry and humanity remain to us;
and they have some doctoral skill. Eyes are bet-
ter on the whole than telescopes or microscopes.
He has contributed a key to many parts of nature,
through the rare turn for unity and simplicity in
hismind. Thus Goethe suggested the leading idea
262 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
of modern botany, that a leaf or the eye of a leaf
is the unit of botany, and that every part of the
plant is only a transformed leaf to meet a new con-
dition ; and, by varying the conditions, a leaf may
be converted into any other organ, and any other
organ into a leaf. In like manner, in osteology, he
assumed that one vertebra of the spine might be
considered as the unit of the skeleton: the head
was only the uppermost vertebrze transformed.
“The plant goes from knot to knot, closing at last
with the flower and the seed. So the tape-worm,
the caterpillar, goes from knot to knot and closes
with the head. Man and the higher animals are
built up through the vertebrae, the powers being
concentrated in the head.” In optics again he re-
jected the artificial theory of seven colors, and con-
‘sidered that every color was the mixture of light
and darkness in new proportions. It is really of
very little consequence what topic he writes upon.
He sees at every pore, and has a certain gravita-
‘tion towards truth. He will realize what you say.
He hates to be.trifled.with and to be made to say
‘over again some old wife’s fable that has had pos-
session of men’s faith these thousand years. He
may as well see if it is true as another. He sifts
it. Iam here, he would say, to be the measure and
judge of these things. Why should I take them
on trust? And therefore what he says of religion,
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 263
of passion, of marriage, of manners, of property,
of paper-money, of periods of belief, of omens, of
luck, or whatever else, refuses to be forgotten.
Take the most remarkable “example that could
occur of this tendency to verify every term in pop-
ular use. The Devil had played an important part
in mythology in “all times. Goethe would have nc
word that does not cover a thing. The same meas-
ure will still serve: fe I have never heard of any ,
crime which I might not have committed.”] So he
flies at the throat of this imp. He shall 1 real ;
he shall be modern; he shall be European; he shall,
dress like a gentleman, and accept the manners, |
and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the |
life of Vienna and of Heidelberg in 1820, — or he
shall not exist. Accordingly, he stripped him of }
mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon
tail, brimstone and blue-fire, and instead of looking.
in books and pictures, looked for him in his own (
mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness and.
unbelief that, in crowds or in solitude, darkens over '
the human thought, — and found that the portrait.
gained reality and terror by every thing he added |
and by every thing he took away. He found that
the essence of this hobgoblin which had hovered
in shadow about the habitations of men ever since
there were men, was pure intellect, applied,— as
always there is a tendency,—to the service of
264 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
the senses: and he flung into literature, in his Me-
phistopheles, the first. organic. figure that has been
added for some ages, and which will remain as long
as the Prometheus. i
I have no design to enter into any analysis of
his numerous works. ‘They consist of translations,
criticism, dramas, lyric and every other description
of poems, literary journals and portraits of distin-
guished men. Yet I cannot omit to specify the
“Wilhelm Meister.”
“ Wilhelm Meister” is a novel in every sense,
the first of its ‘kind, called by its admirers the > only
delineation ute modern. society, —as if other noy-
els, those of Scott for example, dealt with costume
and condition, this with the spirit of life. It isa
book over which some veil is still drawn. It is
read by very intelligent persons with wonder and
delight. It is preferred by some such to Hamlet,
as a work of genius. I suppose no book of this
century can compare with it in its delicious sweet-
ness, So new, so provoking to the mind, gratifying
it with so many and so solid thoughts, just in-
sights into life and manners and characters; so
many good hints for the conduct_of life, so many
unexpected glimpses into a higher sphere, and
never a trace of rhetoric or dulness. A very
provoking book to the curiosity of young men of
genius, but a very unsatisfactory one. Lovers of
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 265
light reading, those who look in it for the enter
tainment they find in a romance, are disappointed.
On ‘the other hand, those who begin it with the
higher hope to read in it a worthy history of
genius, and the just award of the laurel to its
toils and denials, have also reason to complain.
We had an English romance here, not long ago,
professing to embody the hope of a new age and
to unfold the political hope of the party called
‘Young England, — in which the only reward
of virtue is a seat in Parliament and a peerage.
Goethe’s romance has_a conclusion as lame and
immoral. George Sand, in Consuelo and its con-
tinuation, has sketched a truer and more dignified
picture. In the progress of the story, the char-
acters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate
that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic
convention: they quit the society and habits of
their rank, they lose their wealth, they become
the servants of great ideas and of the most gen-
erous social ends; until at last the hero, who is
the centre and fountain of an association for the
rendering of the noblest benefits to the human
race, no longer answers to his own titled name ;
it sounds foreign and remote in his ear. “I am
only man,” he says; “I breathe and work for
man ;” and this in poverty and extreme sacrifices.
Goethe’s hero, on the contrary, has so many weak-
266 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
nesses and impurities and keeps such bad com-
pany, that the sober English public, when the
book was translated, were disgusted. And yet it
is so crammed with wisdom, with knowledge of
the world and with knowledge of laws; the per-
sons so truly and subtly drawn, and with such few
strokes, and not a word too much,—the book re-
mains ever so new and unexhausted, that we must
even let it go its way and be willing to get what
good from it we can, assured that it has only
begun its office and has millions of readers yet to
serve.
The argument is the passage of a democrat to
the aristocracy, using both words in their best
sense. And this passage is not made in any mean
or creeping way, but through the hall door. Na-
ture and character assist, and the rank is made
real by sense and probity in the nobles. No gen-
erous youth can escape this charm of reality in
the book, so that it is highly stimulating to intel-
lect and courage.
The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the
book as “ thoroughly modern and prosaic; the ro-
mantic is completely levelled in it; so is the po-
etry of nature; the wonderful. The book treats
only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poet.
icized civic and domestic story. The wonderful
in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusi-
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 267
astic dreaming :”” —and yet, what is also charac-
teristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and
it remained his favorite reading to the end ot his
life.
What distinguishes Goethe for French and
English readers is a property which he shares
with his nation, — a, habitual reference to. interior wr \
truth, In England and in America there is a
respect for talent; and, if it is exerted in support
of any ascertained or intelligible interest or party,
or in regular opposition to any, the public is satis-
fied. In France there is even a greater delight
in intellectual brilliancy for its own sake. And
in all these countries, men of talent write from
talent. It is enough if the understanding is oc-
cupied, the taste propitiated,—so many columns,
so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable
way. The German intellect wants the French
sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of
the English, and the American adventure; but it
has a certain probity, which never rests in a su-
perficial performance, but asks steadily, Zo what
end? A German public asks for a controlling
sincerity. Here is activity of thought; but what
is it for? What does the man mean? Whence,
whence all these thoughts ?
Talent alone can not make a writer. There, |
must be a man behind the book; a personality L V
' 968 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
)which by birth and quality is pledged to the doc.
)trines there set forth, and which exists to see and
state things so, and not otherwise; holding things
because they are things. If he cannot rightly
express himself to-day, the same things subsist
and will open themselves to-morrow. There lies
the burden on his mind,—the burden of truth
to be declared,— more or less understood; and it
constitutes his business and calling in the world
\to see those facts through, and to make them
known. What signifies that he trips and stam-
mers; that his voice is harsh or hissing; that
his method or his tropes are inadequate? That
message will find method and imagery, articulation
and melody. Though he were dumb it would
speak. If not,—if there be no such God’s word
' in the man, — what care we how adroit, how fluent,
| how brilliant he is?
It makes a great difference to the force of any
sentence whether there be a man behind it or no.
In the learned journal, in the influential news-
paper, I discern no form; only some irresponsi-
ble shadow ; oftener some moneyed corporation, or
some dangler who hopes, in the mask and robes of
his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But through
every clause and part of speech of a right book I
meet the eyes of the most determined of men; his
force and terror inundate every word; the commas
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 269
and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic
and nimble, — can go far and live long.
In England and America, one may be an adept
in the writings of a Greek or Latin poet, without
any poetic taste or fire. That a man has spent
years on Plato and Proclus, does not afford a pre-
sumption that he holds heroic opinions, or under-
values the fashions of his town. But the German
nation have the most ridiculous good faith on these
subjects: the student, out of the lecture-room, still
broods on the lessons; and the professor can not
divest himself of the fancy that the truths of phi-
losophy have some application to Berlin and Mu-
nich. This earnestness..enables them to outsee
men of much more talent. Hence almost all the
valuable distinctions which are current in higher
conversation have been derived to us from Ger-
many. But whilst men distinguished for wit and
learning, in Hngland and France, adopt their study
and their side with a certain levity, and are not
understood to be very deeply engaged, from
grounds of character, to the topic or the part they
espouse, — Goethe, the head and body of the Ger-
man nation, does not speak from talent, but the
truth shines through: he is very wise, though his
talent often veils his wisdom. However excellent
his sentence is, he has somewhat better in view.
It awakens my curiosity. He has the formidable
270 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
independence which converse with truth gives:
hear you, or forbear, his fact abides; and your in-
terest in the writer is not confined to his story and
he dismissed from memory when he has performed
his task ereditably, as a baker when he has left his
loaf; but his work is the least part of him. |The
old Eternal Genius who built the world has con-
fided himself more to this man than to any other._
I dare not say that Goethe ascended to the high-
est grounds from which genius has spoken. He
has not worshipped the highest unity; he is inca-
pable of a self-surrender to the moral sentiment.
There are nobler strains in poetry than any he has
sounded. There are writers poorer in talent, whose
tone is purer and more touches the heart. Goethe
can never be dear to men. His is not even the
devotion to pure truth ; but to truth for the sake of
culture. He has no aims less large than the con-
quest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be
his portion: a man not to be bribed, nor deceived,
nor overawed; of astoical self-command and self-
denial, and having one test for all men, — What
can you teach me? All possessions are valued by
him for that only; rank, privileges, health, time,
Being itself.
He is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts
and sciences and events; artistic, but not artist;
spiritual, but not spiritualist. There is nothing he
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 971
had not right to know: there is no weapon in the
armory of universal genius he did not take into
his hand, but with peremptory heed that he should
not be for a moment prejudiced by his instruments.
He lays a ray of light under every fact, and _be-
tween himself and his dearest property. From
him nothing was hid, nothing withholden. The
lurking demons sat to him, and the saint who saw
the demons; and the metaphysical elements took
form. “ Piety itself is no aim, but only a means
whereby through purest inward peace we may at-
tain to highest culture.” And his penetration of
every secret of the fine arts will make Goethe still
more statuesque. His affections help him, like wo-
men employed by Cicero to worm out the secret of
conspirators. Enmities he has none. Enemy of
him you may be, —if so you shall teach him aught
which your good-will cannot, were it only what ex-
perience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy and
welcome, but enemy on high terms. He cannot
hate any body; his time is worth too much. Tem-
peramental antagonisms may be suffered, but like
feuds of emperors, who fight dignifiedly across
kingdoms.
His autobiography, under the title of ‘ Poetry
and Truth out of my Life,” is the expression of
_ the idea, — now familiar to the world through: the
German mind, but a novelty to England, Old and
7H 4 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
New, when that book appeared, — that a man ex-
ists for culture; not for what he can accomplish,
but for what can be accomplished in him. The
reaction of things on the man is the only note-
worthy result. (An intellectual man can see him-
self as a third person ; therefore his faults and de-
lusions interest him equally with his successes.|
Though he wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes
more to know the history and destiny of man ;
whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him
are only interested in a low success.
. This idea reigns in the “ Dichtung und Wahr-
heit”’ and directs the selection of the incidents ;
and nowise the external importance of events, the
rank of the personages, or the bulk of incomes. Of
course the book affords slender materials for what
would be reckoned with us a ** Life of Goethe ;”” —
few dates, no correspondence, no details of offices
or employments, no light on his marriage; and a
period of ten years, that should be the most.active
in his life, after his settlement at Weimar, is sunk
in silence. Meantime certain love-affairs that came
to nothing, as people say, have the strangest impor-
tance: he crowds us with details : — certain whim-
sical opinions, cosmogonies and religions of his own
invention, and especially his relations to remarka-
ble minds and to critical epochs of thought: —
these he magnifies. His “ Daily and Yearly Jour.
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 273
”
nal,” his “Italian Travels,’ his “Campaign in
France” and the historical part of his “ Theory of
Colors,” have the same interest. In the last, he
rapidly notices Kepler, Roger Bacon, Galileo, New-
ton, Voltaire, &c.; and the charm of this portion of
the book consists in the simplest statement of the
relation betwixt these grandees of European scien-
tific history and himself; the mere drawing of the
lines from Goethe to Kepler, from Goethe to Ba-
con, from Goethe to Newton. The drawing of the
line is, for the time and person, a solution of the
formidable problem, and gives pleasure when Iph-
igenia and Faust do not, without any cost of inven-
tion comparable to that of Iphigenia and Faust.
This lawgiver of art is not an artist. Was it
that he knew too much, that his sight was micro-
scopic and interfered with the just perspective, the
seeing of the whole? He is fragmentary; a writer
of occasional poems and of an encyclopedia of sen-
tences. When he sits down to write a drama or a’
tale, he collects and sorts his observations from a
hundred sides, and combines them into the body as
fitly as he can. A great deal refuses to incorpo-
rate: this he adds loosely as letters of the parties,
leaves from their journals, or the like. A great
deal still is left that will not find any place. This
the bookbinder alone can give any cohesion to; and
hence, notwithstanding the looseness of many of his
VOL. Iv. 18
214 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
works, we have volumes of detached paragraphs,
aphorisms, Xenien, &e.
I suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew out
of the calculations of self-culture. It was the in-
firmity of an admirable scholar, who loved the
world out of gratitude ; who knew where libraries,
galleries, architecture, laboratories, savans and lei-
sure, were to be had, and who did not quite trust
the compensations of poverty and nakedness. Soc-
rates loved Athens; Montaigne, Paris; and Ma-
dame de Staél said she was only vulnerable on that
side (namely, of Paris). It has its favorable as-
pect. All the geniuses are usually so ill-assorted
and sickly that one is ever wishing them somewhere
else. We seldom see any body who is not uneasy
or afraid to live. There is a slight blush of shame
on the cheek of good men and aspiring men, and a
spice of caricature. But this man was entirely at
home and happy in his century and the world.
None was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed
the game. In this aim of culture, which is the
genius of his works, is their power. The idea of
absolute, eternal truth, without reference to my
own enlargement by it, is higher. The surrender
to the torrent of poetic inspiration is higher; but
compared with any motives on which books are
written in England and America, this is very truth,
and has the power to inspire which belongs to truth.
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 15
Thus has he brought back to a book some of its
ancient might and dignity.
Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and
country, when original talent was oppressed under
the load of books and mechanical auxiliaries and
the distracting variety of claims, taught men how
to dispose of this mountainous miscellany and make
it subservient. I join Napoleon with him, as being
both representatives of the impatience and reaction
of nature against the morgue of conventions, — two
stern realists, who, with their scholars, have sever-
ally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant and
seeming, for this time and for ali time. This cheer-
ful laborer, with no external popularity or provoca-
tion, drawing his motive and his plan from his own
breast, tasked himself with ‘stints for a giant, and
without relaxation or rest, except by alternating
his pursuits, worked on for eighty years as the
steadiness of his first zeal.
It is the last lesson of modern science that the
highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by
few elements, but by the highest complexity. Man
is the most composite of all creatures; the wheel-
insect, volvow globator, 1s at the other extreme.
We shall learn to draw rents and revenues from
the immense patrimony of the old and the recent
ages. (Goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence
of all times; that the disadvantages of any epoch
276 REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
exist only to the faint-hearted. Genius hovers
with his sunshine and music close by the darkest
and deafest eras. No mortgage, no attainder, will
hold on men or hours. The world is young: the
former great men call to us affectionately. We
too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens
and the earthly world. The secret of genius is to
suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that
we know; in the high refinement of modern life,
in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good
faith, reality and a purpose; and first, last, midst
and without end, to honor every truth by use.
NATURE,
ADDRESSES AND LECTURES.
CONTENTS.
—_—e—
NATURE F é £ 3 3 : : “ ;
Tue AMERICAN ScHoutarR. An Oration delivered before
the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, Aug. 31, 1837
An Avpress delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity
College, Cambridge, July 15,1838 . ; : ‘
LitERARY Eruics. An Oration delivered before the Liter-
ary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838
Tue MeruHop or Nature. An Oration delivered before
the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine,
August 11, 1841
Man THE Rerormer. A Lecture read before the Mechan-
ics’ Apprentices’ Library Association, Boston, January 25,
1841
LECTURE ON THE Times. Read at the Masonic Temple,
Boston, December 2, 1841 : ‘ 5
THE ConseRVATIVE. A Lecture read in the Masonic Tem-
ple, Boston, December 9, 1841 . ‘ : :
THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. A Lecture read in the Masonic
Temple, Boston, January, 1842
THe Younc AMERICAN. A Lecture read before the Mer-
cantile Library Association, in Boston, February 7, 1844.
81
117
149 +
181
215
245
277
309
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NATURE.
—¢—
A sUBTLE chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings ;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose ;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
INTRODUCTION.
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepul-
chres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histo-
ries, and criticism. The foregoing generations
beheld God and nature face to face ; we, through
their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an
original relation to the universe? Why should
not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight
and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation
to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed
for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream
around and through us, and invite us by the pow-
ers they supply, to action proportioned to nature,
why should we grope among the dry bones of the
past, or put the living generation into masquerade
out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day
also. There is more wool and flax in the fields.
There are new lands, new men, new thoughts.
Let us demand our own works and laws and wor-
ship.
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which
are unanswerable. We must truss the perfection
10 INTRODUCTION.
of the creation so far as to believe that whatever
curiosity the order of things has awakened in our
minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every
man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to
those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life,
before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner,
nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, de-
scribing its own design. Let us interrogate the
great apparition that shines so peacefully around
us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?
All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory
of nature. We have theories of races and of func-
tions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea
of creation. We are now so far from the road to
truth; that religious teachers dispute and hate each
other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound
and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most
abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a
true theory appears, it will be its own evidence.
Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now
many are thought not only unexplained but inex-
plicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts,
sex.
Philosophically considered, the universe is com-
posed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking,
therefore, all that is separate from us, all which
Philosophy distinguishes: as the NOT ME, that is,
both nature and art, all other men and my own
INTRODUCTION. 11
body, must be ranked under this name, Naturg.
In enumerating the values of nature and casting up
their sum, I shall use the word in both senses ; —
in its common and in its philosophical import. In
inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccu-
racy is not material; no confusion of thought will —
occur. Vature, in the common sense, refers to es-> |
sences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river,(.
the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will)
with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue,¢
a picture. But his operations taken together are
so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching,
and washing, that in an impression so grand as that
of the world on the human.mind, they do not vary
the result.
‘
,
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their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake
them and they shall quit the false good and leap to
the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks.
This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual do-
mestication of the idea of Culture. The main en-
terprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the
upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials
strewn along the ground. The private life of one}
man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, more )
formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in )
its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in his-
tory. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth
the particular natures of all men. Each philoso-
pher, each bard, each actor has only done for me,
as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself.
The books which once we valued more than the
apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. _ What
is that but saying that we have come up with the
198 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.
point of view which the universal mind took through
the eyes of one scribe; we have been that man, and
have passed on. First, one, then another, we drain
‘all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these sup-
plies, we crave a better and more abundant food.
The man has never lived that can feed us ever.
The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person.
who shall set a barrier on any one side to this un-
bounded, unboundable empire. It is one central
fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, light-
ens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the throat
of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards
of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a
thousand stars. It is. one soul which animates
all men.
But [ have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this ab-
straction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay
longer to add what I have to say of nearer reference
to the time and to this country.
Historically, there is thought to be a difference
in the ideas which predominate over successive
epochs, and there are data for marking the genius
of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Re-
flective or Philosophical age. With the views I
have intimated of the oneness or the identity of the
mind through all individuals, I do not much dwell
on these differences. In fact, I believe each indi
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 109
vidual passes through all three. The boy is a Greek;
the youth, romantic; the adult, reflective. L deny bee
not however that a revolution in the leading idea
may be distinctly enough traced.
Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.
Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are crit-
ical; we are embarrassed with second thoughts ; we
cannot enjoy any thing for hankering to know
whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with
eyes; we see with our feet; the time is infected
with Hamlet’s unhappiness, —
“ Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
It is so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be
pitied. Would we be blind? Do we fear lest we
should outsee nature and God, and drink truth
dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary
class as a mere announcement of the fact that they
find themselves not in the state of mind of their
fathers, and regret the coming state as untried ; as
a boy dreads the water before he has learned that
he can swim. If there is any period one would de-
sire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution ;
when the old and the new stand side by side and
admit of being compared ; when the energies of all
men are searched by fear and by hope; when the
historic glories of the old can be compensated by
the rich possibilities of the new era? ‘This time,
/ J
110 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.
like all times, is a very good one, if we but know
what to do with it.
I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of
{the coming days, as they glimmer already through
jpoetry and art, through philosophy and science,
through church and state.
One of these signs is the fact that the same
// /movement which effected the elevation of what was
ealled the lowest class in the state, assumed in lit-
erature a very marked and as benign an aspect.
Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the
low, the common, was explored and poetized. That
‘which had been negligently trodden under foot by
‘those who were harnessing and provisioning them-
kelves for long journeys into far countries, is sud-
\denly found to be richer than all foreign parts.
The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child,
the philosophy of the street, the meaning of house-
hold life, are the topics of the time. It is a great
stride. It is a sign,—is it not? of new vigor
when the extremities are made active, when cur-
'yents of warm life run into the hands and the feet.
_Lask not for the great, the remote, the romantic:
PanIIT tere ania
_what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek
art, or Provengal minstrelsy ; I embrace, the com-
mon, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar,
| the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you
may have the antique and future worlds. What
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 111
would we really know the meaning of? The meal
in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in
the street ; the news of the boat; the glance of the.
eye; the form and the gait of the body ;— show
me the ultimate reason of these matters ; show me)
the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause’
lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs_
and extremities of*nature; let me see every trifle |
bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly |
on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and /
the ledger referred to the like cause by which light |
undulates and poets sing ; —and the world lies no /
longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has \
form and order; there is no trifle, there is no puz- /
zle, but one design unites and animates the far- ) }
thest pinnacle and the lowest trench:
This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith,
Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe,
Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have
differently followed and with various success. In
contrast with their writing, the style of Pope, of
Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and _ pedantic.
This writing is blood-warm. Man is surprised to
find that things near are not less beautiful and
wondrous than things remote. The near explains
the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is
related to all nature. This perception of the worth
of the vulgar ‘is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in
112 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.
this very thing the most modern of the moderns,
has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the
ancients.
There is one man of genius who has done much
for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has
never yet been rightly estimated ; — I mean Eman-
uel Swedenborg. The most imaginative of men,
yet writing with the precision of a mathematician,
he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical
| Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time.
Such an attempt of course must have difficulty
which no genius could surmount. But he saw and
showed the connection between nature and the af-
fections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic
or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangi-
ble world. Especially did his shade-loving muse
hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature;
he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral
evil to the foul material forms, and has given in
epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of
unclean and fearful things.
Another sign of our times, also marked by an
analogous political movement, is the new impor-
tance given to the single person. Every thing that
tends to insulate the individual, — to surround him
with barriers of natural respect, so that each man
shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with
man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state,
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 113
— tends to true union as well as greatness. “I
learned,” said the melancholy Pestalozzi, “that no
man in God’s wide sii is either willing or able to
help any other man.” Help must come from the
bosom alone. The scholar is that man who must
take up into himself all the ability of the time, all
the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the
future. He must be an university of knowledges.
If there be one lesson more than another which
should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, }
the man is all; in yourself is the law of all na. \
ture, and you know not yet how a globule of sap |
ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Rea.
son ; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare
all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confi.
dence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by _,
all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, _/
to the_American Scholar. We have listened too
long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit
of the American freeman is already suspected to
be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private ava-
rice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The
scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See al-
ready the tragic consequence. The mind of this
country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon it-
self. There is no work for any but the decorons
and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest
promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated
VOL. I. 8
114 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.
by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars
of God, find the earth below not in unison with
these, but are hindered from action by the disgust
which the principles on which business is man-
aged inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust,
some of them suicides. What is the remedy ?
They did not yet see, and thousands of young men
as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the
career do not yet see, that if the single man plant
himself indomitably on his instincts, and there
abide, the huge world will come round to him.
’Patience, — patience ; with the shades of all the
‘good and great for company; and for solace the
‘perspective of your own infinite life; and for work
the study and the communication of principles,
the making those instincts prevalent, the conver-
sion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace
in the world, not to be an unit ;— not to be reck-
oned one character ; — not to yield that peculiar
fruit which each man was created to bear, but to
be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the
thousand, of the party, the section, to which we be-
long ; and our opinion predicted geographically, as
the north, or the south? Not. so, brothers and
friends, — please God, ours shall not be so. We
will walk on our own feet; we will work with our
own hands; we will speak our own minds. The
study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity,
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 115
for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread
of man and the love of man shall be a wall of de-
fence and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of
men will for the first time exist, because each be-
lieves himself inspired by the Divine Soul which
also inspires all men.
‘niga soit en ' go Fal Sona
= i
;
| i v5 eae
tin Peele Ci Sak thee yet ged aye 4 oe ‘ ,
i
4
elder ages drew men to leave all and follow, — |
father and mother, house and land, wife and child ? |
Where shall I hear these august laws of moral be-
ing so pronounced as to fill my ear, and I feel en-
nobled by the offer of my uttermost action and pas-
sion? The test of the true faith, certainly, should
be its power to charm and command the soul, as
the laws of nature control the activity of the hands,
— so commanding that we find pleasure and honor
in obeying. The faith should blend with the light
of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud,
the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. But
now the priest’s Sabbath has lost the splendor of
nature ; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done;
we can make, we do make, even sitting in our
pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves.
Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist,
then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate.
We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do
not uplift, but smite and offend us. We are fain
to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we
ean, a solitude that hears not. I onee heard a
preacher who sorely tempted me to say I would go
136 ADDRESS.
to church no more. Men go, thought I, where
they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the
temple in the afternoon. A snow-storm was fall-
ing around us. ‘The snow-storm was real, the
preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad
contrast in looking at him, and then out of the
window behind him into the beautiful meteor of
the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one
‘word intimating that he had laughed or wept,
‘was married or in love, had been commended, or
cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and
‘acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital
secret of his profession, namely, to convert life
into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in
all his experience had he yet imported into his doc-
trine. This man had ploughed and planted and
talked and bought and sold; he had read books;
he had eaten and drunken; his head aches, his
heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there
not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he
had ever lived at all. Nota line did he draw out
of real history. The true preacher can be known
by this, that he deals out to the people his life, —
life passed through the fire of thought. But of the
bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon
what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a
father or a child ; whether he was a freeholder or
a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a country-
ADDRESS. 137
man; or any other fact of his biography. It\
seemed strange that the people should come to
church. It seemed as if their houses were very un-
entertaining, that they should prefer this thought-
less clamor. It shows that there is a commanding
attraction in the moral sentiment, that can lend a
faint tint of hght to dulness and ignorance coming
in its name and place. The good hearer is sure
he has been tcuched sometimes; is sure there is
somewhat to be reached, and some word that can
reach it. When he listens to these vain words, he
comforts himself by their relation to his remem-
brance of better hours, and so they clatter and echo
unchallenged.
I am not ignorant that when we preach unworth-
ily, it is not always quite in vain. There is a good
ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out
of very indifferent nutriment. There is poetic
truth concealed in all the common-places of prayer
and of sermons, and though foolishly spoken, they
may be wisely heard; for each is some select ex-
pression that broke out in a moment of piety from
some stricken or jubilant soul, and its excellency
made it remembered. The prayers and even the
dogmas of our church are like the zodiac of Den-
derah and the astronomical monuments of the Hin-
doos, wholly insulated from anything now extant in
the life and business of the people. They mark the
138 ADDRESS.
height to which the waters once rose. But this do-
eility is a check upon the mischief from the good
and devout. In a large portion of the community,
the religious service gives rise to quite other thoughts
and emotions. We need not chide the negligent
servant. We are struck with pity, rather, at the
swift retribution of his sloth. ‘Alas for the un-
happy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and
not give bread of life) Everything that befalls, ac-
cuses him. Would he ask contributions for the
missions, foreign or domestic? Instantly his face
is suffused with shame, to propose to his parish that
‘they should send money a hundred or a thousand
miles, to furnish such poor fare as they have at
home and would do well to go the hundred or the
thousand miles to escape. Would he urge people
to a godly way of lhving;—and can he ask a
fellow-creature to come to Sabbath meetings, when
he and they all know what is the poor uttermost
they can hope for therein? Will he invite them
privately to the Lord’s Supper? He dares not. If
no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking
formality is too plain than that he can face a man
of wit and energy and put the invitation without
terror. In the street, what has he to say to the
bold village blasphemer? The village blasphemer
sees fear in the face, form, and gait of the min-
ister. |
ADDRESS. 139
Let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by any\
oversight of the claims of good men. I know and |
honor the purity and strict conscience of numbers.
of the clergy. What life the public worship re-!
tains, it owes to the scattered company of pious
men, who minister here and there in the churches,
and who, sometimes accepting with too great ten-
derness the tenet of the elders, have not accepted |
from others, but from their own heart, the genuine
impulses of virtue, and so still command our love
and awe, to the sanctity of character. Moreover,
the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few
eminent preachers, as in the better hours, the truer
inspirations of all, —nay, in the sincere moments of '
every man. But, with whatever exception, it is
still true that tradition characterizes the preaching
of this country; that it comes out of the memory,
and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is
usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal ;
that thus historical Christianity destroys the power
of preaching, by withdrawing it from the explo-
ration of the moral nature of man; where the sub-
lime is, where are the resources of astonishment and
power. What a cruel injustice it is to that Law,
the joy of the whole earth, which alone can make
thought dear and rich; that Law whose fatal sure-
ness the astronomical orbits poorly emulate ;— that
it is travestied and depreciated, that it is behooted
140 ADDRESS.
and behowled, and not a trait, not a word of it ar-
ticulated. The pulpit in losing sight of this Law,
loses its reason, and gropes after it knows not what.
And for want of this culture the soul of the com-
munity is sick and faithless. It wants nothing so
_/much as a stern, high, stoical, Christian diseipline,
| to make it know itself and the divinity that speaks
through it. Now man is ashamed of himself; he
skulks and sneaks through the world, to be tolerated,
to be pitied, and scarcely in a thousand years does
)any man dare go be wise and good, and so draw af-
| ter him the tears and blessings of his kind.
Certainly there have been periods when, from the
inactivity of the intellect on certain truths, a greater
faith was possible in names and persons. The Puri-
tans in England and America found in the Christ
of the Catholic Church and in the dogmas inherited
from Rome, scope for their austere piety and their
longings for civil freedom. But their creed is pass-
ing away, and none arises in its room. I think no
man can go with his thoughts about him into one
of our churches, without feeling that what hold the
public worship had on men is gone, or going. It
has lost its grasp on the affection of the good and
the fear of the bad. In the country, neighborhoods,
half parishes are signing off, to use the local term.
It is already beginning to indicate character and
religion to withdraw from the religious meetings.
ADDRESS. 141
[ have heard a devout person, who prized the Sab-
bath, say in bitterness of heart, ‘On Sundays, it
seems wicked to go to church.” And the motive
that holds the best there is now only a hope and
a waiting. What was once a mere circumstance,
that the best and the worst men in the parish, the
poor and the rich, the learned and the ignorant,
young and old, should meet one day as fellows in
one house, in sign of an equal right in the soul, has
come to be a paramount motive for going thither.
My friends, in these two errors, I think, I find the
causes of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief.
And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation
than the loss of worship? Then all things go to de>\
cay. Genius leaves the temple to haunt the sen-
ate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. \_,
Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by [
the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor.
Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do not
mention them. F
And now, my brothers, you will ask, What in
these desponding days can be done by us? The
remedy is already declared in the ground of our
complaint of the Church. We have contrasted the
Church with the Soul. — Tn the soul then let the re-.
demption be sought. Wherever a man comes, there
comes revolution. The old is for slaves. When a
man comes, all books are legible, all things trans-
142 ADDRESS.
parent, all religions are forms. He is religious.
Man is the wonderworker. He is seen amid mir-
acles. All men bless and curse. He saith yea and
nay, only. The stationariness of religion; the as-
sumption that the age of inspiration is past, that
the Bible is closed ; the fear of degrading the char-
acter of Jesus by representing him as a man ; —in-
dicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our
theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show
us that_God_is, not was; that He speaketh, not
spake. The true Christianity, —a faith like Christ’s
in the infinitude of man, —is lost. None believeth
in the soul of man, but only in some man or person
old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone.
_All men goin flocks to this saint or that poet,
avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They can-
not see in secret ; they love to be blind in public.
They think society wiser than their soul, and know
not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the
whole world. See how nations and races flit by on
_ the sea of time and leave no ripple to tell where
| they floated or sunk, and one good soul shall make
\ the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zoroaster, rev-
\Jerend forever. None assayeth the stern ambition
to be the Self of the nation and of nature, but each
would be an easy secondary to some Christian
scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent
man. (Once leave your own knowledge of God,
ADDRESS. 148
your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge,
as St. Paul’s, or George Fox’s, er Swedenborg’s, and
you get wide from God with every year this sec-
ondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries, —
the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can
scarcely be convinced there is in them anything
divine.
Let me aan ditiah you, first of all, te go alone;
to refuse the good models, even those which are
sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love
God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you
shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wes-
leys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank
God for these good men, but say, ‘I also otis Se man.’
Imitation cannot go above its model. “The imitator
dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inven-
tor did it because it was natural to him, and so in
him it has a charm. In the imitator something else
is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own
beauty, to come short of another man’s.
Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, )
cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men/
at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only,
that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money,
are nothing to you, —are not bandages over your eyes,)
that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege,
of the immeasurable mind Not too anxious to visit
periodically all families aud each family in your
144 ADDRESS.
parish connection, — when you meet one of these
men or women, be to them a divine man; be to
them thought and virtue ; let their timid aspirations
find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts
be genially tempted out in your atmosphere ; let
their doubts know that you have doubted, and their
wonder feel that you have wondered. By trusting
your own heart, you shall gain more confidence in
other men. For all our penny-wisdom, for all our
soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be
doubted that all men have sublime thoughts ; that
all men value the few real hours of life; they love
to be heard; they love to be caught up into the
vision of principles. We mark with light in the
(memory the few interviews we have had, in the
) dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that
/ )made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought ;
that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to
be what we inly were. Discharge to men the
priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be
\. followed with their love as by an angel.
~ And, to this end, let us not aim at common de-
grees of merit. Can we not leave, to such as love
it, the virtue that glitters for the commendation of
society, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes of
absolute ability and worth? We easily come up
to the standard of goodness in society. Society’s
praise can be cheaply secured, and almost all men
ADDRESS. 145
are content with those easy merits; but the instant
effect of conversing with God will be to put them
away. ‘There are persons who are not actors, not
speakers, but influences ; persons too great for fame,
for display ; who disdain eloquence ; to whom all
we call art and artist, seems too nearly allied to
show and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite
and selfish, and loss of the universal. The orators,
the poets, the commanders encroach on us only as
fair women do, by our allowance and homage.
Slight them by preoccupation of mind, slight them,
as you can well afford to do, by high and universal
aims, and they instantly feel that you have right,
and that it is in lower places that they must shine.
They also feel your right; for they with you are
open to the influx of the all-knowing Spirit, which
annihilates before its broad noon the little shades
and gradations of intelligence in the compositions
we call wiser and wisest.
In such high communion let us study the grand
strokes of rectitude: a bold benevolence, an inde-
pendence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes
of those who love us shall impair our freedom, but
we shall resist for truth’s sake the freest flow of
kindness, and appeal to sympathies far in ad-
vance; and, — what is the highest form in which
we know this beautiful element, — a certain solid-
ity of merit, that has nothing to do with opinion,
VOL. I. 10
146 ADDRESS.
and which is so essentially and manifestly virtue,
that it is taken for granted that the right, the
_ brave, the generous step will be taken by it, and
nobody thinks of commending it. You would com-
pliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would
not praise an angel. | The silence that accepts
merit as the most natural thing in the world, is
the highest applause. | Such souls, when they ap-
pear, are the Imperial Guard of Virtue, the per-
petual reserve, the dictators of fortune. One needs
not praise their courage, —-they are the heart and
soul of nature. O my friends, there_are resources.
im us on which we have not drawn. There are
men who rise refreshed on hearing a threat ; men
to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes
the majority, —demanding not the faculties of pru-
dence and thrift, but comprehension, immovable-
ness, the readiness of sacrifice, —comes graceful
and beloved as a bride. Napoleon said of Mas-
sena, that he was not himself until the battle began
to go against him; then, when the dead began to
fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of
combination, and he put on terror and victory as
a robe. So it isin rugged crises, in unweariable
endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of
question, that the angel is shown. But these are
heights that we can scarce remember and look up
to without contrition and shame. Let us thank
God that such things exist.
ADDRESS. 147
And now let us do what we can to rekindle the
smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The
evils of the church that now is are manifest. The
question returns, What shall we do? I confess,
all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with
new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith
arth _
makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own
Nn
forms. All ‘attempts to contrive a system are as
cold as the new worship introduced by the French
to the goddess of Reason, —to-day, pasteboard and
filigree, and ending to-morrow in madness and
murder. Rather let_the b breath of new life be
breathed by y you. through the £ forms already. existe.
ing. For if once you are alive, you shall find they
shall become plastic and new. The remedy to
their deformity is first, soul, and second, soul, and
evermore, soul. A whole popedom of forms one
pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. Two in-
estimable _advantages Christianity has given us;
first ‘the, e Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world,
whose eae. ge welcome alike into the closet of
the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into
prison-cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the
vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand
forevermore, a temple, which new love, new faith,
new sight shall restore to more than its first splen-
dor to mankind. And secondly, the institution of
preaching, —the speech of man to men, — essen-
148 ADDRESS.
tially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms.
What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in
lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the
invitation of men or your own occasions lead you,
you speak the very truth, as your life and con-
science teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting
hearts of men with new hope and new revelation?
I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty
which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and
chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips
spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West
also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain
' immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to
millions. But they have no epical integrity; are
fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the
intellect. I look for the new Teacher that shall
follow so far those shining laws that he shall see
them come full circle; shall see their rounding
complete grace; shall see the world to be the mir-
ror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of
gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show
\ that the Ought, that Duty, is is_one thing with Sci-
fence, » with Beauty, and with “Joy RS ee coal es .
Sei cases
\
LITERARY ETHICS.
AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, JULY 24, 1888.
4S es
i Py ‘ ,
ORATION.
GENTLEMEN,
The invitation to address you this day, with which
you have honored me, was a call so welcome that I
made haste to obey it. A summons to celebrate
with scholars a literary festival, is so alluring to me
as to overcome the doubts I might well entertain of
my ability to bring you any thought worthy of your
attention. I have reached the middle age of man ;
yet I believe I am not less glad or sanguine at the
meeting of scholars, than when, a boy, I first saw
the graduates of my own College assembled at their
anniversary. Neither years nor books have yet
availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me,
that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth,
the excellency of his country, the happiest of men.
His duties lead him directly into the holy ground
where other men’s aspirations only point. His suc-
cesses are occasions of the purest joy to all men.
Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. His
failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advan-
tages. And because the scholar by every thought
he thinks extends his dominion into the general
152 7 LITERARY ETHICS.
mind of men, he is not one, but many. The few
scholars in each country, whose genius I know,
seem to me not individuals, but societies; and when
events occur of great import, I count over these rep-
resentatives of opinion, whom they will affect, as
if I were counting nations. And even if his results
were incommunicable ; if they abode in his own
spirit ; the intellect hath somewhat so sacred in its
possessions that the fact of his existence and pur-
suits would be a happy omen.
Meantime I know that a very different estimate
of the scholar’s profession prevails in this country,
and the importunity, with which society presses its
claim upon young men, tends to pervert the views
of the youth in respect to the culture of the intel-
lect. Hence the historical failure, on which Europe
and America have so freely commented. This
country has not fulfilled what seemed the reason-
able expectation of mankind. Men looked, when
all feudal straps and bandages were snapped asun-
der, that nature, too long the mother of dwarfs,
should reimburse itself by a brood of Titans, who
should laugh and leap in the continent, and run up
the mountains of the West with the errand of ge-
nius and of love. But the mark of American merit
in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in
eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without
grandeur, and itself not new but derivative, a vase
LITERARY ETGHICS. 163
of fair outline, but empty, — which whoso sees
may fill with what wit and character is in him, but
which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow
with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all
beholders.
I will not lose myself in the desultory questions,
what are the limitations, and what the causes of
the fact. It suffices me to say, in general, that the
diffidence of mankind in the soul has crept over the
American mind; that men here, as elsewhere, are
indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity,
any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit,
to the unproductive service of thought.
Yet in every sane hour the service of thought ap-
pears reasonable, the despotism of the senses insane.
The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words,
and become a pedant; but when he comprehends
his duties he above all men is a realist, and con-
verses with things. For the scholar is the student
with what emphasis it accosts the soul of man, such
is the worth, such the call of the scholar.
The want of the times and. the propriety of this
anniversary concur to draw attention to the doc-/
trine of spas ts Ethics. What I have to say on |
that doctrine distributes itself under the topics of
the resources, the subject, and the discipline of the
of the world; and of what worth the world is, h
scholar.
154 LITERARY ETHICS.
I. The resources of the scholar are proportioned
to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect.
The resources of the scholar are co-extensive with
nature and truth, yet can never be his unless claimed
by him with an equal greatness of mind. He can-
not know them until he has beheld with awe the in-
finitude and impersonality of the intellectual power.
When he has seen that it is not his, nor any man’s,
but that it is the soul which made the world, and
that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he,
as its minister, may rightfully hold all things sub-
ordinate and answerable to it. A divine pilgrim
in nature, all things attend his steps. Over him
stream the flying constellations; over him streams
Time, as they, scarcely divided into months and
years. He inhales the year as a vapor: its fragrant
mid-summer breath, its sparkling January heaven.
And so pass into his mind, in bright transfigura-
tion, the grand events of history, to take a new
order and seale from him. He is the world; and
the epochs and heroes of chronology are pictorial
images, in which his thoughts are told. There is
no event but sprung somewhere from the soul of
man; and therefore there is none but the soul of
man can interpret. Every presentiment of the
mind is executed somewhere in a gigantic fact.
What else is Greece, Rome, England, France, St.
Helena? What else are churches, literatures, and
LITERARY ETHICS. 155
empires? The new man must feel that he is new,
and has not come into the world mortgaged to the
opinions and usages of Europe, and Asia, and Egypt.
The sense of spiritual independence is like the lovely
varnish of the dew, whereby the old, hard, peaked
earth and its old self-same productions are made
new every morning, and shining with the last touch
of the artist’s hand. A false humility, a complais-
ance to reigning schools or to the wisdom of antiq-
uity, must not defraud me of supreme possession
of this hour. If any person have less love of liberty
and less jealousy to guard his integrity, shall he
therefore dictate to you and me? Say to such doc-
tors, We are thankful to you, as we are to history, ©
to the pyramids, and the authors ; but now our day
is come; we have been born out of the eternal
silence; and now will we live, — live for ourselves,
— and not as the pall-bearers of a funeral, but as
the upholders and creators of our age; and neither
Greece nor Rome, nor the three Unities of Aristotle,
nor the three Kings of Cologne, nor the College of |
the Sorbonne, nor the Edinburgh Review is to com-:
mand any longer. Now that we are here we will
put our own interpretation on things, and our own
things for interpretation. Please himself with com-
plaisance who will, — for me, things must take my
seale, not I theirs. I will say with the warlike
king, “ God gave me this crown, and the whole
world shall not take it away.”
156 LITERARY ETHICS.
_The whole value of history, of biography, is to
increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man
can be and do. This is the moral of the Plu-
tarchs, the Cudworths, the Tennemanns, who give
us the story of men or of opinions. Any history
of philosophy fortifies my faith, by showing me
that what high dogmas I had supposed were the —
rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture, and
only now possible to some recent Kant or Fichte,
—were the prompt improvisations of the earliest
inquirers; of Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xeno-
phanes. In view of these students, the soul seems
to whisper, ‘There is a better way than this indo-
lent learning of another. Leave me alone; do not
teach me out of Leibnitz or Schelling, and I shall
find it all out myself.’
Still more do we owe to biography the fortifica-
tion of our hope. If you would know the power
of character, see how much you would impoverish
the world if you could take clean out of history the
lives of Milton, Shakspeare, and Plato, — these
three, and cause them not to be. See you not how
much less the power of man would be? I console
myself in the poverty of my thoughts, in the pau-
city of great men, in the malignity and dulness of
the nations, by falling back on these sublime recol-
lections, and seeing what the prolific soul could
beget on actual nature ;— seeing that Plato was,
LITERARY ETHICS. 157
and Shakspeare, and Milton, — three irrefragable
facts. Then I dare; I also will essay to be. The
humblest, the most hopeless, in view of these radi-
ant facts, may now theorize and hope. In spite of
all the rueful abortions that squeak and gibber in
the street, in spite of slumber and guilt, in spite of
the army, the bar-room, and the jail, have been
these glorious manifestations of the mind; and I
will thank my great brothers so truly for the ad-
monition of their being, as to endeavor also to be
just and brave, to aspire and to speak. Plotinus
too, and Spinoza, and the immortal bards of philos-
ophy, —that which they have written out with pa-
tient courage, makes me bold. No more will I dis-
miss, with haste, the visions which flash and spar-
kle across my sky; but observe them, approach
them, domesticate them, brood on them, and draw
out of the past, genuine life for the present hour.
To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions )
of hope and provocation, you must come to know/
that each admirable genius is but a successful )
diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your |
own. The impoverishing philosophy of ages has
laid stress on the distinctions of the individual, and
not on the universal attributes of man. The youth,
intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to
see that it is only a projection of his own soul
which he admires. In solitude, in a remote vil.
158 LITERARY ETHICS.
lage, the ardent youth loiters and mourns. With
inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has
read the story of the Emperor Charles the Fifth,
until his fancy has brought home to the surround-
ing woods, the faint roar of cannonades in the
Milanese, and marches in Germany. He is curi-
ous concerning that man’s day. What filled it?
the crowded orders, the stern decisions, the for-
eign despatches, the Castilian etiquette? The soul
answers — Behold his day here! In the sighing of
these woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in
the cool breeze that sings out of these northern
mountains ; in the workmen, the boys, the maid-
ens you meet, —in the hopes of the morning, the
ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon ; in
the disquieting comparisons; in the regrets at want
of vigor; in the great idea and the puny execu-
tion ; — behold Charles the Fifth’s day; another,
yet the same ; behold Chatham’s, Hampden’s, Bay-
ard’s, Alfred’s, Scipio’s, Pericles’s day, — day of
all that are born of women. The difference of cir-
cumstance is merely costume. I am tasting “the
lself-same life, — its sweetness, its greatness, its
| pain, which I so admire in other men. Do not
foolishly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past,
what it cannot tell, — the details of that nature, of
that day, called Byron, or Burke ; — but ask it of
the enveloping Now; the more quaintly you in-
LITERARY ETHICS. 159
spect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details,
its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so
much the more you master the biography of this
hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day,
through wisdom and justice, and you can put up
your history books.
An intimation of these broad rights is familiar
in the sense of injury which men feel in the as-
sumption of any man to limit their possible pro-
gress. We resent all criticism which denies us any-
thing that lies in our line of advance. Say to the
man of letters that he cannot paint a Transfigura-
tion, or build a steamboat, or be a grand-marshal, —
and he will not seem to himself depreciated. But
deny to him any quality of literary or metaphysical
power, and he is piqued. Concede to him genius,
which is asort of Stoical plenwm annulling the
comparative, and he is content; but concede him
talents never so rare, denying him genius, and he
is aggrieved. What does this mean? Why sim-
ply that the soul has assurance, by instincts and
presentiments, of a// power in the direction of its
ray, as well as of the ied skills it has already
acquired.
In order to a knowledge of the resources of the
scholar, we must not rest in the use of slender ac-
complishments, — of faculties to do this and that
other feat with words; but we must pay our vows
{60 LITERARY ETHICS.
to the highest power, and pass, if it be possible, by
assiduous love and watching, into the visions of ab-
solute truth. The growth of the intellect is strictly
analogous in all individuals. It is larger reception.
Able men, in general, have good dispositions, and
a respect for justice ; because an able man is noth-
ing else than a good, free, vascular organization,
whereinto the universal spirit freely flows; so that
his fund of justice is not only vast, but infinite.
All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what
hinders them in the particular is the momentary
predominance of the finite and individual over the
general truth. The condition of our incarnation
in a private self seems to be a perpetual tendency
to prefer the private law, to obey the private im-
pulse, to the exclusion of the law of universal be-
ing. The hero is great by means of the predomi-
nance of the universal nature; he has only to open
his mouth, and it speaks; he has only to be forced
to act, and it acts. All men catch the word, or
embrace the deed, with the heart, for it is verily
theirs as much as his; but in them this disease of
an excess of organization cheats them of equal is-
sues. Nothing is more simple than greatness ; in-
| deed, to be simple is to be great. The vision of ge-
of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest
(2 privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. Out of this
LITERARY ETHICS. 161
must all that is alive and genial in thought go.
Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and
nothing comes out but what was put in. But the
moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous
thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, an-
ecdote, all flock to their aid. Observe the phenom-
enon of extempore debate. A man of cultivated
mind but reserved habits, sitting silent, admires the
miracle of free, impassioned, picturesque speech,
in the man addressing an assembly; — a state of
being and power how unlike his own! Presently
his own emotion rises to his lips, and overflows
in speech. He must also rise and say somewhat.
Once embarked, once having overcome the novelty
of the situation, he finds it just as easy and
natural to speak, — to speak with thoughts, with
pictures, with rhythmical balance of sentences, —
as it was to sit silent; for it needs not to do, but
to suffer; he only adjusts himself to the free
spirit which gladly utters itself through him; and
motion is as easy as rest.
II. I pass now to consider the task offered to
the intellect of this country. The view I have
taken of the resources of the scholar, presupposes a
subject as broad. We do not seem to have imag-
ined its riches. We have not heeded the invitation
it holds out. To be as good a scholar as English-
VOL. I. 11
162 LITERARY ETHICS.
men are, to have as much learning as our contem-
poraries, to have written a book that is read, sat-
isfies us. We assume that all thought is already
long ago adequately set down in books, — all imag-
inations in poems ; and what we say we only throw
in as confirmatory of this supposed complete body
of literature. A very shallow assumption. Say
rather all literature is yet to be written. Poetry
has scarce chanted_its first song. The perpetual
Heliadixik on eofandenen to us, is, ° The world is new,
untried. Do not believe the past. I give you the
universe a virgin to-day.’
By Latin and English poetry we were born and
bred in an oratorio of praises of nature, — flowers,
birds, mountains, sun, and moon ; — yet the natur-
alist of this hour find that he knows nothing, by all
their poems, of any of these fine things; that he has
conversed with the mere surface and show of them
all; and of their essence, or of their history, know-
ing nothing. Further inquiry will discover that
nobody, — that not these chanting poets themselves,
knew any thing sincere of these handsome natures
they so commended ; that they contented themselves
with the passing chirp of a bird, that they saw one
or two mornings, and listlessly looked at sunsets,
and repeated idly these few glimpses in their song.
But go into the forest, you shall find all new and
_ undescribed. The honking of the wild geese fly-
LITERARY ETHICS. 163
ing by night; the thin note of the companionable
titmouse in the winter day; the fall of swarms of
flies, in autumn, from combats high in the air, pat-\
tering down on the leaves like rain ; the angry hiss
of the wood-birds ; the pine throwing out its pollen}
for the benefit of the next century ; the turpentine)
exuding from the tree; — and indeed any vegeta-|
tion, any animation, any and all, are alike unat-|
tempted. The man who stands on the seashore, or
who rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man
that ever stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his
sensations and his world are so novel and strange.
Whilst I read the poets, I think that nothing new)
can be said about morning and evening. But when.
I see the daybreak I am not reminded of these!
Homeric, or Shakspearian, or Miltonic, or Chauce-’
rian pictures. No, but I feel perhaps the pain of
an alien world; a world not yet subdued by the
thought; or I am cheered by the moist, warm, glit-
tering, budding, melodious hour, that takes down
the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life
and pulsation to the very horizon. Zhaé is morn-
ing, to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of
this sickly body, and to become as large as nature.
The noonday darkness of the American forest,
the deep, echoing, aboriginal woods, where the liv- |
ing columns of the oak and fir tower up from the|
ruins of the trees of the last millennium; where,’
164 LITERARY ETHICS.
from year to year, the eagle and the crow see no
intruder ; the pines, bearded with savage moss, yet
touched with grace by the violets at their feet; the
broad, cold lowland which forms its coat of vapor
with the stillness of subterranean crystallization ;
and where the traveller, amid the repulsive plants
that are native in the swamp, thinks with pleasing
terror of the distant town; this beauty, — haggard
and desert beauty, which the sun and the moon, the
snow and the rain, repaint and vary, has never
been recorded by art, yet is not indifferent to any
passenger. All men are poets at heart. They
(serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes
them sometimes. What mean these journeys to
Niagara; these pilgrims to the White Hills? Men
believe in the adaptations of utility, always: in the
mountains, they may believe in the adaptations of
the eye. Undoubtedly the changes of geology have
a relation to the prosperous sprouting of the corn
and peas in my kitchen garden; but not less is
there a relation of beauty between my soul and the
dim crags of Agiocochook up there in the clouds.
Every man, when this is told, hearkens with joy,
and yet his own conversation with nature is still un-
sung.
Is it otherwise with civil history? Is it not the
lesson of our experience that every man, were life
long enough, would write history for himself?
LITERARY ETHICS. 165
What else do these volumes of extracts and manu-
script commentaries, that every scholar writes, in-
dicate? Greek history is one thing to me; another
to you. Since the birth of Niebuhr and Wolf, Ro-}
man and Greek History have been written anew. |
Since Carlyle wrote French History, we see that no
history that we have is safe, but a new classifier
shall give it new and more philosophical arrange-
ment. Thucydides, Livy, have only provided ma-
terials. The moment a man of genius pronounces
the name of the Pelasgi, of Athens, of the Etrurian,
of the Roman people, we see their state under a
new aspect. As in poetry and history, so in the
other departments. There are few masters or none. —
Religion is yet to be settled on its fast foundations
in the breast of man; and politics, and philosophy,
and letters, and art. As yet we have nothing but |
tendency and indication.
This starting, this warping of the best literary
works from the adamant of nature, is especially ob-
servable in philosophy. Let it take what tone of
pretension it will, to this complexion must it come,
at last. Take for example the French Eclecticism,
which Cousin esteems so conclusive; there is an op-
tical illusion in it. It avows great pretensions. It
looks as if they had all truth, in taking all the sys-
tems, and had nothing to do but to sift and wash
and strain, and the gold and diamonds would re.
166 LITERARY ETHICS.
main in the last colander. But, Truth is such a fly-
\away, such a slyboots, so untransportable and un-
barrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as
(light. Shut the shutters never so quick to keep
all the light in, it is all in vain; it is gone before
you can cry, Hold. And so it happens with our
philosophy. Translate, collate, distil all the sys-
tems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be,
compelled in any mechanical manner. But the first
observation you make, in the sincere act of your
nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new
view of nature and of man, that, like a menstruum,
shall dissolve all theories in it ; shall take up Greece,
Rome, Stoicism, Eclecticism, and what not, as mere
data and food for analysis, and dispose of your
world-containing system as a very little unit. A
profound thought, anywhere, classifies all things :
a profound thought will lift Olympus. The book
of philosophy is only a fact, and no more inspiring
fact than another, and no less; but a wise man will
never esteem it anything final and transcending.
(Go and talk with a man of genius, and the first
‘word he utters, sets all your so-called knowledge
‘afloat and at large. Then Plato, Bacon, Kant, and
the Eclectic Cousin condescend instantly to be men
and mere facts.
I by no means aim in these remarks to disparage
the merit of these or of any existing compositions ;
LITERARY ETHICS. 167
I only say that any particular portraiture does not
in any manner exclude or forestall a new attempt,
' but, when considered by the soul, warps and
shrinks away. The inundation of the spirit sweeps
away before it all our little architecture of wit and
memory, as straws and straw-huts before the tor-
vent. Works of the intellect are great only by,
comparison with each other ; Ivanhoe and Waver- |
ley compared with Castle Radcliffe and the Por-_
ter novels; but nothing is great, — not mighty
Homer and Milton, — beside the infinite Reason. |
It carries them away as a flood. They are as a/
sleep. |
Thus is Justice done to each generation and in-
dividual, — wisdom teaching man that he shall not
hate, or fear, or mimic his ancestors; that he shall
not bewail himself, as if the world was old, and
thought was spent, and he was born into the dotage
of things; for, by virtue of the Deity, thought re-
news itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing
whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is
a new subject with countless relations.
III. Having thus spoken of the resources and
the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith
proceeds also the rule of his ambition and life.
Let him know that the world is his, but he must
possess it by putting himself into harmony with the
168 LITERARY ETHICS.
constitution of things. He must be a solitary, la-
borious, modest, and charitable soul.
He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must
have his glees and his glooms alone. His own esti-
mate must be measure enough, his own praise re-
ward enough for him. And why must the student
be solitary and silent? ‘That he may become ac-
/quainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely
\ place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is’
/ not in the lonely place ; his heart is in the market ;
) he does not see; he does not hear; he does not
‘think. But go cherish your soul; expel compan-
ions ; set your habits to a hfe of solitude ; then will
( the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest
jtrees and field flowers; you will have results,
which, when you meet your fellow-men, you can
/ communicate, and they will gladly receive. Do not
go into solitude only that you may presently come
into public. Such solitude denies itself; is public
and stale. The public can get public experience,
but they wish the scholar to replace to them those
private, sincere, divine experiences of which they
have been defrauded by dwelling in the street. It
is the noble, manlike, just thought, which is the
superiority demanded of you, and not crowds but
solitude confers this elevation. Not insulation of
place, but independence of spirit is essential, and
it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest, and
LITERARY ETHICS. 169
the rock, are a sort of mechanical aids to this, that
they are of value. Think alone, and all places are
friendly and sacred. The poets who have lived in
cities have been hermits still. Inspiration makes
solitude anywhere. Pindar, Raphael, Angelo,
Dryden, De Staél, dwell in crowds it may be, but
the instant thought comes the crowd grows dim to
their eye; their eye fixes on the horizon, on va-
cant space ; they forget the by-standers ; they spurn
personal relations ; they deal with abstractions,
with verities, with ideas. They are alone with the
mind.
Of course I would not have any superstition
about solitude. Let the youth study the uses of:
solitude and of society. Let him use both, not)
serve either. The reason why an ingenious soul!
shuns society, is to the end of finding society.|
It repudiates the false, out of love of the true.)
You can very soon learn all that Society can teach)
you 4 ‘For « one while.” “Tits: ‘foolish sh_routine, an _indefi-|
ae a more wre than : a few ¢ can. ~ Then ac- |
cept the hint of shame, of. spiritual emptiness and
waste which true nature gives you, and retire and},
hide; lock the door; shut the shutters; then wel-)
come falls the imprisoning rain, — dear hermitage \
of nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have solitary }
prayer and praise. Digest and correct the past
170 LITERARY ETHICS.
experience ; and blend it with the new and divine
life.
You will pardon me, Gentlemen, if I say I think
that we have need of a more rigorous scholastic
rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the har-
dihood and devotion of the scholar himself can en-
force. We live in the sun and on the surface, —
a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of
muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of
our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can
greatness ever grow? Come now, let us go and be
dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths,
a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live
in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep,
and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the
Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce
deep into the grandeur and secret of our being,
and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness
the sublimities of the moral constitution. How
mean to go blazing, a gaudy butterfly, in fashion-
able or political saloons, the fool of society, the
fool of notoriety, a topic for newspapers, a piece of
the street, and forfeiting the real prerogative of
_ the russet coat, the privacy, and the true and warm
heart of the citizen !
Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the
lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our
being. A mistake of the main end to which they
LITERARY ETHICS. 171
labor is incident to literary men, who, dealing with
the organ of language,—the subtlest, strongest,
and longest-lived of man’s creations, and only fitly
used as the weapon of thought and of justice, —
learn to enjoy the pride of playing with this splen-
did engine, but rob it of its almightiness by failing
to work with it. Extricating themselves from the
tasks of the world, the world revenges itself by
exposing, at every turn, the folly of these incom-
plete, pedantic, useless, ghostly creatures. The!
scholar will feel that the richest romance, the
noblest fiction that was ever woven, the heart and \,,
soul of beauty, lies enclosed in human life. It-
self of surpassing value, it is also the richest ma-
terial for his creations. How shall he know its se-
erets of tenderness, of terror, of will, and of fate?
How can he catch and keep the strain of upper
music that peals from it? Its laws are concealed
under the details of daily action. All action is an
experiment upon them. He must bear his share
of the common load. He must work with men in
houses, and not with their names in books. His
needs, appetites, talents, affections, accomplish- |
ments, are keys that open to him the beautiful
museum of human life. Why should he read it as
an Arabian tale, and not know, in his own beating
bosom, its sweet and smart? Out of love and
hatred, out of earnings, and borrowings, and lend-
172 LITERARY ETHICS.
/ ings, and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of
| wooing and worshipping; out of travelling, and
| voting, and watching, and caring; out of disgrace
| and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and
| beautiful laws. Let him not slur his lesson; let
him learn it by heart. Let him endeavor exactly,
bravely, and cheerfully, to solve the problem of
that life which is set before him. And this by
punctual action, and not by promises or dreams.
Believing, as in God, in the presence and favor
of the grandest influences, let him deserve that
favor, and learn how to receive and use it, by fidel-
ity also to the lower observances.
This lesson is taught with emphasis in the life of
the great actor of this age, and affords the expla-
nation of his success. Bonaparte represents truly
a great recent revolution, which we in this country,
please God, shall carry to its farthest consumma-
tion. Not the least instructive passage in modern
history seems to me a trait of Napoleon exhibited
to the English when he became their prisoner.
On coming on board the Bellerophon, a file of
English soldiers drawn up on deck gave him
a military salute. Napoleon observed that their
manner of handling their arms differed from the
French exercise, and, putting aside the guns of
those nearest him, walked up to a soldier, took his
gun, and himself went through the motion in
LITERARY ETHICS. iS
the French mode. The English officers and men
looked on with astonishment, and inquired if such
familiarity was usual with the Emperor.
In this instance, as always, that man, with what-
ever defects or vices, represented performance in
lieu of pretension. Feudalism and Orientalism
had long enough thought it majestic to do nothing ;
the modern majesty consists in work. He be-
longed to a class fast growing in the world, who
think that what a man can do is his greatest orna-
ment, and that he always consults his dignity by
doing it. He was not a believer in luck; he had
a faith, ike sight, in the application of means to
ends. Means to ends, is the motto of all his be-
havior. He believed that the great captains of
antiquity performed their exploits only by correct
combinations, and by justly comparing the relation
between means and consequences, efforts and ob-
stacles. The vulgar call good fortune that which
really is produced by the calculations of genius.
But Napoleon, thus faithful to facts, had also this
crowning merit, that whilst he believed in number
and weight, and omitted no part of prudence, he
believed also in the freedom and quite incalculable
force of the soul. A man of infinite caution, he
neglected never the least particular of preparation,
of patient adaptation; yet nevertheless he had a
sublime confidence, as in his all, in the sallies of
174 LITERARY ETHICS.
the courage, and the faith in his destiny, which, at
the right moment, repaired all losses, and demol-
ished cavalry, infantry, king, and kaisar, as with
irresistible thunderbolts. As they say the bough
of the tree has the character of the leaf, and the
whole tree of the bough, so, it is curious to remark,
Bonaparte’s army partook of this double strength
of the captain; for, whilst strictly supplied in all
its appointments, and everything expected from
the valor and discipline of every platoon, in flank
and centre, yet always remained his total trust in
the prodigious revolutions of fortune which his
reserved Imperial Guard were capable of working,
if, in all else, the day was lost. Here he was sub-
lime. He no longer calculated the chance of the
cannon ball. He was faithful to tactics to the
uttermost, —and when all tactics had come to an
end then he dilated and availed himself of the
mighty saltations of the most formidable soldiers
in nature.
Let the scholar appreciate this combination of
gifts, which, applied to better purpose, make true
wisdom. He is a revealer of things. Let him first
learn the things. Let him not, too eager to grasp
some badge of reward, omit the work to be done.
Let him know that though the success of the
market is in the reward, true success is the doing ;
that, in the private obedience to his mind; in the
LITERARY ETHICS. 175
sedulous inquiry, day after day, year after year, to
know how the thing stands; in the use of all
means, and most in the reverence of the humble
commerce and humble needs of life, — to hearken
what they'say, and so, by mutual reaction of thought
and life, to make thought solid, and life wise; and
in a contempt for the gabble of to-day’s opinions
the secret of the world is to be learned, and the
skill truly to unfold it is acquired. Or, rather, is
it not, that, by this discipline, the usurpation of the
senses is overcome, and the lower faculties of man
are subdued to docility; through which as an un-
obstructed channel the soul now easily and gladly
flows ?
The good scholar will not refuse to bear the yoke\
in his youth; to know, if he can, the uttermost se-
a
2 |
eret of toil and endurance ; to make his own hands
acquainted with the soil by which he is fed, and
the sweat that goes before comfort and luxury.
a
Let him pay his tithe and serve the world as a true \
'
ane
and noble man ; never forgetting to worship the im-
mortal divinities who whisper to the poet and make
him the utterer of melodies that pierce the ear of
eternal time. If he have this twofold goodness, —
the drill and the inspiration, — then he has health ;
then he is a whole, and not a fragment; and the
perfection of his endowment will appear in his com-
positions. Indeed, this twofold merit character-
176 LITERARY ETHICS.
) izes ever the productions of great masters. The
man of genius should occupy the whole space be-
tween God or pure mind and the multitude of un-
educated men. He must draw from the infinite
_ Reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into
the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other.
From one, he must draw his strength ; to the other,
he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the
_ real; the other, to the apparent. At one pole is
Reason; at the other, Common Sense. If he be
defective at either extreme of the scale, his philos-
_ ophy will seem low and utilitarian, or it will appear
. too vague and indefinite for the uses of life.
The student, as we all along insist, is great only
by being passive to the superincumbent spirit. Let
this faith then dictate all his action. Snares and
bribes abound to mislead him; let him be true
nevertheless. His success has its perils too. There
is somewhat inconvenient and injurious in his posi-
tion. They whom his thoughts have entertained or
inflamed, seek him before yet they have learned
the hard conditions of thought. They seek him,
that he may turn his lamp on the dark riddles
whose solution they think is inscribed on the walls
of their being. They find that he is a poor, igno-
rant man, in a white-seamed, rusty coat, like them-
selves, nowise emitting a continuous stream of
light, but now and then a jet of luminous thought
LITERARY ETHICS. 117
followed by total darkness; moreover, that he can-
not make of his infrequent illumination a portable
taper to carry whither he would, and explain now
this dark riddle, now that. Sorrow ensues. The
scholar regrets to damp the hope of ingenuous
boys ; and the youth has lost a star out of his new
flaming firmament. Hence the temptation to the
scholar to mystify, to hear the question, to sit upon
it, to make an answer of words in lack of the oracle
of things. Not the less let him be cold and true,
and wait in patience, knowing that truth can make
even silence eloquent and memorable. Truth shall
be “policy enough for him. Let him open his
breast to all honest i inquiry, and be an artist supe-
rior to tricks of art. Show frankly as a saint would
do, your experience, methods, tools, and means.
Welcome all comers to the freest use of the same.
And out of this superior frankness and charity
you shall learn higher secrets of your nature,
which gods will bend and aid you to communicate.
If, with a high trust, he can thus submit himself,
he will find that ample returns are poured into his
bosom out of what seemed hours of obstruction
and loss. Let him not grieve too much on account
of unfit associates. When he sees how much
thought he owes to the disagreeable antagonism
of various persons who pass and cross him, he can
easily think that in a society of perfect sympathy,
VOL. I, 12
178 LITERARY ETHICS.
no word, no act, no record, would be. He will
learn that it is not much matter what he reads,
what he does. Be a scholar, and he shall have the
scholar’s part of everything. As in the counting-
/room the merchant cares little whether the cargo
Ybe hides or barilla; the transaction, a letter of
\eredit or a transfer of stocks; be it what it may,
‘his commission comes gently out of it; so you shall
‘get your lesson out of the hour, and the object,
whether it be a concentrated or a wasteful employ-
ment, even in reading a dull book, or working off
| a stint of mechanical day-labor which your necessi-
‘/ties or the necessities of others impose.
Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these
considerations upon the scholar’s place and hope,
because I thought that standing, as many of you
now do, on the threshold of this College, girt and
ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, |
in your country, you would not be sorry to be ad-
monished of those primary duties of the intellect
whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your
new companions. You will hear every day the
_ fmaxims of a low prudence. You will hear that
- _ the first duty is to get land and money, place and
(name. ‘What is this Truth you seek? what is
“this Beauty?’ men will ask, with derision. If.
nevertheless God have called any of you to explore
LITERARY ETHICS. 179
truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When
you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce,
I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the
good of the land and let learning and romantic ex-
pectations go, until a more convenient season ;’ —
then dies the man in you; then once more perish
the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they
have died already in a thousand thousand men.
The hour of that choice is the crisis of your his-
tory, and see that you hold yourself fast by the in-
tellect. Itis this domineering temper of the sen-
sual world that creates the extreme need of the
priests of science ; and it is the office and right of
the intellect to make and not take its estimate.
Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you
from every object in nature, to be its tongue to
the heart of man, and to show the besotted world }
how passing fair is wisdom. Forewarned that the
vice of the times and the country is an excessive
pretension, let us seek the shade, and find wisdom
in neglect. Be content with a little light, so it be
your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither
chided nor flattered out of your position of per-
petual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept an-
other’s dogmatism. Why should you renounce)
your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, )
for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and \
barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. \
J
180 LITERARY ETHICS.
Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind
will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such
as shall not take away your property in all men’s
possessions, in all men’s affections, in art, in na-
ture, and in hope.
You will not fear that I am enjoining too stern
an asceticism. Ask not, Of what use is a scholar-
ship that systematically retreats? or, Who is the
better for the philosopher who conceals his accom-
plishments, and hides his thoughts from the wait-
ing world? Hides his thoughts! Hide the sun
and moon. Thought is all light, and publishes it-
self to the universe. It will speak, though you
were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will
flow out of your actions, your manners, and your
face. It will bring you friendships. It will im-
pledge you to truth by the love and expectation of
generous minds. By virtue of the laws of that Na-
ture which is one and perfect, it shall yield every
sincere good that is in the soul to the scholar be-
loved of earth and heaven.
THE METHOD OF NATURE.
AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE ADELPHI.
IN WATERVILLE COLLEGE, MAINE, AUGUST 11, 1841.
Hage WCE AHSCT RAY Pe
YEE PRAT Be
THE METHOD OF NATURE.
GENTLEMEN,
Let us exchange congratulations on the enjoy-
ments and the promises of this literary anniver-
sary. ‘The land we live in has no interest so dear,
if it knew its want, as the fit consecration of days
of reason and thought. Where there is no vision,
the people perish. The scholars are the priests of
that thought which establishes the foundations of
the earth. No matter what is their special work
or profession, they stand for the spiritual interest
of the world, and it is a common calamity if they
neglect their post in a country where the material
interest is so predominant as it is in America. We
hear something too much of the results of machin-
ery, commerce, and the useful arts. We are a
puny and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and
following, are our diseases. The rapid wealth
which hundreds in the community acquire in trade,
or by the incessant expansions of our population
and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest ; the luck
ef one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts
184 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish
the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the
very body and feature of man.
I do not wish to look with sour aspect at the in-
dustrious manufacturing village, or the mart of
commerce. I love the music of the water-wheel ;
I value the railway; I feel. the pride which the
sight of a ship inspires; I look on trade and every
mechanical craft as education also. But let me dis-
criminate what is precious herein. There is in each
«of these works an act of invention, an intellectual
(step, or short series of steps, taken ; that act or step
is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition
of the same a thousand times. And I will not be
‘deceived into admiring the routine of handicrafts
and mechanics, how splendid soever the result, any
more than I admire the routine of the scholars or
clerical class. That splendid results ensue from the
labors of stupid men, is the fruit of higher laws than
their will, and the routine is not to be praised for
it. I would not have the laborer sacrificed to the
result, — I would not have the laborer sacrificed to
my convenience and pride, nor to that of a great
class of such as me. Let there be worse cotton and
better men. The weaver should not be bereaved of
his superiority to his work, and his knowledge that
the product or the skill is of no value, except so far
as it embodies his spiritual prerogatives. If I see
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 185
nothing to admire in the unit, shall [ admire a mil-
lion units? Men stand in awe of the city, but do
not honor any individual citizen; and are contin- |
ually yielding to this dazzling result of numbers,|
that which they would never yield to the solitary,
example of any one. |
Whilst the multitude of men degrade each other,
and give currency to desponding doctrines, the
scholar must be a bringer of hope, and must rein-
force man against himself. I sometimes believe
that our literary anniversaries will presently assume
a greater importance, as the eyes of men open to
their capabilities. Here, a new set of distinctions,
a new order of ideas, prevail. Here, we set a bound
to the respectability of wealth, and a bound to the
pretensions of the law and the church. The bigot
must cease to be a bigot to-day. Into our charmed
circle, power cannot enter; and the sturdiest de-
fender of existing institutions feels the terrific in-
flammability of this air which condenses heat in
every corner that may restore to the elements the
fabrics of ages. Nothing solid is secure ; every
thing tilts and rocks. Even the scholar is not safe;
he too is searched and revised. Is his learning
dead ? Is he living in his memory? The power
of mind is not mortification, but life. But come
forth, thou curious child! hither, thou loving, all-
hoping poet! hither, thou tender, doubting heart,
186 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
which hast not yet found any place in the world’s
market fit for thee ; any wares which thou couldst
buy or sell, — so large is thy love and ambition, —
thine and not theirs is the hour. Smooth thy brow,
and hope and love on, for the kind Heaven justifies
thee, and the whole world feels that thou art in the
right.
We ought to celebrate this hour by expressions
of manly joy. Not thanks, not prayer seem quite
the highest or truest name for our communication
with the infinite, — but glad and conspiring recep-
tion, — reception that becomes giving in its turn,
as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in
infancy. I cannot,—nor ean any man, — speak pre-
cisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me the
wit of man, his strength, his grace, his tendency,
his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is
beyond explanation. When all is said and done,
_ the rapt saint is found the only logician. Not
exhortation, not argument becomes our lips, but
peans of joy and praise. But not of adulation:
we are too nearly related in the deep of the mind
to that we honor. It is God inus which checks the
language of petition by a grander thought. In the
bottom of the heart it is said; ‘I am, and by me,
O child! this fair body and world of thine stands
and grows. Iam; all things are mine: and all
» mine are thine.’
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 187
The festival of the intellect and the return to its
source cast a strong light on the always interesting
topics of Man and Nature. We are forcibly re-
minded of the old want. There is no man ; there
hath never been. The Intellect still asks that a
man may be born. The flame of life flickers feebly
in human breasts. We demand of men a richness
and universality we do not find. Great men do not
content us. It is their solitude, not their force,
that makes them conspicuous. There is somewhat
indigent and tedious about them. They are poorly
tied to one thought. If they are prophets they are
egotists ; if polite and various they are shallow.
How tardily men arrive at any result! how tardily
they pass from it to another! The crystal sphere
of thought is as concentrical as the geological struc-
ture of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in
strata, concentric strata, so do all men’s thinkings
run laterally, never vertically. Here comes by a
great inquisitor with auger and plumb-line, and
will bore an Artesian well through our conventions
and theories, and pierce to the core of things. But
as soon as he probes the crust, behold gimlet,
plumb-line, and philosopher take a lateral direc-
tion, in spite of all resistance, as if some strong
wind took everything off its feet, and if you come
month after month to see what progress our re-
former has made, — not an inch has he pierced, —
188 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
you still find him with new words in the old place,
floating about in new parts of the same old vein or
crust. The new book says, ‘I will give you the
key to nature,’ and we expect to go like a thunder-
bolt to the centre. But the thunder is a surface
phenomenon, makes a skin-deep cut, and so does
the sage. The wedge turns out to be a rocket.
Thus a man lasts but a very little while, for his
monomania becomes insupportably tedious in a few
months. It is so with every book and person : and
yet — and yet — we do not take up a new book or
meet a new man without a pulse-beat of expecta-
tion. And this invincible hope of a more adequate
interpreter is the sure prediction of his advent.
In the absence of man, we turn to nature, which
stands next. In the divine order, intellect is pri-
mary; nature, secondary ; it is the memory of the
mind. That which once existed in intellect as pure
law, has now taken body as Nature. It existed al-
ready in the mind in solution; now, it has been
precipitated, and the bright sediment is the world.
We can never be quite strangers or inferiors in na-
ture. Itis flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone.
But we no longer hold it by the hand; we have
lost our miraculous power; our arm is no more
as strong as the frost, nor our will equivalent to
gravity and the elective attractions. Yet we can
use nature as @ convenient standard, and the
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 189
meter of our rise and fall. It has this advan-
tage as a witness, it cannot be debauched. When
man curses, nature still testifies to truth and love.
We may’ therefore safely study the mind in na-
ture, because we cannot steadily gaze on it in
mind ; as we explore the face of the sun in a
pool, when our eyes cannot brook his direct splen-
dors.
It seems to me therefore that it were some suit-
able pean if we should piously celebrate this hour
by exploring the method of nature. Let us see
that, as nearly as we can, and try how far it is
transferable to the literary life. Every earnest
glance we give to the realities around us, with in-
tent to learn, proceeds from a holy impulse, and
is really songs of praise. What difference can it
make whether it take the shape of exhortation, or
of passionate exclamation, or of scientific state-
ment? These are forms merely. Through them
we express, at last, the fact that God has done
thus or thus.
In treating a subject so large, in which we must
necessarily appeal to the intuition, and aim much
more to suggest than to describe, I know it is not
easy to speak with the precision attainable on top-
ics of less scope. Ido not wish in attempting to
paint a man, to describe an air-fed, unimpassioned,
impossible ghost. My eyes and ears are revolted
190 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
by any neglect of the physical facts, the limitations
of man. And yet one who conceives the true
order of nature, and beholds the visible as proceed-
ing from the invisible, cannot state his’ thought
without seeming to those who study the physical
laws to do them some injustice. There is an in-
trinsic defect in the organ. Language overstates.
Statements of the infinite are usually felt to be un-
just to the finite, and blasphemous. Hmpedocles
undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought, when he
said, “1 am God;” but the moment it was out of
his mouth it became a he to the ear; and the world
revenged itself for the seeming arrogance by the
good story about his shoe. How can I hope for
better hap in my attempts to enunciate spiritual
facts? Yet let us hope that as far as we receive
the truth, so far shall we be felt by every true per-
son to say what is just.
The method of nature: who could ever analyze
it? That rushing stream will not stop to be ob-
served. We can never surprise nature in a corner ;
never find the end of a thread ; never tell where to
set the first stone. The bird hastens to lay her egg :
the egg hastens to be a bird. The wholeness we
admire in the order of the world is the result of in-
finite distribution. Its smoothness is the smooth-
ness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence
is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is an
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 191
emanation, and that from which it emanates is an
emanation also, and from every emanation is a new
emanation. If anything could stand still, it would
be crushed and dissipated by the torrent it resisted,
and if it were a mind, would be crazed; as insane
persons are those who hold fast to one thought and
do not flow with the course of nature. Not the
cause, but an ever novel effect, nature descends al-
ways from above. It is unbroken obedience. The
beauty of these fair objects is imported into them
from a metaphysical and eternal spring. In all
animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist con-
cedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can account
for the facts, but a mysterious principle of life must
be assumed, which not only inhabits the organ but
makes the organ.
How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet
without place to insert an atom;— in graceful
succession, in equal fulness, in balanced beauty, the
dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an
odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep,
it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected,
nor unravelled, nor shown. Away profane phil-
osopher! seekest thou in nature the cause? ‘This
refers to that, and that to the next, and the next to
the third, and everything refers. Thou must ask
in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou
must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which
192 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
it exists, ere thou canst know the law. Known it
will not be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed.
The simultaneous life throughout the whole body,
the equal serving of innumerable ends without the
least emphasis or preference to any, but the steady
degradation of each to the success of all, allows the
understanding no place to work. Nature can only
be conceived as existing to a universal and not to a
particular end; to a universe of ends, and not to
one, —a work of ecstasy, to be represented by a
circular movement, as intention might be signified
by a straight line of definite length. Each effect
strengthens every other. There is no revolt in all
the kingdoms from the commonweal: no detach-
ment of an individual. Hence the catholic charac-
ter which makes every leaf an exponent of the
world. When we behold the landscape in a poetic
spirit, we do not reckon individuals. Nature knows
‘neither palm nor oak, but only vegetable life, which
_ sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe with a
garland of grasses and vines.
That no single end may be selected and nature
judged thereby, appears from this, that if man him-
self be considered as the end, and it be assumed
that the final cause of the world is to make holy or
wise or beautiful men, we see that it has not suc-
ceeded. Read alternately in natural and in civil
history, a treatise of astronomy, for example, with
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 198
a volume of French Mémoires pour servir. When
we have spent our wonder in computing this waste-
ful hospitality with which boon Nature turns off
new firmaments without end into her wide common,
as fast as the madrepores make coral, — suns and
planets hospitable to souls, — and then shorten the
sight to look into this court of Louis Quatorze, and
see the game that is played there, — duke and mar-
shal, abbé and madame, —a gambling table where
each is laying traps for the other, where the end is
ever by some lie or fetch to outwit your rival and
ruin him with this solemn fop in wig and stars, —
the king;—one can hardly help asking if this
planet is a fair specimen of the so generous astron-
omy, and if so, whether the experiment have not
failed, and whether it be quite worth while to make
more, and glut the innocent space with so poor an
article.
I think we feel not much otherwise if, instead of
beholding foolish nations, we take the great and
wise men, the eminent souls, and narrowly inspect
their biography. None of them seen by himself,
and his performance compared with his promise or
idea, will justify the cost of that enormous apparatus
of means by which this spotted and defective per-
son was at last procured.
To questions of this sort, Nature replies, “I grow.”
Allis nascent, infant. When we are dizzied with
VOL. I. 13
194 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
the arithmetic of the savant toiling to compute the
length of her line, the return of her curve, we are
steadied by the perception that a great deal is doing ;
that all seems just begun: remote aims are in act-
ive accomplishment. We can point nowhere to
anything final; but tendency appears on all hands:
planet, system, constellation, total nature is grow-
ing like a field of maize in July; is becoming some-
what else ; is in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo
does not more strive to be man, than yonder burr
of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a com-
et, a globe, and parent of new stars. Why should
not then these messieurs of Versailles strut and
plot for tabourets and ribbons, for a season, with-
out prejudice to their faculty to run on_ better
errands by and by?
But Nature seems further to reply, ‘I have ven-
tured so great a stake as my success, in no single
creature. I have not yet arrived at any end. The
gardener aims to produce a fine peach or pear, but
my aim is the health of the whole tree, — root,
stem, leaf, flower, and seed,-—-and by no means
the pampering of a monstrous pericarp at the ex-
pense of all the other functions.’
In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that im-
pression nature makes on us is this, that it does
not exist to any one or to any number of particular
ends, but to numberless and endless benefit; that
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 195
there is in it no private will, no rebel leaf or limb,
but the whole is oppressed by one superincumbent
tendency, obeys that redundancy or excess of life
which in conscious beings we call ecstasy.
With this conception of the genius or method of
‘nature, let us go back to man. It is true he pre-
tends to give account of himself to himself, but, at
last, what has he to recite but the fact that there is
a Life not to be described or known otherwise than
by possession ? What account can he give of his
essence more than so it was to be? The royal rea-
son, the Grace of God, seems the only description
of our multiform but ever identical fact. There is
virtue, there is genius, there is success, or there is
not. There is the incoming or the receding of
God: that is all we can affirm; and we can show
neither how nor why. Self-accusation, remorse,
and the didactic morals of self-denial and strife
with sin, is a view we are constrained by our con-
stitution to take of the fact seen from the platform
of action; but seen from the platform of intellec-
tion there is nothing for us but praise and wonder.
The termination of the world in a man appears
to be the last victory of intelligence. The univer-
sal does not attract us until housed in an individ-
ual. Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility ?
The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no
character urtil seen with the shore or the ship.
196 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
| Who would value any number of miles of Atlantic
_ brine bounded by lines of latitude and longitude?
Confine it by granite rocks, let it wash a shore
where wise men dwell, and it is filled with expres-
sion ; and the point of greatest interest is where the
land and water meet. So must we admire in man
‘the form of the formless, the concentration of the
vast, the house of reason, the cave of memory. See
the play of thoughts! what nimble gigantic crea-
tures are these! what saurians, what palaiotheria
shall be named with these agile movers? The
great Pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard
skin to signify the beautiful variety of things and
the firmament, his coat of stars, — was but the rep-
resentative of thee, O rich and various Man! thou
palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses
the morning and the night and the unfathomable
galaxy; in thy brain, the geometry of the City
of God; in thy heart, the bower of love and the
realms of right and wrong. An individual man is
a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form
and ripen. The history of the genesis or the old
mythology repeats itself in the experience of every
child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a
particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead
things from disorder into order. Each individual
soul is such in virtue of its being a power to trans-
late the world into some particular language of its
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 197
own ; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance, —
why, then, into a trade, an art, a science, a mode of
living, a conversation, a character, an influence.
You admire pictures, but it is as impossible for
you to paint a right picture as for grass to bear
apples. But when the genius comes, it makes fin-
gers: itis pliancy, and the power of transferring
the affair in the street into oils and colors. Ra-
phael must be born, and Salvator must be born.
There is no attractiveness like that of a new
man. ‘The sleepy nations are occupied with their
political routine. England, France and America
read Parliamentary Debates, which no high genius
now enlivens; and nobody will read them who
trusts his own eye: only they who are deceived by
the popular repetition of distinguished names. But
when Napoleon unrolls his map, the eye is com-),
manded by original power. When Chatham leads
the debate, men may well listen, because they must
listen. A man, a personal ascendency, is the only .~
great phenomenon. When Nature has work to be
done, she creates a genius to do it. Follow the
great man, and you shall see what the world has at
heart in these ages. There is no omen like that.
But what strikes us in the fine genius is that
which belongs of right to every one. A man
should know himself for a necessary actor. A link
was wanting between two craving parts of nature,
198 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
and he was hurled into being as the bridge over
that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two else
unmarriageable facts. His two parents held each
of one of the wants, and the union of foreign con-
stitutions in him enables him to do gladly and
gracefully what the assembled human race could
not have sufficed to do. He knows his materials ;
he applies himself to his work; he cannot read, or
think, or look, but he unites the hitherto separated
strands into a perfect cord. The thoughts he de-
lights to utter are the reason of his incarnation.
Is it for him to account himself cheap and super-
fluous, or to linger by the wayside for opportuni-
ties? Did he not come into being because some-
thing must be done which he and no other is and
does? If only he sees, the world will be visible
enough. He need not study where to stand, nor
to put things in favorable lights; in him is the
light, from him all things are illuminated to their
centre. What patron shall he ask for employment
and reward? MHereto was he born, to deliver the
thought of his heart from the universe to the uni-
verse; to do an office which nature could not fore-
go, nor he be discharged from rendering, and then
immerge again into the holy silence and eternity
out of which as a man he arose. God is rich, and
many more men than one he harbors in his bosom,
biding their time and the needs and the beauty oi
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 199
all. Is not this the theory of every man’s genius
or faculty? Why then goest thou as some Bos-
well or listening worshipper to this saint or to that?
That is the only lese-majesty. Here art thou with
whom so long the universe travailed in labor; dar-
est thou think meanly of thyself whom the stalwart
Fate brought forth to unite his ragged sides, to
shoot the gulf, to reconcile the irreconcilable ?
Whilst a necessity so great caused the man
to exist, his health and erectness consist in the
fidelity with which he transmits influences from
the vast and universal to the point on which his
genius can act. The ends are momentary; they
are vents for the current of inward life which in-
creases as it is spent. A man’s wisdom is to know
that all ends are momentary, that the best end
must be superseded by a better. But there is a
mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought
from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and
rest in his acts: the tools run away with the
workman, the human with the divine. I conceive\
a man as always spoken. to from behind; and un-
able to turn his head and see the speaker. In all |
the millions who have heard the voice, none ever |
saw the face. As children in their play run be-
hind each other, and seize one by the ears and
make him walk before them, so is the spirit our
unseen pilot. That well-known voice speaks in all
200 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
languages, governs all men, and none ever caught
a glimpse of its form. If the man will exactly
obey it, it will adopt him, so that he shall not any
longer separate it from himself in his thought; he
shall seem to be it, he shall be it. If he listen
with insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is
taught him; the sound swells to a ravishing music,
he is borne away as with a flood, he becomes care-
less of his food and of his house, he is the fool of
ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye is
set on the things to be done, and not on the truth
that is still taught, and for the sake of which the
things are to be done, then the voice grows faint,
and at last is but a humming in his ears. His
health and greatness consist in his being the channel
through which heaven flows to earth, in short, in the
fulness in which an ecstatical state takes place in
him. It is pitiful to be an artist, when by forbear-
ing to be artists we might be vessels filled with the
divine overflowings, enriched by the circulations of
omniscience and omnipresence. Are there not mo-
ments in the history of heaven when the human
race was not counted by individuals, but was only
the Influenced, was God in distribution, God rush-
ing into multiform benefit? It is sublime to re-
ceive, sublime to love, but this lust of imparting as
from us, this desire to be loved, the wish to be
recognized as individuals, —is finite, comes of a
lower strain.
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 201
Shall I say then that as far as we can trace the
natural history of the soul, its health consists in
the fulness of its reception ?— call it piety, call it
veneration, — in the fact that enthusiasm is organ-
ized therein. What is best in any work of art but
that part which the work itself seems to require
and do; that which the man cannot do again; that
which flows from the hour and the occasion, like
the eloquence of men in a tumultuous debate? It
was always the theory of literature that the word
of a poet was authoritative and final. He was
supposed to be the mouth of a divine wisdom.
We rather envied his circumstance than his talent.
We too could have gladly prophesied standing in
that place. We so quote our Scriptures; and the
Greeks so quoted Homer, Theognis, Pindar, and
the rest. If the theory has receded out of modern
criticism, it is because we have not had _ poets.
Whenever they appear, they will redeem their own
credit.
This eestatical state seems to direct a regard to
the whole and not to the parts; to the cause and
not to the ends ; to the tendency and not to the act.
Tt respects genius and not talent; hope, and not
possession ; the anticipation of all things by the
intellect, and not the history itself; art, and not
works of art; poetry, and not experiment; virtue,
and not duties.
202 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
There is no office or function of man but is
rightly discharged by this divine method, and noth-
ing that is not noxious to him if detached from its
universal relations. Is it his work in the world to
study nature, or the laws of the world? Let him
beware of proposing to himself any end. Is it for
use ? nature is debased, as if one looking at the
ocean can remember only the price of fish. Or is
it for pleasure? he is mocked ; there is a certain in-
fatuating air in woods and mountains which draws
on the idler to want and misery. ‘There is some-
thing social and intrusive in the nature of all
things ; they seek to penetrate and overpower each
the nature of every other creature, and itself alone
in all modes and throughout space and spirit to
prevail and possess. Every star in heaven is dis —
contented and insatiable. Gravitation and chem-
istry cannot content them. Ever they woo and
court the eye of every beholder. Every man who
comes into the world they seek to fascinate and
possess, to pass into his mind, for they desire to re-
publish themselves in a more delicate world than
that they occupy. It isnot enough that they are
Jove, Mars, Orion, and the North Star, in the grav-
itating firmament ; they would have such poets as
Newton, Herschel, and .Laplace, that they may re-
exist and re-appear in the finer world of rational
souls, and fill that realm with their fame. So is it
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 203
with all immaterial objects. These beautiful basi-
lisks set their brute glorious eyes on the eye of
every child, and, if they can, cause their nature to
pass through his wondering eyes into him, and so
all things are mixed.
Therefore man must be on his guard against this
cup of enchantments, and must look at nature with
a supernatural eye. By piety alone, by conversing
with the cause of nature, is he safe and commands
it. And because all knowledge is assimilation to
the object of knowledge, as the power or genius of
nature is ecstatic, so must its science or the descrip-
tion of it be. The poet must be a rhapsodist; his
inspiration a sort of bright casualty; his will in it
only the surrender of will to the Universal Power,
which will not be seen face to face, but must be re-
ceived and sympathetically known. It is remark-
able that we have out of the deeps of antiquity in
the oracles ascribed to the half fabulous Zoroaster,
a statement of this fact which every lover and
seeker of truth will recognize. ‘“Itis not proper,”
said Zoroaster, “ to understand the Intelligible
with vehemence, but if you incline your mind, you
will apprehend it: not too earnestly, but bringing
a pure and inquiring eye. You will not understand
it as when understanding some particular thing,
but with the flower of the mind. Things divine
are not attainable by mortals who understand sen-<
904 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
sual things, but only the light-armed arrive at the
summit.”
And because ecstasy is the law and cause of na-
ture, therefore you cannot interpret it in too high
and deep a sense. Nature represents the best
meaning of the wisest man. Does the sunset land-
scape seem to you the place of Friendship, — those
purple skies and lovely waters the amphitheatre
dressed and garnished only for the exchange of
thought and love of the purest souls? It is that.
All other meanings which base men have put on it
are conjectural and false. You cannot bathe twice
in the same river, said Heraclitus; and I add, a
man never sees the same object twice:. with his
own enlargement the object acquires new aspects.
Does not the same law hold for virtue? It is
vitiated by too much will. He who aims at prog-
ress should aim at an infinite, not at a special ben-
efit. The reforms whose fame now fills the land
with Temperance, Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance,
No Government, Equal Labor, fair and generous
as each appears, are poor bitter things when prose-
cuted for themselves as an end. To every reform,
in proportion to its energy, early disgusts are inci-
dent, so that the disciple is surprised at the very
hour of his first triumphs with chagrins, and sick-
ness, and a general distrust; so that he shuns his
associates, hates the enterprise which lately seemed
THE METIIOD OF NATURE. 205
so fair, and meditates to cast himself into the arms
of that society and manner of life which he had
newly abandoned with so much pride and hope.
Is it that he attached the value of virtue to some
particular practices, as the denial of certain appe-
tites in certain specified indulgences, and afterward
found himself still as wicked and as far from hap-
piness in that abstinence as he had been in the
abuse? But the soul can be appeased not by a
deed but by a tendency. It is in a hope that she
feels her wings. You shall love rectitude, and not
the disuse of money or the avoidance of trade; an
unimpeded mind, and not a monkish diet ; sympa-_
thy_and_usefulness, and_not_hoeing or _coopering.
Tell me not how ereat your project is, the civil lib-
eration of the world, its conversion into a Christian
church, the establishment of public education,
cleaner diet, 2 new division of labor and of land,
laws of love for laws of property ;—JI say to you
plainly there is no end to which your practical fac-
ulty can aim, so sacred or so large, that, if pursued
for itself, will not at last become carrion and an of-
fence to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of
the soul must be fed with objects immense and
eternal. Your end should be one inapprehensible
to the senses; then will it be a god always ap-
proached, never touched ; always giving health. A
man adorns himself with prayer and love, as an
206 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
aim adorns an action. What is strong but good-
ness, and what is energetic but the presence of a
brave man? The doctrine in vegetable physiology
of the presence, or the general influence of any
substance over and above its chemical influence, as
of an alkali or a living plant, is more predicable of
man. You need not speak to me, J need not go
where you are, that you should exert magnetism on
me. Be you only whole and sufficient, and I shall
feel you in every part of my life and fortune, and
I can as easily dodge the gravitation of the globe
as escape your influence.
But there are other examples of this total and
supreme influence, besides Nature and the con-
science. ‘¢From the poisonous tree, the world,”
say the Brahmins, “two species of fruit are pro-
duced, sweet as the waters of life; Love or the so-
ciety of beautiful souls, and Poetry, whose taste is
like the immortal juice of Vishnu.” What is Love,
and why is it the chief good, but because it is an
overpowering enthusiasm? Never self-possessed or
prudent, it is all abandonment. Is it not a certain
admirable wisdom, preferable to all other advan-
tages, and whereof all others are only secondaries
and indemnities, because this is that in which the in-
dividual is no longer his own foolish master, but in-
hales an odorous and celestial air, is wrapped round
with awe of the object, blending for the time that
THE METHOD OF NATORE. 207
object with the real and only good, and consults
every omen in nature with tremulous interest?
When we speak truly, —is not he only unhappy
who is not in love? his fancied freedom and self-
rule —is it not so much death? He who is in love
is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every,
time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from)
it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it}
possesses. Therefore if the object be not itself a\
living and expanding soul, he presently exhausts it. /
But the love remains in his mind, and the wisdom ‘|
it brought him; and it craves a new and higher >
object. And the reason why all men honor love is
because it looks up and not down; aspires and not
despairs.
And what is Genius but finer love, a love imper-
sonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things,
and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the
same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds
from within outward, whilst Talent goes from with- |
out inward. ‘Talent finds its models, methods, and
ends, in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to
the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own
end, and draws its means and the style of its archi-.
tecture from within, going abroad only for audience
and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase
to the distance and character of the ear we speak
to. All your learning of all literatures would never
208 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts or ex-
pressions, and yet each is natural and familiar
as household words. Here about us coils forever
the ancient enigma, so old and so unutterable. Be-
hold! there is the sun, and the rain, and the rocks;
the old sun, the old stones. How easy were it to
describe all this fitly ; yet no word can pass. Na-
ture is a mute, and man, her articulate, speaking
brother, lo! he also is a mute. Yet when Genius
arrives, its speech is like a river; it has no strain-
ing to describe, more than there is straining in na-
ture to exist. When thought is best, there is most
of it. Genius sheds wisdom like perfume, and ad-
vertises us that it flows out of a deeper source than
the foregoing silence, that it knows so deeply and
speaks so musically, because it is itself a mutation
of the thing it describes. It is sun and moon and
wave and fire in music, as astronomy is thought
and harmony in masses of matter.
What is all history but the work of ideas, a rec-
ord of the incomputible energy which his infinite
aspirations infuse into man? Has anything grand
and lasting been done? Who did it? Plainly not
any man, but all men: it was the prevalence and
inundation of an idea. What brought the pilgrims
here? One man says, civil liberty ; another, the
desire of founding a church; and a third discovers
that the motive force was plantation and trade.
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 209
But if the Puritans could rise from the dust they
could not answer. It is to be seen in what they
were, and not in what they designed; it was the
growth and expansion of the human race, and re-
sembled herein the sequent Revolution, which was
not begun in Concord, or Lexington, or Virginia,
but was the overflowing of the sense of natural
right in every clear and active spirit of the period,
Is a man boastful and knowing, and his own mas-
ter ?— we turn from him without hope: but let
him be filled with awe and dread before the Vast
and the Divine, which uses him glad to be used,
and our eye is riveted tothe chain of events. What
a debt is ours to that old religion which, in the
childhood of most of us, still dwelt like a sabbath
morning in the country of New England, teaching
privation, self-denial and sorrow! A man was born
not for prosperity, but to sutfer for the benefit of
others, like the noble rock-maple which all around
our villages bleeds for the service of man. Not
praise, not men’s acceptance of our doing, but the
spirit’s holy errand through us absorbed the thought.
How dignified was this! How all that is called tal-
ents and success, in our noisy capitals, becomes
buzz and din before this man-worthiness! How
our friendships and the complaisances we use, shame
us now! Shall we not quit our companions, as if
they were thieves and pot-companions, and betake
VOL. I. 14
210 THE METHOD OF NATURE.
ourselves to some desert cliff of Mount Katahdin,
some unvisited recess in Moosehead Lake, to bewail
our innocency and to recover it, and with it the
power to communicate again with these sharers of
a more sacred idea?
And what is to replace for us the piety of that
race? We cannot have theirs; it glides away
from us day by day; but we also can bask in the
_ great morning which rises forever out of the eastern
sea, and be ourselves the children of the light. I
stand here to say, Let us worship the mighty and
transcendent Soul. It is the office, I doubt not, of
this age to annul that adulterous divorce which the.
superstition of many ages has effected between the
intellect and holiness. The lovers of goodness have
been one class, the students of wisdom another; as
if either could exist in any purity without the other.
Truth is always holy, holiness always wise. I will
that we keep terms with sin and a sinful literature
and society no longer, but live a life of discovery
and performance. Accept the intellect, and it will
accept us. Be the lowly ministers of that pure om-
niscience, and deny it not before men. It will burn
up all profane literature, all base current opinions,
all the false powers of the world, as in a moment of
time. I draw from nature the lesson of an intimate
divinity. Our health and reason as men need our
respect to this fact, against the heedlessness and
THE METHOD OF NATURE. 211
against the contradiction of society. The sanity of
man needs the poise of this immanent force. His
nobility needs the assurance of this inexhaustible
reserved power. How great soever have been its
bounties, they are a drop to the sea whence they
flow. If you say, ‘The acceptance of the vision is
also the act of God:’—-I shall not seek to pene-
trate the mystery, I admit the force of what you
say. If you ask, ‘ How can any rules be given for
the attainment of gifts so sublime?’ I shall only
remark that the solicitations of this spirit, as long
as there is life, are never forborne. Tenderly, ten-
derly, they woo and court us from every object in |
nature, from every fact in life, from every thought
in the mind. The one condition coupled with the
gift of truth is its use. That man shall be learned
who reduceth his learning to practice. Emanuel
Swedenborg affirmed that it was opened to him
“that the spirits who knew truth in this life, but
did it not, at death shall lose their knowledge.” |
“If knowledge,” said Ali the Caliph, “calleth unto ,
practice, well; if not, it goeth away.” The only
way into nature is to enact our best insight. In-
stantly we are higher poets, and can speak a deeper
law. Do what you know, and perception is con-
verted into character, as islands and continents were
built by invisible infusories, or as these forest leaves
absorb light, electricity, and volatile gases, and the
OAD, THE METHOD OF NATURE.
gnarled oak to live a thousand years is the arrest
and fixation of the most volatile and ethereal cur-
rents. The doctrine of this Supreme Presence is a
ery of joy and exultation. Who shall dare think
(he has come late into nature, or has missed any-
thing excellent in the past, who seeth the admirable
_ stars of possibility, and the yet untouched continent
of hope glittering with all its mountains in the vast
West? I praise with wonder this great reality,
which seems to drown all things in the deluge of its
light. What man seeing this, can lose it from his.
thoughts, or entertain a meaner subject? The en-
trance of this into his mind seems to be the birth
of man. We cannot describe the natural history
of the soul, but we know that it is divine. I ecan-
not tell if these wonderful qualities which house to-
day in this mortal frame shall ever re-assemble in
equal activity in a similar frame, or whether they
have before had a natural history like that of this
body you see before you; but this one thing I know,
that these qualities did not now begin to exist, can-
not be sick with my sickness, nor buried in any
grave; but that they circulate through the Universe:
\ before the world was, they were. Nothing can bar
* them out, or shut them in, but they penetrate the
ocean and land, space and time, form an essence,
and hold the key to universal nature. I draw from
this faith, courage and hope. All things are known.
THE METHOD OF NATURE. Z13
to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any com-
munication. Nothing can be greater than it. Let
those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in
her native realm, and it is wider than space, older
than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanim-.
ity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn ;
they are not for her who puts on her coronation
robes, and goes out through universal love to uni- |
versal power.
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MAN THE REFORMER.
A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE MECHANICS’ APPRENTICES:
LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, BOSTON, JANUARY 25, 1841.
«
Te Gs
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(4 REPU GEE TREY 1
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MAN THE REFORMER.
Mr. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN,
I wisH to offer to your consideration some
thoughts on the particular and general relations of
man as a reformer. I shall assume that the aim
of each young man in this association is the very
highest that belongs to a rational mind. Let it be.
granted that our life, as we lead it, is common and
mean; that some of those offices and functions for
which we were mainly created are grown so rare in
society that the memory of them is only kept alive
in old books and in dim traditions; that prophets
and poets, that beautiful and perfect men we are
not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some
sources of human instruction are almost unnamed
and unknown among us; that the community in\
which we live will hardly bear to be told that;
every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine,
illumination, and his daily walk elevated by inter-)
course with the spiritual world. Grant all this,
as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will
deny that we ought to seek to establish ourselves
218 MAN THE REFORMER.
‘in such disciplines and courses as will deserve that
guidance and clearer communication with the spir-
itual nature. And further, I will not dissemble
my hope that each person whom I address has felt
his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidi-
ties, and limitations, and to be in his place a free
and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not con-
tent to slip along- through the world like a footman
or a spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies
as many knocks as he can, but a brave and upright
man, who must find or cut a straight road to
everything excellent in the earth, and not only go
honorably himself, but make it easier for all who
follow him to go in honor and with benefit.
In the history of the world the doctrine of Re-
form had never such scope as at the present hour.
Lutherans, Hernhutters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers,
Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, in their
accusations of society, all respected something,
—church or state, literature or history, domestic
usages, the market town, the dinner table, coined
money. But now all these and all things else hear
the trumpet, and must rush to judgment, — Chris-
tianity, the laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the
laboratory ; and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite,
calling, man, or woman, but is threatened by the
new spirit.
What if some of the objections whereby our in-
MAN THE REFORMER. 219
stitutions are assailed are extreme and speculative,
and the reformers tend to idealism’? That only
shows the extravagance of the abuses which have
driven the mind. into the opposite extreme. It is \
when your facts and persons grow unreal and fan-.
tastic by too much falsehood, that the scholar flies:
for refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to re-
cruit and replenish nature from that source. Let
ideas establish their legitimate sway again in so-.
ciety, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars
will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
It will afford no security from the new ideas,
that the old nations, the laws of centuries, the .
property and institutions of a hundred cities, are
built on other foundations. ‘The demon of reform
has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker,
of every inhabitant of every city. The fact that
a new thought and hope have dawned in your
breast, should apprise you that in the same hour a
new light broke in upon a thousand private hearts.
That secret which you would fain keep, —as soon
as you go abroad, lo! there is one standing on the
doorstep to tell you the same. There is not the.
most bronzed and sharpened money-catcher who
does not, to your consternation almost, quail and:
shake the moment he hears a question prompted.
by the new ideas. We thought he had some sem.
blance of ground to stand upon, that such as he aut
220 MAN THE REFORMER.
least would die hard; but he trembles and flees.
Then the scholar says, ‘Cities and coaches shall
never impose on me again; for behold every soli-
tary dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. That
fancy I had, and hesitated to utter because you
would laugh, — the broker, the attorney, the mar-
ket-man are saying the same thing. Had I waited
a day longer to speak, I had been too late. Be-
hold, State Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts,
and begins to prophesy !’
It cannot be wondered at that this general in-
quest into abuses should arise in the bosom of
society, when one considers the practical impedi-
ments that stand in the way of virtuous young
men. The young man, on entering life, finds the
way to lucrative employments blocked with abuses.
The ways of trade are grown selfish to the borders
of theft, and supple to the borders (Gif not beyond
the borders) of fraud. The employments of com-
merce are not intrinsically unfit for a man, or less
genial to his faculties; but these are now in their
general course so vitiated by derelictions and
abuses at which all connive, that it requires more
vigor and resources than can be expected of every
young man, to right himself in them; he is lost in
them ; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has
he genius and virtue? the less does he find them
fit for him to grow in, and if he would thrive in
MAN THE REFORMER. 2M |
them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of
boyhood and youth as dreams; he must forget the
prayers of his childhood and must take on him the
harness of routine and obsequiousness. If not so
minded, nothing is left him but to begin the world
anew, as he does who puts the spade into the
ground for food. We are all implicated of course
in this charge; it is only necessary to ask a few
questions as to the progress of the articles of com-
merce from the fields where they grew, to our
houses, to become aware that we eat and drink and
wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities.
How many articles of daily consumption are fur. |
nished us from the West Indies; yet it is said that
in the Spanish islands the venality-of the officers
of the government has passed into usage, and that
no article passes into our ships which has not been
fraudulently cheapened. In the Spanish islands,
every agent or factor of the Americans, unless he
be a consul, has taken oath that he is a Catholic,
or has caused a priest to make that declaration for
him. The abolitionist has shown us our dreadful
debt to the southern negro. In the island of
Cuba, in addition to the ordinary abominations of
slavery, it appears only men are bought for the
plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of
these miserable bachelors, to yield us sugar. I
leave for those who have the knowledge the part
DOD. MAN THE REFORMER.
of sifting the oaths of our custom-houses; I will
not inquire into the oppression of the sailors; I
will not pry into the usages of our retail trade. I
content myself with the fact that the general sys-
tem of our trade (apart from the blacker traits,
which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and un-
shared by all reputable men), is a system of self-
ishness; is not dictated by the high sentiments of
human nature; is not measured by the exact law
of reciprocity, much less by the sentiments of love
and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of con-
cealment, of superior keenness, not of giving but
of taking advantage. It is not that which a man
delights to unlock to a noble friend; which he
meditates on with joy and self-approval in his hour
of love and aspiration; but rather what he then
puts out of sight, only showing the brilliant result,
and atoning for the manner of acquiring, by the
manner of expending it. I do not charge the mer-
chant or the manufacturer. The sins of our trade
belong to no class, to no individual. One plucks,
one distributes, one eats. Every body partakes,
every body confesses, — with cap and knee volun-
teers his confession, yet none feels himself account-
able. He did not create the abuse; he cannot
alter it. What is he? an obscure private person
who must get his bread. ‘That is the vice, — that
/no one feels himself called to act for man, but only
MAN THE REFORMER. 223
as a fraction of man. It happens therefore that
all such ingenuous souls as feel within themselves
the irrepressible strivings of a noble aim, who by
the law of their nature must act simply, find these
ways of trade unfit for them, and they come forth
from it. Such cases are becoming more numerous
every year.
But by coming out of trade you have not cleared
yourself. The trail of the serpent reaches into all
the lucrative professions and practices of man.
Each has its own wrongs. [Hach finds a tender
and very intelligent conscience a disqualification
for success. Each requires of the practitioner a |
certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness
and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a seques-
tration from the sentiments of generosity and love,
a compromise of private opinion and lofty integ-
rity. Nay, the evil custom reaches into the whole
institution of property, until our laws which estab-
lish and protect it seem not to be the issue of love
and reason, but of selfishness. Suppose a man is
so unhappy as to be born a saint, with keen per- |
ceptions but with the conscience and love of an an-
gel, and he is to get his living in the world; he
finds himself excluded from all lucrative works ;
he has no farm, and he cannot get one; for to earn |
money enough to buy one requires a sort of concen-
tration toward money, which is the selling himself
224 MAN THE REFORMER.
\for a number of years, and to him the present hour
is as sacred and inviolable as any future hour.
Of course, whilst another man has no land, my
title to mine, your title to yours, is at once vitiated.
Inextricable seem to be the twinings and tendrils
of this evil, and we all involve ourselves in it the
deeper by forming connections, by wives and chil-
dren, by benefits and debts.
Considerations of this kind have turned the at-
tention of many philanthropic and intelligent per-
sons to the claims of manual labor, as a part of
the education of every young man. If the accumu-
lated wealth of the past generation is thus tainted,
—no matter how much of it is offered to us, — we
must begin to consider if it were not the nobler
part to renounce it, and to put ourselves into pri-
mary relations with the soil and nature, and ab-
staining from whatever is dishonest and unclean,
to take each of us bravely his part, with his own
hands, in the manual labor of the world.
But it is said, ‘ What! will you give up the im-
mense advantages reaped from the division of la-
bor, and set every man to make his own shoes, bu-
reau, knife, wagon, sails, and needle? This would
be to put men back into barbarism by their own
act.’
I see no instant prospect of a virtuous revo-
lution ; yet I confess I should not be pained at a
change which threatened a loss of some of the lux-
MAN THE REFORMER. 220
uries or conveniences of society, if it proceeded
froma preference of the agricultural life out of the
belief that our primary duties as men could be bet-
ter discharged in that calling. Who could regret
to see a high conscience and a purer taste exercis-
ing a sensible effect on young men in their choice
of occupation, and thinning the ranks of competi-
tion in the labors of commerce, of law, and of
state? It is easy to see that the inconvenience
would last but a short time. This would be great
action, which always opens the eyes of men. When
many persons shall have done this, when the major-
ity shall admit the necessity of reform in all these
institutions, their abuses will be redressed, and the
way will be open again to the advantages which
arise from the division of labor, and a man may se-
lect the fittest employment for his peculiar talent
again, without compromise.
But quite apart from the emphasis which the
times give to the doctrine that the manual labor of
society ought to be shared among all the members,
there are reasons proper to every individual why he
should not be deprived of it. The use of manual
labor is one which never grows obsolete, and which
is inapplicable to no person. _A man should have
a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We
must have a basis for our higher accomplishments,
our delicate entertainments of poetry and philoso. |
926 MAN THE REFORMER.
phy, in the work of our hands. We must have an
antagonism in the tough world for all the variety
of our spiritual faculties, or they will not be born.
Manual labor is the study of the external world.
The advantage of riches remains with him who pro-
cured them, not with the heir. When I go into
my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such
an exhilaration and health that I discover that I
have been defrauding myself all this time in letting
others do for me what I should have done with my
own hands. But not only health, but education is
in the work. Is it possible that I, who get indefi-
nite quantities of sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets,
crockery ware, and letter-paper, by simply signing
my name once in three months to a cheque in favor
of John Smith & Co. traders, get the fair share of
exercise to my faculties by that act which nature
intended for me in making all these far-fetched
matters important to my comfort? It is Smith
himself, and his carriers, and dealers, and manufac-
turers ; it is the sailor, the hidedrogher, the butcher,
the negro, the hunter, and the planter, who have
intercepted the sugar of the sugar, and the cotton
of the cotton. They have got the education, I only
the commodity. This were all very well if I were
necessarily absent, being detained by work of my
own, like theirs, work of the same faculties; then
should I be sure of my hands and feet; but now
MAN THE REFORMER. 227
I feel some shame before my wood-chopper, my
ploughman, and my cook, for they have some sort
of self-sufficiency, they can contrive without my
aid to bring the day and year round, but I depend
on them, and have not earned by use a right to my
arms and feet.
Consider further the difference between the first \
and second owner of property. Every species of |
property is preyed on by its own enemies, as iron |
by rust; timber by rot; cloth by moths; provis-
ions by mould, putridity, or vermin; money by
thieves ; an orchard by insects; a planted field by
weeds and the inroad of cattle; a stock of cattle |
by hunger; a road by rain and frost; a bridge by
freshets. And whoever takes any of these things
into his possession, takes the charge of defending
them from this troop of enemies, or of keeping
them in repair. A man who supplies his own want,
who builds a raft or a boat to go a-fishing, finds it
easy to caulk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the
rudder. What he gets only as fast as he wants for
his own ends, does not embarrass him, or take away
his sleep with looking after. But when he comes
to give all the goods he has year after year collected,
in one estate to his son, —house, orchard, ploughed
land, cattle, bridges, hardware, wooden-ware, car-
pets, cloths, provisions, books, money,— and can-
not give him the skill and experience which made
228 MAN THE REFORMER.
or collected these, and the method and place they
have in his own life, the son finds his hands full,
—not to use these things, but to look after them
and defend them from their natural enemies. To
him they are not means, but masters. Their ene-
mies will not remit ; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun,
freshet, fire, all seize their own, fill him with vexa-
tion, and he is converted from the owner into a
watchman or a watch-dog to this magazine of old
and new chattels. Whata change! Instead of the
masterly good humor and sense of power and fertil-
ity of resource in himself; instead of those strong
and learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes,
that supple body, and that mighty and prevailing
heart which the father had, whom nature loved and
feared, whom snow and rain, water and land, beast
and fish seemed all to know and to serve, — we have
uow a puny, protected person, guarded by walls
and curtains, stoves and down beds, coaches, and
men-servants and women-servants from the earth
and the sky, and who, bred to depend on all these,
is made anxious by all that endangers those pos-
sessions, and is forced to spend so much time in
guarding them, that he has quite lost sight of their
original use, namely, to help him to his ends, — to
the prosecution of his love; to the helping of his
friend, to the worship of his God, to the enlarge-
ment of his knowledge, to the serving of his coun
MAN Tit REFORMER. 229
try, to the indulgence of his sentiment ; and he is
now what is called a rich man, — the menial and
runner of his riches.
Hence it happens that the whole interest of his-
tory lies in the fortunes of the poor. Knowledge,,
Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his ne-,
cessities, his march to the dominion of the world.
Every man ought to have this opportunity to con-.
quer the world for himself. Only such persons in-
terest us, Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English,
Americans, who have stood in the jaws of need, and.
have by their own wit and might extricated them-
selves, and made man victorious.
I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor,
or insist that every man should be a farmer, any
more than that every man should be a lexicogra-
pher. In general one may say that the husband-
man’s is the oldest and most universal profession,
and that where a man does not vet discover in him-
self any fitness for one work more than another,
this may be preferred. But the doctrine of the
Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand
in primary relations with the work of the world ;
ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the acci-
deat of his having a purse in his pocket, or his hav-
ing been bred to some dishonorable and injurious
sraft, to sever him from those duties; and for this
reason, that labor is God’s education ; that he only
230 MAN THE REFORMER.
is a sincere learner, he only can become a master,
who learns the secrets of labor, and who, by real
cunning extorts from nature its sceptre.
Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of the
learned professions, of the poet, the priest, the law-
giver, and men of study generally; namely, that in
the experience of all men of that class, the amount
of manual labor which is necessary to the mainte-
nance of a family, indisposes and disqualifies for
intellectual exertion. I know, it often, perhaps’
usually happens that where there is a fine organ-
ization, apt for poetry and philosophy, that individ-
ual finds himself compelled to wait on his thoughts ;
to waste several days that he may enhance and glo-
rify one ; and is better taught by a moderate and
dainty exercise, such as rambling in the fields, row-
ing, skating, hunting, than by the downright drudg-
ery of the farmer and the smith. I would not quite
forget the venerable counsel of the Egyptian mys-
teries, which declared that “there were two pairs
of eyes in man, and it is requisite that the pair
which are beneath should be closed, when the pair
that are above them peréeive, and that when the
pair above are closed, those which are beneath
should be opened.” Yet I will suggest that no
separation from labor can be without some loss of
power and of truth to the seer himself; that, I
doubt not, the faults and_ vices of our literature and
TE sem reggae ey car
MAN THE REFORMER. 231
philosophy, their too great fineness, effeminacy, and |
melancholy, are attributable to the enervated and \
sickly habits of the literary class. Better that ‘the/
book should_not be quite. so good, and_the book-\.
maker : abler ar and better, and not himself simself often a Iu|
dierous contrast to-all-that he has writien,
But granting that for ends so sacred and dear
some relaxation must be had, I think that if a man
find in himself any strong bias to poetry, to art, to
the contemplative life, drawing him to these things
with a devotion incompatible with good husbandry, —
that man ought to reckon early with himself, and,
respecting the compensations of the Universe, ought °
to ransom himself from the duties of economy by
a certain rigor and privation in his habits. For '
privileges so rare and grand, let him not stint to/
pay a great tax. Let him be a cenobite, a pauper,
and if need be, celibate also. Let him learn to eat.
his meals standing, and to relish the taste of fair
water and black bread. He may leave to others,
the costly conveniences of housekeeping, and large )
hospitality, and the possession of works of art. Let
him feel that genius is a hospitality, and that he
who can create works of art needs not collect them. “
He must live in a chamber, and postpone his self-
indulgence, forewarned and forearmed against that
frequent misfortune of men of genius, — the taste for
luxury. ‘This is the tragedy of genius ; — attempt-
232 MAN THE REFORMER.
‘ing to drive along the ecliptic with one horse of the
heavens and one horse of the earth, there is only
diseord and ruin and downfall to chariot and char-
jioteer. :
The duty that every man should assume his own
vows, should call the institutions of society to ac-
count, and examine their fitness to him, gains in
emphasis if we look at our modes of living. Is our
housekeeping sacred and honorable? Does it raise
and inspire us, or does it cripple us instead? I
ought to be armed by every part and function of
my household, by all my social function, by my
economy, by my feasting, by my voting, by my traf-
fic. Yet I am almost no party to any of these
things. Custom does it for me, gives me no power
therefrom, and runs me in debt to boot. We » spend.
our incomes for paint and paper, for a , hundred
trifles, I know not what, and not for the things of —
a man. Our expense i 1s almost all for conformity.
It is for cake that we run in debt; it is not the in-
tellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that
costs so much, Why ‘needs any “man be rich?
)Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome
apartments, access to public houses and places of
‘amusement? Only for want of thought. Give his
‘mind a new image, and he flees into a solitary gar-
den or garret to enjoy it, and is richer with that
‘dream than the fee of a county could make him.
MAN THE REFORMER. 933
But we are first thoughtless, and then find that we
are _moneyless. We are first sensual, and then
must be-rich. We dare not trust our wit for
making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we
buy ice-creams. He is accustomed to carpets, and |
we have not sufficient character to put floor cloths >
out of his mind whilst he stays in the house, and so
we pile the floor with carpets. Let the house rather \
be a temple of the Furies of Lacedsemon, formida- |
ble and holy to all, which none but a Spartan may /
enter or so much as behold. As soon as there is)
faith, as soon as there is society, comfits and cush-
ions will be left to slaves. Expense will be inven- |
tive and heroic. We shall eat hard and lie hard,
we shall dwell like the ancient Romans in narrow -:
tenements, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, will
be worthy for their proportion of the landscape mm
which we set them, for conversation, for art, for
music, for worship. We shall be rich to great pur-
poses; poor only for selfish ones.
Now what help for these evils? How can the
man who has learned but one art, procure all the
conveniences of life honestly? Shall we say all
we think ? — Perhaps with his own hands. Sup-
pose he collects or makes them ill ;— yet he has
learned their lesson. If he cannot do that? —
Then perhaps he ean go without. Immense wis-
dom and riches are in that. It is better to go with-
934 MAN THE REFORMER.
out, than to have them at too great a cost. Let us
learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a
high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is
grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes,
when it is practised for freedom, or love, or devo-
tion. Much of the economy which we see in houses
is of a base origin, and is best kept out of sight.’
Parched corn eaten to-day, that Wy may have roast,
fowl to my dinner on Sunday, i is a baseness ; ; but
parched corn and a house with one apartment, that
I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be |
serene and docile to what the mind shall speak,
and girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of
knowledge or goodwill, is frugality for gods and _
__heroes. |
Can we not learn the lesson of self-help? So-
ciety is full of infirm people, who incessantly sum-
mon others to serve them. They contrive every-
where to exhaust for their single comfort the entire
means and appliances of that luxury to which our
invention has yet attained. Sofas, ottomans, stoves,
‘Awine, game-fowl, spices, perfumes, rides, the the-
lea entertainments, —all these they want, they
‘need, and whatever can be suggested more than
these they crave also, as if it was the bread which
should keep them from starving; and if they miss
any one, they represent themselves as the most
‘wronged and most wretched persons on earth.
MAN THE REFORMER. Zo)
One must have been born and bred with them to
know how to prepare a meal for their learned |
stomach. Meantime they never bestir themselves |
to serve another person; not they! they have a
great deal more to do for themselves than they can
possibly perform, nor do they once perceive the
cruel joke of their lives, but the more odious they
grow, the sharper is the tone of their complaining
and craving. Can anything be so elegant as to,
have few wants and to serve them one’s self, so as|
to have somewhat left to give, instead of being al-\
ways prompt to grab? It is more elegant to an- \
swer one’s own needs than to be richly served ; in-
elegant perhaps it may look to-day, and to a few,
but it is an elegance forever and to all.
I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in re-
form. Ido not wish to push my criticism on the
state of things around me to that extravagant
mark that shall compel me to suicide, or to an ab-
solute isolation from the advantages of civil so-
ciety. If we suddenly plant our foot and say, — I
will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any
food or fabric which I do not know to be innocent,
or deal with any person whose whole manner of
life is not clear and rational, we shall stand still.
Whose is‘so?. Not mine; not thine; not his. But
I think we must clear ourselves each one by the in-
terrogation, whether we have earned our bread to-
236 MAN THE REFORMER.
day by the hearty contribution of our energies to
the common benefit; and we must not cease to
tend to the correction of flagrant wrongs, by lay-
ing one stone aright every day.
But the idea which now begins to agitate society
has a wider scope than our daily employments, our
households, and the institutions of property. We
are to revise the whole of our social structure, the
State, the school, religion, marriage, trade, science,
and explore their foundations in our own nature ;
we are to see that the world not only fitted the
former men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of
every usage which has not its roots in our own
mind. What isa man born for but to be a Re-
former, a Re-maker of what man has made; a re-
nouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good, imi-
tating that great Nature which embosoms us all,
and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but
every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morn-—
ing a new day, and with every pulsation a new
life? Let him renounce everything which is not
true to him, and put all his practices back on their
first thoughts, and do nothing for which he has not
the whole world for his reason. If there are in-
conveniences and what is called ruin in the way,
because we have so enervated and-maimed our-
selves, yet it would be like dying of perfumes to
sink in the effort to re-attach the deeds of every
day to the holy and mysterious recesses of life.
MAN THE REFORMER. 937
The power which is at once spring and regulator
in all efforts of reform is the conviction that there
is an infinite worthiness in man, which will appear
at the call of worth, and that all particular reforms
are the removing of some impediment. Is it not
the highest duty that man should be honored in us?
I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad}-
lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. t)
ought to make him feel that I can do without his |
riches, that I cannot be bought, — neither by com- |
fort, neither by pr pride, —and though I be utterly,
penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is:
—__ the_poor man beside me. ‘And if, at the same time, ).
a woman or a child discovers a sentiment of piety,
‘or a juster way of thinking than mine, I ought to,
confess it by my respect and obedience, atolee it)
go to alter my whole way of life. ‘
The Americans have many virtues, but they
have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words
whose meaning is more lost sight of. We use
these words as if they were as obsolete as Selah
and Amen. And yet they have the broadest mean-
ing, and the most cogent application to Boston in
this year. The Americans have little faith. They :
rely on the power of a dollar ; they are deaf to av
sentiment. They think you may talk the north
wind down as easily as raise society; and no Giass
more faithless than the scholars or intellectual men.
938 MAN THE REFORMER.
Now if I talk with a sincere wise man, and my
friend, with a poet, with a conscientious youth
who is still under the dominion of his own wild
thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the team of so-
ciety to drag with us all in the ruts of custom, I
see at once how paltry is all this generation of un-
believers, and what a house of cards their institu-
tions are, and I see what one brave man, what one
great thought executed might effect. I see that
the reason of the distrust of the practical man in
all theory, is his inability to perceive the means
whereby we work. Look, he says, at the tools with
which this world of yours is to be built. As we
cannot make a planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and
forests, by means of the best carpenters’ or engi-
neers’ tools, with chemist’s laboratory and smith’s
forge to boot, —so neither can we ever construct
that heavenly society you prate of out of foolish,
sick, selfish men and women, such as we know
themto be. But the believer not only beholds his
\ heaven to be possible, but already to begin to ex-
ist, —not by the men or materials the statesman
‘uses, but by men transfigured and raised above
_ themselves by the power of principles. To princi-
\ples something else is possible that transcends all
/the power of expedients.
Every great and commanding moment in the an-
nals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
MAN THE REFORMER. 239
\
The victories of the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a\
few years, from a small and mean beginning, estab-
lished a larger empire than that of Rome, is an ex-
ample. They did they knew not what. The naked
Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch
for a troop of Roman cavalry. The women fought
like men, and conquered the Roman men. They
were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They were
Temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor
flesh needed to feed them. They conquered Asia,
and Africa, and Spain, on barley. The Caliph
Omar’s walking-stick struck more terror into those
who saw it than another man’s sword. His diet
was barley bread; his sauce was salt; and often-
times by way of abstinence he ate his bread with-
out salt. His drink was water. His palace was
built of mud; and when he left Medina to go to
the conquest of Jerusalem, he rode on a red camel,
with a wooden platter hanging at his saddle, with a /
bottle of water and two sacks, one holding barley,/
and the other dried fruits. /
But there will dawn ere long on our politics, on |
our modes of living, a nobler morning than that Ara- |
bian faith, in the sentiment of Jove. This is the;
one one remedy for all ills, d the’ panacea. of nature. We)
must t be lovers, and at. at once the impossible becomes
possible. Our age and history, for these thousand’
years, h has not been the history of kindness, but
———
940 MAN THE REFORMER.
of selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. The
money we spend for courts and prisons is very ill
laid out. We make, by distrust, the thief, and
burglar, and incendiary, and by our court and jail
we keep him so. An acceptance of the sentiment
(of love throughout Christendom for a season would
bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears,
with the devotion of his faculties to our service.
See this wide society of laboring men and women.
We allow ourselves to be served by them, we live
apart from them, and meet them without a salute
in the streets. We do not greet their talents, nor
rejoice in their good fortune, nor foster their hopes,
nor in the assembly of the people vote for what is
dear to them. Thus we enact the part of the self-
ish noble and king from the foundation of the
world. See, this tree always bears one fruit. In
every household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by
the malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of do-
mestics. Let any two matrons meet, and observe
how soon their conversation turns on the troubles
from their “ help,” as our phrase is. In every
knot of laborers the rich man does not feel himself
among his friends, — and at the polls he finds them
arrayed in a mass in distinct opposition to him.
We complain that the politics of masses of the
people are controlled by designing men, and led in
opposition to manifest justice and the common
MAN THE REFORMER. 941
weal, and to their own interest. But the people
do not wish to be represented or ruled by the igno-
rant and base. They only vote for these, because
they were asked with the voice and semblance of
kindness. They will not vote for them long. They
inevitably prefer wit and probity. To use an Egyp-
tian metaphor, it is not their will for any long time
“to raise the nails of wild beasts, and to depress} /
the heads of the sacred birds.” Let our affection i
flow out to our fellows; it would operate in a day)’
the greatest of all revolutions. It is better to work_
on institutions by the sun than by the wind. The}
8
State must consider the poor man, and all voices)
must speak for him. Every child that is born
must have a just chance for his bread. Let the’)
amelioration in our laws of property proceed from S :
the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of (
the poor. Let us begin by habitual imparting. ~
Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that
no one should take more than his share, let him ha
be ever so rich. Let me feel that I am to be:
a lover. I am to see to it that the world is
the better for me, and to find my reward in the
act. Love would put a new face on this weary old
world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too
long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast
the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of
armies, and navies, and lines of defence, would be
VOL. I. 16
242 MAN THE REFORMER.
superseded by this unarmed child. Love will creep
where it cannot go, will accomplish that by imper-
ceptible methods, — being its own lever, fulcrum,
and power, — which force could never achieve.
Have you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn
morning, a poor fungus or mushroom, —a plant
without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but
a soft mush or jelly, — by its constant, total, and
inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its
way up through the frosty ground, and actually to
lift a hard crust on its head? It is the symbol of
the power of kindness. The virtue of this principle
in human society in application to great interests is
obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in history
it has been tried in illustrious instances, with sig-
nal success. This great, overgrown, dead Chris-
‘tendom of ours still keeps alive at least the name
of a lover of mankind. But one day all men will be
lovers; and every calamity will be dissolved in the
universal sunshine.
Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this
portrait of man the reformer? The mediator be-
tween the spiritual and the actual world should
have a great prospective prudence. An Arabian
poet describes his hero by saying,
\“ Sunshine was he
( In the winter day ;
| ( And in the midsummer
_| Coolness and shade.”
MAN THE REFORMER. 243
He who would help himself and others should not
be a subject of irregular and interrupted impulses
of virtue, but a continent, persisting, immovable
person, — such as we have seen a few scattered up
and down in time for the blessing of the world ;
men who have in the gravity of their nature a qual-
ity which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which
distributes the motion equably over all the wheels
and hinders it from falling unequally and suddenly
in destructive shocks. It is better that joy should\
be spread over all the day in the form of strength,
than that it should be-concentrated into ecstasies, |
full of danger and followed by reactions. There is.
a sublime prudence which is the very highest that
we know of man, which, believing in a vast future,
— sure of more to come than is yet seen, — post-
pones always the present hour to the whole life ;
postpones talent to genius, and special results to
character. As the merchant gladly takes money
from his income to add to his capital, so is the great
man very willing to lose particular powers and tal-
ents, so that he gain in the elevation of his life.
The opening of the spiritual senses disposes men
ever to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal tal-
ents, their best means and skill of procuring a pres-
ent success, their power and their fame, — to cast
all things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine
communications. A purer fame, a greater power
244 MAN THE REFORMER.
rewards the sacrifice. It isthe conversion of our
-harvest into seed. As the farmer casts into the
\ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will
‘come when we too shall hold nothing back, but
‘shall eagerly convert more than we now possess
| into means and powers, when we shall be willing to
‘sow the sun and the moon for seeds.
LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
READ AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, DECEMBER 2, 1841.
LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
+
THe Times, as we say — or the present aspects
of our social state, the Laws, Divinity, Natural Sci-
ence, Agriculture, Art, Trade, Letters, have their
root in an invisible spiritual reality. To appear
in these aspects, they must first exist, or have some
necessary foundation. Beside all the small reasons
we assign, there is a great reason for the existence
of every extant fact; a reason which lies grand and
immovable, often unsuspected, behind it in silence.
The Times are the masquerade of the Eternities >)
trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic |
agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the/
Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which
the genius of to-day is building up the Future./
The Times — the nations, manners, institutions,
opinions, votes, are to be studied as omens, as sa-
cred leaves, whereon a weighty sense is inscribed,
if we have the wit and the love to search it out.
Nature itself seems to propound to us this topic,
and to invite us to explore the meaning of the con-
spicuous facts of the day. Everything that is pop-
248 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
ular, it has been said, deserves the attention of the
i Pcinopher! and this for the obvious reason, t that
although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet
it characterizes the people.
Here is very good matter to be handled, if we
are skilful; an abundance of important practical
questions which it behooves us to understand.
Let us examine the pretensions of the attacking
and defending parties. Here is this great fact of
Conservatism, entrenched in its immense redoubts,
-with Himmaleh for its front, and Atlas for its
flank, and Andes for its rear, and the Atlantic and
Pacific seas for its ditches and trenches ; which has
| planted its crosses, and crescents, and stars and
| stripes, and various signs and badges of possession,
over every rood of the planet, and says, ‘I will
hold fast; and to whom I will, will I give; and
whom I will, will I exclude and starve:’ so says
/ Conservatism; and all the children of men attack
\ the colossus in their youth, and all, or all but a
\few, bow before it when they are old. A necessity
not yet commanded, a negative imposed on the
will of man by his condition, a deficiency in his
force, is the foundation on which it rests. Let
this side be fairly stated. Meantime, on the other
part, arises Reform, and offers the sentiment of
Love as an overmatch to this material might. I
wish to consider well this affirmative side, which
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 249
has a loftier port and reason than heretofore, which
encroaches on the other every day, puts it out of
countenance, out of reason, and out of temper, and
leaves it nothing but silence and possession.
The fact of aristocracy, with its two weapons of
wealth and manners, is as commanding a feature of
the nineteenth century and the American republic
as of old Rome, or modern England. The reason
and influence of wealth, the aspect of philosophy
and religion, and the tendencies which have ac-
quired the name of Transcendentalism in Old and
New England; the aspect of poetry, as the expo-
nent and interpretation of these things; the fuller
development and the freer play of Character as a
social and political agent ; — these and other related
topics will in turn come to be considered.
But the subject of the Times is not an abstract
question. We talk of the world, but we meana
few men and women. If you speak of the age, you
mean your own platoon of people, as Dante and
Milton painted in colossal their platoons, and called
them Heaven and Hell. In our. idea of progress,
we do not go out of this personal picture. We de
not think the sky will be bluer, or honey sweeter,
or our climate more temperate, but only that our
relation to our fellows will be simpler and happier.. |
What is the reason to be given for this extreme at-
traction which persons have for us, but that they
250 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
are the Age? they are the results of the Past;
they are the heralds of the Future. They indicate,
— these witty, suffering, blushing, intimidating fig-
ures of the only race in which there are individuals
or changes, how far on the Fate has gone, and what
it drives at. As trees make scenery, and consti-
tute the hospitality of the landscape, so persons are
the world to persons. A cunning mystery by which
the Great Desert of thoughts and of planets takes
this engaging form, to bring, as it would seem, its
meanings nearer to the mind. Thoughts walk and
speak, and look with eyes at me, and transport me
into new and magnificent scenes. These are the
pungent instructors who thrill the heart of each of
us, and make all other teaching formal and cold.
How I follow them with aching heart, with pining
desire! I count myself nothing before them. I
would die for them with joy. They can do what
they will with me. How they lash us with those
tongues! How they make the tears start, make us
blush and turn pale, and lap us in Elysium to sooth-
ing dreams and castles in the air! By tones of
triumph, of dear love, by threats, by pride that
freezes, these have the skill to make the world look
bleak and inhospitable, or seem the nest of tender-
ness and joy. I do not wonder at the miracles
_ which poetry attributes to the music of Orpheus,
when I remember what I have experienced from
2
3
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 951
the varied notes of the human voice. They are an
incalculable energy which countervails all other
forces in nature, because they are the channel of
supernatural powers. There is no interest or insti-
man could be born into it, he would immediately | |
redeem and replace it. A personal ey -—
trenalory some years. ‘ago, “somebody sHueliod a circle
of friends of order here in Boston, who supposed
that our people were identified with their religious
\|
tution so poor and withered, but_if a new strong)
denominations, by declaring that an eloquent man, |
— let him be of what sect soever, — would be or-
dained at once in one of our metropolitan churches.
To be sure he would; and not only in ours but in
any church, mosque, or temple, on the planet ; but |
he must be eloquent, able to supplant our method \
and classification by the superior beauty of his own.
Every fact we have was brought here by some per- ;
son; and there is none that will not change and, |
pass away before a person whose nature is broader \
fe
than the person which the fact in question repre- |
sents. And so I find the Age walking about in
happy and hopeful natures, in strong eyes and pleas-
ant thoughts, and think I read it nearer and truer
so, than in the statute-book, or in the investments
of capital, which rather celebrate with mournful
music the obsequies of the last age. In the brain of a
259, LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
fanatic ; in the wild hope of a mountain boy, called
by city boys very ignorant, because they do not
know what his hope has certainly apprised him shall
be; in the love-glance of a girl; in the hair-splitting
conscientiousness of some eccentric person who has
found some new scruple to embarrass himself and
his neighbors withal is to be found that which shall
constitute the times to come, more than in the now
organized and accredited oracles. For whatever is
affirmative and now advancing, contains it. J think
‘that only is real which men love and rejoice in;
ot what they tolerate, but what they choose ; what
they embrace and avow, and not the things which
chill, benumb, and terrify them.
_ And so why not draw for these times a portrait
fallery? Let us paint the painters. Whilst the
‘Daguerreotypist, with camera-obseura and_ silver
plate, begins now to traverse the land, let us set up
our Camera also, and let the sun paint the people.
Let us paint the agitator, and the man of the old
school, and the member of Congress, and the col-
lege-professor, the formidable editor, the priest and
reformer, the contemplative girl, and the fair as-
pirant for fashion and opportunities, the woman of
the world who has tried and knows ;— let us ex-
amine how well she knows. Could we indicate the
indicators, indicate those who most accurately rep-
resent every good and evil tendency of the general
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 955
mind, in the just order which they take on this can-
vas of Time, so that all witnesses should recog:
nize a spiritual law as each well known form flitted
for a moment across the wall, we should have a
series of sketches which would report to the next
ages the color and quality of ours.
Certainly I think if this were done there would
be much to admire as well as to condemn; souls
of as lofty a port as any in Greek or Roman fame
might appear; men of great heart, of strong hand,
and of persuasive speech ; subtle thinkers, and men
of wide sympathy, and an apprehension which looks
over all history and everywhere recognizes its own.
To be sure, there will be fragments and hints of
men, more than enough: bloated promises, which
end in nothing or little. * And then truly great
men, but with some defect in their composition
which neutralizes their whole force. Here is a.
Damascus blade, such as you may search through|
nature in vain to parallel, laid up on the shelf in|
some village to rust and ruin. And how many
seem not quite available for that idea which they
represent? Now and then comes a bolder spirit, I
should rather say, a more surrendered soul, more
informed and led by God, which is much in ad-
vance of the rest, quite beyond their sympathy, but
predicts what shall soon be the general fulness ; as
when we stand by the seashore, whilst the tide is
254. LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
coming in, a wave comes up the beach far higher
than any foregoing one, and recedes; and for a
long while none comes up to that mark; but after
some time the whole sea is there and beyond it.
But we are not permitted to stand as spectators
of the pageant which the times exhibit; we are
parties also, and have a responsibility which is not
to be declined.
956 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
the present all notice of the stationary class, we
shall find that the movement party divides itself
~ into two classes, the actors, and the students.
The actors constitute that great army of martyrs
| who, at least in America, by their conscience and
philanthropy, occupy the ground which Calvinism
occupied in the last age, and compose the visible
church of the existing generation. The present
age will be marked by its harvest of projects for
the reform of domestic, civil, literary, and ecclesi-
astical institutions. The leaders of the crusades
against War, Negro slavery, Intemperance, Govern-
ment based on force, Usages of trade, Court and
_ Custom-house Oaths, and so on to the agitators on
the system of Education and the laws of Property,
are the right successors of Luther, Knox, Robin-
son, Fox, Penn, Wesley, and Whitfield. They
have the same virtues and vices; the same noble
impulse, and the same bigotry. These movements
are on all accounts important ; they not only check
the special abuses, but they educate the conscience
and the intellect of the people. How can such a
question as the Slave-trade be agitated for forty
‘years by all the Christian nations, without throw-
/ ing great light on ethics into the general mind?
\The fury with which the slave-trader defends every
© inch of his bloody deck and his howling auction-
platform, is a trumpet to alarm the ear of mankind,
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 25T
to wake the dull, and drive all neutrals to take)
sides and to listen to the argument and the verdict. \
The Temperance-question, which rides the conver-\,
sation of ten thousand circles, and is tacitly recalled
at every public and at every private table, drawing: - be:
with it all the curious ethics of the Pledge, of the \ , on bs
Wine-question, of the equity of the manufacture | 4 : f
and the trade, is a gymnastic training to the cas. | 6
uistry and conscience of the time. Anti-masonry,
had a deep right and wrong, which gradually
emerged to sight out of the turbid controversy.
The political questions touching the Banks; the
Tariff; the limits of the executive power ; the right .
of the constituent to instruct the representative ;
the treatment of the Indians; the Boundary wars ;
the Congress of nations; are all pregnant with
ethical conclusions; and it is well if government
and our social order can extricate themselves from
these alembics and find themselves still government
and social order. ‘The student of history will here-
after compute the singular value of our endless
discussion of questions to the mind of the period.
Whilst each of these aspirations and attempts of | %,
the people for the Better is magnified by the nat-/
ural exaggeration of its advocates, until it excludes } > |
the others from sight, and repels discreet persons |
by the unfairness of the plea, the movements are
in reality all parts of one movement. There is a
VOL. I. 1’
258 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
Died chain, — see it, or see it not,— of reforms
emerging from the surrounding darkness, each
‘cherishing some part of the general idea, and all
must be seen in order to do justice to any one.
)Seen in this their natural connection, they are sub-
) lime. The conscience of the Age demonstrates it-
self in this effort to raise the life of man by putting
it in harmony with his idea of the Beautiful and
‘the Just. The ee of reform is always identi-
cal, it is the comparison of the idea with the_fact.
Our modes of living are not “agreeable: to our imag-
ination. We suspect they are unworthy. We ar-
raign our daily employments. They appear to us
unfit, unworthy of the faculties we spend on them.
In conversation with a wise man, we find ourselves
apologizing for our employments ; we speak of
them with shame. Nature, literature, science,
childhood, appear to us beautiful; but not our own
daily work, not the ripe fruit and considered labors
,of man. This beauty which the fancy finds in
everything else, certainly accuses the manner of
life we lead. Why should it be hateful? Why
should it contrast thus with all natural beauty ?
Why should it not be poetic, and invite and raise
us? Is there a necessity that the works of man
should be sordid? Perhaps not. — Out of this fair
__ Idea in the mind springs the effort at the Perfect.
It is the interior testimony to a fairer possibility of
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 259
life and manners which agitates society every day
with the offer of some new amendment. If we,
would make more strict inquiry concerning its ori-
gin, we find ourselves rapidly approaching the in:
ner boundaries of thought, that term where speech.
becomes silence, and science conscience. For the |
origin of all reform is in that mysterious fountain (
of the moral sentiment in man, which, amidst the ,
natural, ever contains the supernatural for men. }
That is new and creative. That is alive. That ;
alone can make a man other than he is. Here or |
nowhere resides unbounded energy, unbounded —
power.
The new voices in the wilderness erying “ Re-
pent,” have revived a hope, which had well-nigh
perished out of the world, that the thoughts of the’
mind may yet, in some distant age, in some happy
hour, be executed by the hands. That is the hope,
of which all other hopes are parts. For some ages,
these ideas have been consigned to the poet and
musical composer, to the prayers and the sermons
of churches; but the thought that they can ever
have any footing in real life, seems long since to
have been exploded by all judicious persons. Mil-
ton, in his best tract, describes a relation between
religion and the daily occupations, which is true
until this time.
“A wealthy man, addicted to bis pleasure and
_
260 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
‘to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so en-
tangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that
of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock go-
ing upon that trade. What should he do? Fain
he would have the name to be religious; fain he
would bear up with his neighbors in that. What
does he therefore, but resolve to give over toiling,
and to find himself out some factor, to whose care
and credit he may commit the whole managing of
his religious affairs; some divine of note and estima-
tion that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the
whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks
and keys, into his custody ; and indeed makes the
very person of that man his religion; esteems his
associating with him a sufficient evidence and com-
mendatory of his own piety. So that a man may
say his religion is now no more within himself, but
is become a dividual moveeble, and goes and comes
near him, according as that good man frequents
the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts,
feasts him, lodges him ; his religion comes home at
night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously
laid to sleep; rises, is saluted, and after the malm-
sey, or some well spiced bruage, and better break-
fasted than he whose morning appetite would have
| gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Je-
| rusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and
| leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all
\ day without his religion.”
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 261
This picture would serve for our times. Relig-
ion was not invited to eat or drink or sleep with us,
or to make or divide an estate, but was a holiday
guest. Such omissions judge the church; as the,
compromise made with the slaveholder, not much! /
noticed at first, every day appears more flagrant.
mischief to the American constitution. But now
the purists are looking into all these matters. The
more intelligent are growing uneasy on the subject
of Marriage. They wish to see the character re-\
presented also in that covenant. There shall be)
nothing brutal in it, but it shall honor the man and \
the woman, as much as the most diffusive and uni-\
versal action. Grimly the same spirit looks into»
the law of Property, and accuses men of driving a5.
trade in the great boundless providence which had ?\
given the air, the water, and the land to men, to ( :
use and not to fence in and monopolize. It casts
its eye on Trade, and Day Labor, and so it goes up
and down, paving the earth with eyes, destroying
privacy and making thorough-lights. Is all this for
nothing ? Do you suppose that the reforms which
are preparing will be as superficial as those we
know ?
By the books it reads and translates, julge what
books it will presently print.
upright ?
266 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
But the man of ideas, accounting the circum-
stance nothing, judges of the commonwealth from
the state of his own mind. ‘If, he says, ‘I am.
selfish, then is there slavery, or the effort to estab-
lish it, whereverI go. But if I am just, then is
there no slavery, let the laws say what they will.
For if I treat all men as gods, how to me can there
be any such thing as a slave?’ But how frivolous
is your war against circumstances. This denounc-
ing philanthropist is himself a slaveholder in every
word and look. Does he free me? Does he cheer
me? He is the state of Georgia, or Alabama, with
[their sanguinary slave-laws, walking here on our
‘northeastern shores. We are all thankful he has
no more political power, as we are fond of liberty
ourselves. [am afraid our virtue_ is_a little geo-_
graphical. I am not mortified by our vice; that is
obduracy; it colors and palters, it curses and
swears, and I can see to the end of it; but I own
our virtue.makes me ashamed ; so sour_and narrow,
so thin and blind, virtue so vice-like. Then again,
how trivial seem the contests of the abolitionist, —
whilst he aims merely at the circumstance of the
slave. Give the slave the least elevation of relig-
ious sentiment, and he is no slave; you are the
slave ; he not only in his humility feels his superior-
ity, feels that much deplored condition of his to be
a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 267
the master. The exaggeration which our young
people make of his wrongs, characterizes them-
selves. What are no trifles to them, they naturally
think are no trifles to Pompey.
We say then that the reforming movement is
sacred in its origin ; in its management and details, \
timid and profane. These benefactors hope to
raise man by improving his circumstances: by com-
bination of that which is dead they hope to make
something alive. In vain. By new infusions alone
of the spirit by which he is made and directed, can
he be re-made and reinforced. The sad Pestalozzi,
who shared with all ardent spirits the hope of Eu-,
rope on the outbreak of the French Revolution, af-
ter witnessing its sequel, recorded his conviction
that ‘the amelioration of outward circumstances) |
will be the effect but can never be the means of }
mental and moral improvement.” Quitting now
the class of actors, let us turn to see how it stands
with the other class of which we spoke, namely, the
students.
A wad ease has fallen on the life of man.4, - %
Every Age, like every human body, has its own
distemper. Other times have had war, or famine,
or a barbarism, domestic or bordering, as their an-
tagonism. Our forefathers walked in the world/
and went to their graves tormented with the fear)
of Sin and the terror of the Day of J udgment.|
ev
Py
268 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
These terrors have lost their force, and our tor-
ment is Unbelief, the Uncertainty as to what we
ought to do; the distrust of the value of what we
do, and the distrust that the Necessity (which we
all at last believe in) is fair and’ beneficent. Our
Religion assumes the negative form of rejection.
Out of love of the true, we repudiate the false ;
and the Religion is an abolishing criticism. A
great perplexity hangs like a cloud on the brow of
all cultivated persons, a certain imbecility in the
best spirits, which distinguishes the period. We
do not find the same trait in the Arabian, in the
Hebrew, in Greek, Roman, Norman, English peri-
ods; no, but in other men a natural firmness.
The men did not see beyond the need of the
hour. They planted their foot strong, and doubted
nothing. We mistrust every step we take. We
find it the worst thing about time that we know
not what to do with it. We are so sharp-sighted
that we can neither work nor think, neither read
Plato nor not read him.
Then there is what is called a too intellectual
tendency. Can there be too much intellect? We
have never met with any such excess. But the
eriticism which is levelled at the laws and man-
ners, ends in thought, without causing a new
_method of life. The genius of the day does not
incline to a deed, but to a beholding. It is not,
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 269
that men do not wish to act; they pine to be em-
ployed, but are paralyzed by the uncertainty what |
they should do. The inadequacy of the work to
the faculties is the painful perception which keeps
them still. This happens to the best. Then, tal-
ents bring their usual temptations, and the current
literature and poetry with perverse ingenuity draw
us away from life to solitude and meditation. This
could well be borne, if it were great and involun-
tary ; 1f the men were ravished by their thought,
and hurried into ascetic extravagances. Society
could then manage to release their shoulder from
its wheel and grant them for a time this _privi-
lege of sabbath. But they are not so. Thinking,
which was. a rage, is become an art. The thinker)
gives me results, and never invites me to be pres?
ent with him at his invocation of truth, and to eng
joy with him its proceeding into his mind.
So little action amidst such audacious and yet
sincere profession, that we begin to doubt if that
great revolution in the art of war, which has made
it a game of posts instead of a game of battles, has
not operated on Reform; whether this be not also
a war of posts, a paper blockade, in which each
party is to display the utmost resources of his
spirit and belief, and no conflict occur, but the
world shall take that course which the demonstra-
tion of the truth shall indicate.
270 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
But we must pay for being too intellectual, as
they call it. People are not as light-hearted for it.
I think men never loved life less. I question if
care and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly
on the faces of any population. This Hnnwi, for
which we Saxons had no name, this word of France
has got a terrific significance. It shortens life,
and bereaves the day of its ight. Old age begins
in the nursery, and before the young American is
put into jacket and trowsers, he says, ‘I want
something which I never saw before;’ and ‘I
wish I was not I.’ I have seen the same gloom on
the brow even of those adventurers from the intel-
lectual class who had dived deepest and with most
success into active life. I have seen the authentic
sign of anxiety and perplexity on the greatest
forehead of the State. The canker worms have
crawled to the topmost bough of the wild elm, and
swing down from that. Is there less oxygen in
the atmosphere? What has checked in this age
the animal spirits which gave to our forefathers
their bounding pulse ?
But have a little patience with this melancholy
bumor. Their unbelief arises out of a greater
Belief; their inaction out of a scorn of inadequate
action. By the side of these men, the hot agita-
tors have a certain cheap and ridiculous air; they
even look smaller than the others. Of the two, I
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. A}
own | like the speculators best. They have some
piety which looks with faith to a fair Future, un-
profaned by rash and unequal attempts to realize
it. And truly we shall find much to console us,
when we consider the cause of their uneasiness. It
is the love of greatness, it is the need of harmony,
the contrast of the dwarfish Actual with the exor-
bitant Idea. No man can compare the ideas and
aspirations of the innovators of the present day
with those of former periods, without feeling how
great and high this criticism is. The revolutions
that impend over society are not now from ambi-
tion and rapacity, from impatience of one or an-_
other form of government, but from new modes of
thinking, which shall recompose society after a
new order, which shall animate labor by love and
science, which shall destroy the value of many kinds
of property and replace all property within the
- dominion of reason and equity. There was never
so great a thought laboring in the breasts of men ;
as now. It almost seems as if what was aforetime
spoken fabulously and hieroglyphically, was now
spoken plainly, the doctrine, namely, of the indwell-
ing of the Creator in man. The spiritualist wishes
this only, that the spiritual principle should be suf-
fered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possi-
ble applications to the state of man, without the
admission of anything unspiritual, that is, anything
272 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
positive, dogmatic, or personal. The excellence of
this class consists in this, that they have believed ;
that, affirming the need of new and higher modes
of living and action, they have abstained from the
recommendation of low methods. Their fault is
that they have stopped at the intellectual percep-
tion ; that their will is not yet inspired from the
Fountain of Love. But whose fault is this? and
what a fault, and to what inquiry does it lead!
We have come to that which is the spring of all
power, of beauty and virtue, of art and poetry ;
and who shall tell us according to what law its in-
spirations and its informations are given or with-
holden ? |
I do not wish to be guilty of the narrowness and
pedantry of inferring the tendency and genius of
the Age from a few and insufficient facts or per-
sons. Every age has a thousand sides and signs
and tendencies, and it is only when surveyed from
inferior points of view that great varieties of char-
acter appear. Our time too is full of activity and
performance. Is there not something comprehen-
sive in the grasp of a society which to great mechan-
ical invention and the best institutions of property
adds the most daring theories; which explores the
subtlest and most universal problems? -At the
manifest risk of repeating what every other Age
has thought of itself, we might say we think the
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 273
Genius of this Age more philosophical than any
other has been, righter in its aims, truer, with less |
fear, less fable, less mixture of any sort. :
But turn it how we will, as we ponder this mean-
ing of the times, every new thought drives us to
the deep fact that the Time is the child of the Eter-
_nity. The main interest which any aspects of the?
Times can have for us, is the great spirit which ¢
gazes through them, the light which they can shed }
on the wonderful questions, What we are? and
Whither we tend? We do not waatingdes deceived’
WAL AAA LW ,|
Here we drift, like white sail across the wild ocean,
now bright on the wave, now darkling in the trough’,
of the sea; —but from what port did we sail?)
Who knows? Or to what port are we bound ?
Who knows? There is no one to tell us but such
poor weather-tossed mariners as ourselves, whom
we speak as we pass, or who have hoisted some sig-
nal, or floated to us some letter in a bottle from far.
- But what know they more than we? ‘They also
found themselves on this wondrous sea. No; from
the older sailors, nothing. Over all their speaking-
trumpets, the gray sea and the loud winds answer,
Not in us; notin Time. Where then but in Our-
selves, where but in that Thought through which we
communicate with absolute nature, and are made
aware that whilst we shed the dust of which we are |
built, grain by grain, till it is all gone, the law’
VOL. I. 18
274 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
which clothes us with humanity remains anew? |
where but in the intuitions which are vouchsafed
us from within, shall we learn the Truth? Faith-
less, faithless, we fancy that with the dust we de-
part and are not, and do not know that the law and
the perception of the law are at last one; that only
as much as the law enters us, becomes us, we are
living men, — immortal with the immortality of
this law. Underneath all these appearances lies
/that which is, that which lives, that which causes.
» This ever renewing generation of appearances rests
\ on a reality, and a reality that is alive.
_ To a true scholar the attraction of the aspects of
nature, the departments of life, and the passages of
_his experience, is simply the information they yield
( him of this supreme nature which lurks within all.
/ That reality, that causing force is moral. The
) Moral Sentiment is but its other name. It makes
by its presence or absence right and wrong, beauty
and ugliness, genius or depravation. As the gran-
ite comes to the surface and towers into the highest
mountains, and, if we dig down, we find it below the
superficial strata, so in all the details of our domes-
tic or civil life is hidden the elemental reality, which
ever and anon comes to the surface, and forms the
grand men, who are the leaders and examples,
rather than the companions of the race. The gran-
ite is curiously concealed under a thousand forma
LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 275
tions and surfaces, under fertile soils, and grasses,
and flowers, under well-manured, arable fields, and
large towns and cities, but it makes the foundation
of these, and is always indicating its presence by
slight but sure signs. So is it with the Life of our
life ; so close does that also hide. I read it in glad
and in weeping eyes; I read it in the pride and in
the humility of people; it is recognized in every
bargain and in every complaisance, in every criti-
cism, and in all praise ; it is voted for at elections; |
it wins the cause with juries; it rides the stormy
eloquence of the senate, sole victor; histories are
written of it, holidays decreed to it ; statues, tombs,
churches, built to its honor; yet men seent to fear .
and to shun it when it comes barely to view in our
immediate neighborhood.
For that reality let us stand; that let us serve,
and for that speak. Only as far as that shines |
through them are these times or any times worth
consideration. I wish to speak of the politics, ed-
ucation, business, and religion around us without
ceremony or false deference. You will absolve me
from the charge of flippancy, or malignity, or the
desire to say smart things at the expense of whom-
soever, when you see that reality is all we prize,
and that we are bound on our entrance into nature
to speak for that. Let it not be recorded in our
own memories that in this moment of the Eternity,
276 LECTURE ON THE TIMES.
when we who were named by our names flitted
across the light, we were afraid of any fact, or dis-
graced the fair Day by a pusillanimous preference
of our bread to our freedom. What is the scholar,
what is the man for, but for hospitality to every
new thought of his time? Have you leisure, power,
property, friends? You shall be the asylum and
patron of every new thought, every unproven opin-
ion, every untried project which proceeds out of
good will and honest seeking. All the newspapers,
all the tongues of to-day will of course at first. de-
fame what is noble; but you who hold not of to-day,
not of the times, but of the Everlasting, are to stand
for it: ahd the highest compliment man ever re-
ceives from heaven is the sending to him its dis-
guised and discredited angels.
THE CONSERVATIVE.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON,
DECEMBER 9, 1841
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4
THE CONSERVATIVE.
THE two parties which divide the state, the party
of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very
old, and have disputed the possession of the world
ever since it was made. This quarrel is the sub-
ject of civil history. The conservative party estab:
ie
lished the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of
the most ancient world. The battle of patrician \
and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old us- (
age and accommodation to new facts, of the rich {
and the poor, reappears in all countries and times. (
The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national |
councils and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates \
every man’s bosom with opposing advantages every |
hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now |
one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight |
“Re aroacmesion
renews itsélf as if for the first time, under new
- names and hot personalities.
Such an irreconcilable antagonism of course
must have a correspondent depth of seat in the hu-
man constitution. It is the opposition of Past and;
Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understand. /
280 THE CONSERVATIVE.
ing and the Reason. It is the primal antagonism,
the appearance in trifles of the two poles of na-
ture.
There is a fragment of old fable which seems
somehow to have been dropped from the current
mythologies, which may deserve attention, as it ap-
pears to relate to this subject.
Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none
but the great Uranus or Heaven beholding him,
and he created an oyster. Then he would act
again, but he made nothing more, but went on
creating the race of oysters. Then Uranus cried,
‘A new work, O Saturn! the old is not good
again.’
Saturn replied,‘ I fear. There is not only the
alternative of making and not making, but also of
unmaking. Seest thou the great sea, how it ebbs
and flows? so is it with me; my power ebbs; and if
I put forth my hands, I shall not do, but undo.
Therefore I do what I have done; I hold what I
have got; and so I resist Night and Chaos.’
‘O Saturn,’ replied Uranus, ‘thou canst not hold
thine own but by making more. Thy oysters are —
barnacles and cockles, and with the next flowing of |
the tide they will be pebbles and sea-foam.’
‘I see,’ rejoins Saturn, ‘thou art in league with
Night, thou art become an evil eye; thou spakest
from love; now thy words smite me with hatred.
THE CONSERVATIVE. 981
I appeal to Fate, must there not be rest?’ — ‘I
appeal to *Fate also,’ said Uranus, ‘ must there not
be motion?’— But Saturn was silent, and went
on making oysters for a thousand years.
After that, the word of Uranus eame into his
mind like a ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter ;
and then he feared again; and nature froze, the _
things that were made went backward, and to save /
the world, Jupiter slew his father Saturn. , LA
This may stand for the earliest account of a con-\
versation on politics between a Conservative and a
Radical which has come down to us. It is ever
thus. It is the counteraction of the centripetal “
and the centrifugal forces. Innovation is the sa- |
lient energy ; Conservatism the pause on the last
movement. ‘That which is was made by God,’
saith Conservatism. ‘He is leaving that, he is en-
tering this other,’ rejoins Innovation.
There is always a certain meanness in the argu-
ment of conservatism, joined with a certain superi-
ority in its fact. It affirms because it holds. Its
fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes
to see a better fact. The castle which conservatism
is set to defend is the actual state of things, good
and bad. The project of innovation is the best
possible state of things. Of course conservatism
always has the worst of the argument, is always
apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to
282 THE CONSERVATIVE.
change would be to deteriorate: it must saddle it-
self with the mountainous load of the vielence and
vice of society, must deny the possibility of good,
deny ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet ;
whilst innovation is always im the right, triumpl:-
ant, attacking, and sure of final success. Conser-
vatism stands on man’s confessed lmitations, re-
form on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism
on circumstance, liberalism on power; one goes to
make an adroit member of the social frame, the
other to postpone all things to the man himself ;
conservatism is debonair and social, reform is in-
dividual and imperious. We are reformers in
spring and summer, in autumn and winter we
stand by the old; reformers in the morning, con-
servers at night. Reform is affirmative, conserva-
tism negative ; conservatism. goes for comfort, re-
form for truth. Conservatism is more candid to
behold another’s worth; reform more disposed to
maintain and increase its own. Conservatism
makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no inven-
tion; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude,
no prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great dif-
ference to your figure and to your thought whether
your foot is advancing or receding. Conservatism
never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it
does that, it is not establishment, but reform. Con-
servatism tends to universal seeming and treachery,
——
THE CONSERVATIVE. 2838
believes in a negative fate; believes that men’s
temper governs them; that for me it avails not to
trust in principles, they will fail me, I must bend
a little; it distrusts nature; it thinks- there is a
general law without a particular application, —
law for all that does not include any one. Reform
in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to
kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated
self-conceit ; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to un-
natural refining and elevation which ends in Meee
risy and sensual reaction.
And so, whilst we do not go beyond general state-
ments, it may be safely affirmed of these two meta-
physical antagonists, that each is a good | half, but
an n impossible \ whole. Each exposes the abuses of
the other, but in a jane society, in a true man, both
must combine. Nature does not give the crown of
its approbation, namely beauty, to any action or
emblem or actor but to one which combines both
these elements ; not to the rock which resists the
waves from age to age, nor to the wave which lashes _
incessantly the rock, but the superior beauty is with
the oak which stands with its hundred arms against
the storms of a century, and grows every year like |
a sapling; or the river which ever flowing, yet 1s!
found in the same bed from age to age; or, greatest
of all, the man who has subsisted for years amid
the changes of nature, yet has distanced himself, so
284 THE CONSERVATIVE.
that when you remember what he was, and see
what he is, you say, What strides! what a disparity
is here !
Throughout nature the past combines in every
creature with the present. Each of the convolu-
tions of the sea-shell, each node and spine marks
one year of the fish’s life; what was the mouth of
the shell for one season, with the addition of new
matter by the growth of the animal, becoming an
ornamental node. The leaves and a shell of soft
wood are all that the vegetation of this summer has
made; but the solid columnar stem, which lifts that
bank of foliage into the air, to draw the eye and to
f
(cool us with its shade, is the gift and legacy of dead
Bt
}
i{ land buried years.
In nature, each of these elements being always
present, each theory has a natural support. As we
take our stand on Necessity, or on Ethics, shall we
go for the conservative, or for the reformer. If we
read the world historically, we shall say, Of all the
‘ages, the present hour and circumstance is the cu-
mulative result; this is the best throw of the dice
of nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible.
PI£ we see it from the side of Will, or the Moral
_ Sentiment, we shall accuse the Past and the Pres-
ent, and require the impossible of the Future.
But although this bifold fact lies thus united in
real nature, and so united that no man can con-
THE CONSERVATIVE. 285
tinue to exist in whom both these elements do not
work, yet men are not philosophers, but are rather
very foolish children, who, by reason of their par-
tiality, see everything in the most absurd. manner,
and are the victims at all times of the nearest. ob-
ject. There is even no philosopher who is a phi-
losopher at all times. Our experience, our percep-
tion is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts
and in succession, that is, with every truth a cer-
tain falsehood. As this is the invariable method of
our training, we must give it allowance, and suffer
men to learn as they have done for six muillenni-
ums, a word at a time; to pair off into insane par.
ties, and learn the amount of truth each knows:
by the denial of an equal amount of truth. For
the present, then, te come at what sum is attaina-
ble to us, we must even hear the parties plead as
parties.
That which is best about conservatism, that
which, though it cannot be expressed in detail, in-
spires reverence in all, is the Inevitable. There is
the question not only what the conservative says
for himself, but, why must he say it? What insur-
mountable fact binds him to that side? Here is
the fact which men call Fate, and fate in dread de-
grees, fate behind fate, not to be disposed of by the
consideration that the Conscience commands this or
that, but necessitating the question whether the fac-
286 THE CONSERVATIVE.
ulties of man will play him true in resisting the
facts of universal experience ? For although the
commands of the Conscience are essentially abso-
lute, they are historically limitary. Wisdom does
not seek a literal rectitude, but an useful, that is
a conditioned one, such a one as the faculties of
man and the constitution of things will warrant.
The reformer, the partisan, loses himself in driving
to the utmost some specialty of right conduct, until
his own nature and all nature resist him; but Wis-
dom attempts nothing enormous and dispropor-
tioned to its powers, nothing which it cannot per-
form or nearly perform. We have all a certain in-
tellection or presentiment of reform existing in the
mind, which does not yet descend into the charac-
ter, and those who throw themselves blindly on this
lose themselves. Whatever they attempt in that
direction, fails, and reacts suicidally on the actor
himself, This is the penalty of having transcended
nature. For the existing world is not a dream, and
cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; nei-
ther is it a disease; but it is the ground on which
you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.
Reform converses with possibilities, perchance with
impossibilities ; but here is sacred fact. This also
was true, or it could not be: it had life in it, or it
could not have existed ; it has life in it, or it could
‘not continue. Your schemes may be feasible, or
THE CONSERVATIVE. 287
may not be, but this has the endorsement of nature
and a long friendship and cohabitation with the
powers of nature. This will stand until a better
cast of the dice is made. The contest between the 1/
Future and the Past is one between Divinity enter- V
ing and Divinity departing. You are welcome to
try your experiments, and, if you can, to displace
the actual order by that ideal republic you an-
nounce, for nothing but God will expel God. But
plainly the burden of proof must lie with the pro-(|
jector. We hold to this, until you can demonstrate) |
something better.
The system of property and law goes back for
its origin to barbarous and sacred times ; it is the
fruit of the same mysterious cause as the mineral
or animal world. There is a natural sentiment
and prepossession in favor of age, of ancestors, of
barbarous and aboriginal usages, which is a hom-
age to the element of necessity and divinity which
is in them. The respect for the old names of |
places, of mountains and streams, is universal.
The Indian and barbarous name can never be sup-
planted without loss. The ancients tell us that the
gods loved the Ethiopians for their stable customs ;
and the Egyptians and Chaldeans, whose origin /
could not be explored, passed among the junior |
tribes of Greece and Italy for sacred nations.
Moreover, so deep is the foundation of the ex-
288 THE CONSERVATIVE.
isting social system, that it leaves no one out of it.
We may be partial, but Fate is not. All men
have their root in it. You who quarrel with the
arrangements of society, and are willing to embroil
all, and risk the indisputable good that exists, for
the chance of better, live, move, and have your
being in this, and your deeds contradict your
words every day. For as you cannot jump from
‘the ground without using the resistance of the
ground, nor put out the boat to sea without shov-
/ing from the shore, nor attain liberty without re-
jecting obligation, so you are under the necessity
of using the Actual order of things, in order to
‘disuse it; to live by it, whilst you wish to take
\away its life. The past has baked your loaf, and
in the strength of-its bread you would break up the
oven. But you are betrayed by your own nature.
You also are conservatives. However men please to
style themselves, I see no other than a conservative
party. You are not only identical with us in your
needs, but also in your methods and aims. You
quarrel with my conservatism, but it is to build up
one of your own; it will have a new beginning,
but the same course and end, the same trials, the
same passions ; among the lovers of the new I ob-
serve that there is a jealousy of the newest, and
that the seceder from the seceder is as damnable
as the pope himself.
THE CONSERVATIVE. 289
On these and the like grounds of general state-
ment, conservatism plants itself without danger of
being displaced. Especially before this personal
appeal, the innovator must confess his weakness,
must confess that no man is to be found good
enough to be entitled to stand champion for the
principle. But when this great tendency comes to
practical encounters, and is challenged by young
men, to whom it is no abstraction, but a fact of
hunger, distress, and exclusion from opportunities,
it must needs seem injurious. The youth, of course, |
is an innovator by the fact of his birth. There he }
stands, newly born on the planet, a universal beg- \
gar, with all the reason of things, one would say,
on his side. In his first consideration how to feed,
clothe, and warm himself, he is met by warnings on
every hand that this thing and that thing have
owners, and he must go elsewhere. Then he says,
‘If I am born in the earth, where is my part? have
the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me
my wood-lot, where I may fell my wood, my field
where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where
to build my cabin.’
‘Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on your
peril,’ cry all the gentlemen of this world ; ‘ but
you may come and work in ours, for us, and we
will give you a piece of bread.’
‘ And what is that peril?’
VOL. I. 19
290 THE CONSERVATIVE.
‘Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act;
imprisonment, if we find you afterward.’
‘ And by what authority, kind gentlemen ?’
‘ By our law.’
‘ And your law, —is it just?’
‘As just for you as it was for us. We wrought
for others under this law, and got our lands so.’
‘I repeat the question, Is your law just? ’
‘Not quite just, but necessary. Moreover, it is
juster now than it was when we were born; we
have made it milder and more equal.’
‘I will none of your law,’ returns the youth;
‘it encumbers me. I cannot understand, or so
much as spare time to read that needless library
of your laws. Nature has sufficiently provided me
with rewards and sharp penalties, to bind me not
to transgress. Like the Persian noble of old, I
ask “that I may neither command nor obey.” I
do not wish to enter into your complex social sys-
tem. I shall serve those whom I can, and they
who can will serve me. I shall seek those whom I
love, and shun those whom I leve not, and what
more can all your laws render me ?’
With equal earnestness and good faith, replies
to this plaintiff an upholder of the establishment,
a man of many virtues:
‘Your opposition is feather-brained and _ over.
fine. Young man, I have no skill to talk with
THE CONSERVATIVE. 291
you, but look at me; I have risen early and sat
late, and toiled honestly and painfully for very
many years. I never dreamed about methods; I
laid my bones to, and drudged for the good I pos-
sess ; it was not got by fraud, nor by luck, but by
work, and you must show me a warrant like these
stubborn facts in your own fidelity and labor, be-
fore I suffer you, on the faith of a few fine words,
to ride into my estate, and claim to scatter it as
your own.’
‘Now you touch the heart of the matter,’ re-
plies the reformer. ‘To that fidelity and labor I
pay homage. Iam unworthy to arraign your man-
ner of living, until I too have been tried. But I
should be more unworthy if I did not tell you why
I cannot walk in your steps. I find this vast net-
work, which you call property, extended over the
whole planet. I cannot occupy the bleakest crag
of the White Hills or the Alleghany Range, but
some man or corporation steps up to me to show
me that it is his. Now, though I am very peace-
able, and on my private account could well enough
die, since it appears there was some mistake in my
creation, and that I have been missent to this earth,
where all the seats were already taken, — yet I feel
called upon in behalf of rational nature, which I
represent, to declare to you my opinion that if the
Karth is yours so also is it mine. All your aggre- i/
992 THE CONSERVATIVE.
gate existences are less to me a fact than is my
own; as I am born to the Earth, so the Earth is
given to me, what I want of it to till and to plant ;
nor could I, without pusillanimity, omit to claim so
much. I must not only have a name to live, J
must live. My genius leads me to build a ditfer-
ent manner of life from any of yours. I cannot
then spare you the whole world. I love you bet-
ter. I must tell you the truth practically; and
take that which you call yours. It is God’s world
and mine; yours as much as you want, mine as
much as I want. Besides, I know your ways; I
know the symptoms of the disease. To the end of
your power you will serve this lie which cheats you.
Your want is a gulf which the possession of the
broad earth would not fill. Yonder sun in heaven
you would pluck down from shining on the uni-
verse, and make him a property and privacy, if
you could ; and the moon and the north star you
would quickly have occasion for in your closet and
bed-chamber. What you do not want for use, you
crave for ornament, and what your convenience
\.could spare, your pride cannot.’
~On the other hand, precisely the defence which
was set up for the British Constitution, namely
that with all its admitted defects, rotten boroughs
and monopolies, it worked well, and substantial
justice was somehow done; the wisdom and the
THE CONSERVATIVE. 293
worth did get into parliament, and every interest
did by right, or might, or sleight, get represented ;
— the same defence is set up for the existing insti-
tutions. They are not the best; they are not just;
and in respect to you, personally, O brave young
man! they cannot be justified. They have, it is
most true, left you no acre for your own, and no
law but our law, to the ordaining of which you were
no party. But they do answer the end, they are
really friendly to the good, unfriendly to the bad ;
they second the industrious and the kind ; they
foster genius. They really have so much flexibility
as to afford your talent and character, on the whole, |
the same chance of demonstration and _ success
which they might have if there was no law and no
property.
It is trivial and merely superstitious to say that
nothing is given you, no outfit, no exhibition; for
in this institution of credit, which is as universal
as honesty and promise in the human countenance,
always some neighbor stands ready to be bread and
land and tools and stock to the young adventurer.
And if in any one respect they have come short,
see what ample retribution of good they have made.
They have lost no time and spared no expense
to collect libraries, museums, galleries, colleges,
palaces, hospitals, observatories, cities. The ages
have not been idle, nor kings slack, nor the rich nig:
294 THE CONSERVATIVE.
gardly. Have we not atoned for this small offence_
/(which we could not help) of leaving you no right
7 in the soil, by this splendid indemnity of ancestral
& and national wealth? Would you have been born
like a gipsy in a hedge, and preferred your free-
dom on a heath, and the range of a planet which
had no shed or boscage to cover you from sun and
wind, — to this towered and citied world? to this
world of Rome, and Memphis, and Constantinople,
and Vienna, and Paris, and London, and New
York? For thee Naples, Florence, and Venice ;
- for thee the fair Mediterranean, the sunny Adri-
atic; for thee both Indies smile; for thee the hos-
pitable North opens its heated palaces under the
polar circle; for thee roads have been cut in every
direction across the land, and fleets of floating pal-
aces with every security for strength and provision
for luxury, swim by sail and by steam through all
the waters of this world. Every island for thee
has a town; every town a hotel. Though thou
wast born landless, yet to thy industry and thrift
and small condescension to the established usage,
— scores of servants are swarming in every strange
place with cap and knee to thy command ; scores,
nay hundreds and thousands, for thy wardrobe, thy
table, thy chamber, thy library, thy leisure; and
every whim is anticipated and served by the best
ability of the whole population of each country.
THE CONSERVATIVE. | 295
The king on the throne governs for thee, and the
judge judges; the barrister pleads, the farmer tills,
the joiner hammers, the postman rides. Is it not
exaggerating a trifle to insist on a formal acknowl-
edgment of your claims, when these substantial ad-
vantages have been secured to you? Now can your
children be educated, your labor turned to their ad-
vantage, and its fruits secured to them after your
death. It is frivolous to say you have no acre, be.
cause you have not a mathematically measured Ba
of land. Providence takes care that you shall have
a place, that you are waited for, and come accred-
ited ; and as soon as you put your gift to use, you
shall have acre or acre’s worth according to your
exhibition of desert, — acre, if you need land ;—
acre’s worth, if you prefer to draw, or carve, or”
make shoes or wheels, to the tilling of the soil.
Besides, it might temper your indignation at the
supposed wrong which society has done you, to
keep the question before you, how society got into
this predicament ? Who put things on this false
basis? No single man, but all men. No man vol-
untarily and knowingly ; but it is the result of that,
degree of culture there is in the planet. The or-j
der of things is as good as the character of the pop- {/
ulation permits. Consider it as the work of a
ereat and beneficent and progressive necessity,
which, from the first pulsation in the first animal /
296 THE CONSERVATIVE.
life, up to the present high culture of the best na-
tions, has advanced thus far. Thank the rude fos-
ter-mother though she has taught you a better wis-
dom than her own, and has set hopes in your heart
which shall be history in the next ages. You are
yourself the result of this manner of living, this
foul compromise, this vituperated Sodom. It nour-
ished you with care and love on its breast, as it had
nourished many a lover of the right and many a
poet, and prophet, and teacher of men. Is it so ir-
remediably bad? Then again, if the mitigations
are considered, do not all the mischiefs virtually
vanish? The form is bad, but see you not how
every personal character reacts on the form, and
makes it new? A strong person makes the law
and custom null before his own will. Then the
principle of love and truth reappears in the strict-
est courts of fashion and property. Under the
richest robes, in the darlings of the selectest circles
of European or American aristocracy, the strong
heart will beat with love of mankind, with impa-
tience of accidental distinctions, with the desire to
achieve its own fate and make every ornament it
‘wears authentic and real.
Moreover, as we have already shown that there
is no pure reformer, so it is to be considered that
there is no pure conservative, no man who from
_ the beginning to the end of his life maintains the
THE CONSERVATIVE. 297
defective institutions ; but he who sets his face like
a flint against every novelty, when approached in the
confidence of conversation, in the presence of |
friendly and generous persons, has also his gracious |
and relenting moments, and espouses for the time
the cause of man; and even if this be a shortlived
emotion, yet the remembrance of it in private hours
mitigates his selfishness and compliance with cus-
tom.
The Friar Bernard lamented in his cell on Ze
Mount Cenis the crimes of mankind, and rising
one morning before day from his bed of moss and
dry leaves, he gnawed his roots and berries, drank
of the spring, and set forth to go to Rome to re-
form the corruption of mankind. On his way he
encountered many travellers who ee him cour-
teously, and the cabins of the peasants and the
castles of the lords supplied his few wants. When
he came at last to Rome, his piety and good will
easily introduced him to many families of the rich,
and on the first day he saw and talked with gentle
mothers with their babes at their breasts, who told
him how much love they bore their children, and
how they were perplexed in their daily walk lest
they should fail in their duty to them. ‘ What!’
he said, ‘and this on rich embroidered carpets, on
marble floors, with cunning sculpture, and carved
wood, and rich pictures, and piles of books about ,
/
998 THE CONSERVATIVE.
you ?’ —‘ Look at our pictures and books,’ they
said, ‘and we will tell you, good Father, how we
spent the last evening. These are stories of godly
children and holy families and romantic sacrifices
made in old or in recent times by great and not
mean persons; and last evening our family was
collected and our husbands and brothers discoursed
sadly on what we could save and give in the hard
times. Then came in the men, and they said,
‘What cheer, brother? Does thy convent want
gifts?’ Then the friar Bernard went home swiftly
with other thoughts than he brought, saying, ‘ This
way of life is wrong, yet these Romans, whom I
prayed God to destroy, are lovers, they are lovers ;
\what can I do?’
~ The reformer concedes that these mitigations ex-
ist, and that if he proposed comfort, he should
take sides with the establishment. Your words are
excellent, but they do not tell the whole. Conser-
vatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a
cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take
somewhat for everything they give. I look bigger,
but am less; I have more clothes, but am not so
warm; more armor, but less courage ; more books,
but less wit. What you say of your planted,
builded and decorated world is true enough, and I
gladly avail myself of its convenience ; yet I have
remarked that what holds in particular, holds in
THE CONSERVATIVE. 299
general, that the plant Man does not require aa
his most glorious flowering this pomp of prepara- |
tion and convenience, but the thoughts of some \
beggarly Homer who strolled, God knows when, in|
the infancy and barbarism of the old world ; the |
gravity and sense of some slave Moses who leads |
away his fellow slaves from their masters ; the con- .
templation of some Scythian Anacharsis ; the erect,
formidable valor of some Dorian townsmen in the
town of Sparta ; the vigor of Clovis the Frank, and
Alfred the Saxon, and Alaric the Goth, and Ma-
homet, Ali and Omar the Arabians, Saladin the
Curd, and Othman the Turk, sufficed to build what
you call society on the spot and in the instant when ©
the sound mind in a sound body appeared. Rich
and fine is your dress, O conservatism ! your horses
are of the best blood ; your roads are well cut and
well paved ; your pantry is full of meats and your
cellar of wines, and a very good state and condi-
tion are you for gentlemen and ladies to live under ;
but every one of these goods steals away a drop of |
my blood. I want the necessity of supplying my
own wants. _ All this: costly culture of yours is not
necessary. Greatness does not need it. Yonder |
peasant, who sits ‘neglected there in a corner, car-\
vies a whole revolution of man and nature in his(
head, which shall bea sacred history to some future
ages. For man is the end of nature; nothing so
300 THE CONSERVATIVE.
easily organizes itself in every part of the universe
as he ; no moss, no lichen is so easily born; and he
takes along with him and puts out from himself
the whole apparatus of society and condition eatem-
pore, aS an army encamps in a desert, and where
all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city
in an hour, a government, a market, a place for
feasting, for conversation, and for love.
These considerations, urged by those whose char-
acters and whose fortunes are yet to be formed,
must needs command the sympathy of all reasona-
ble persons. But beside that charity which should
make all adult persons interested for the youth,
and engage them to see that he has a free field and
fair play on his entrance into life, we are bound to
see that the society of which we compose a part,
does not permit the formation or continuance of
‘views and practices injurious to the honor and wel-
fare of mankind. The objection to conservatism,
when embodied in a party, is that in its love of acts
it hates principles; it lives in the senses, not in
truth ; it sacrifices to despair ; it goes for available-
ness in its candidate, not for worth; and for expe-
diency in its measures, and not for the right. Un-
der pretence of allowing for friction, it makes so
many additions and supplements to the machine of
society that it will play smoothly and softly, but will
no longer grind any: grist.
THE CONSERVATIVE. 301
The conservative party in the universe concedes
that the radical would talk sufficiently to the pur-
pose, if we were still in the garden of Eden; he
legislates for man as he ought to be; his theory is
right, but he makes no allowance for friction; and
this omission makes his whole doctrine false. The
idealist retorts that the conservative falls into a far
more noxious error in the other extreme. The con-,
servative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his/
social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for,
the present distress, a universe in slippers and flan-
nels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and
herb-tea. Sickness gets organized as well as health,
the vice as well as the virtue. Now that a vicious
system of trade has existed so long, it has stereo-
typed itself in the human generation, and misers
are born. And now that sickness has got such a
foothold, leprosy has grown cunning, has got into|
the ballot-box ; the lepers outvote the clean ; so-|
ciety has resolved itself into a Hospital Committee,
and all its laws are quarantine. If any man resist
and set up a foolish hope he has entertained as
good against the general despair, Society frowns on
him, shuts him out of her opportunities, her grana-
ries, her refectories, her water and bread, and will
serve him a sexton’s turn. Conservatism takes as
low a view of every part of human action and _ pas-
sion. Its religion is just as bad; a lozenge for the
802 THE CONSERVATIVE.
sick; a dolorous tune to beguile the distemper ;
mitigations of pain by pillows and anodynes; al-
ways mitigations, never remedies; pardons for sin,
funeral honors, — never self-help, renovation, and
virtue. Its social and political action has no better
aim; to keep out wind and weather, to bring the
week and year about, and make the world last our
day ; not to sit on the world and steer it; not to
sink the memory of the past in the glory of a new
and more excellent creation ; a timid cobbler and
patcher, it degrades whatever it touches. The cause
of education is urged in this country with the ut-
most earnestness, —on what ground? Why on this,
that the people have the power, and if they are not
instructed to sympathize with the intelligent, read-
ing, trading, and governing class; inspired with a
taste for the same competitions and prizes, they
will upset the fair pageant of Judicature, and per-
haps lay a hand on the sacred muniments of wealth
itself, and new distribute the land. Religion is
taught in the same spirit. The contractors who
were building a road out of Baltimore, some years
ago, found the Irish laborers quarrelsome and re-
fractory to a degree that embarrassed the agents
and seriously interrupted the progress of the work.
The corporation were: advised to call off the police
/ and build a Catholic chapel, which they did; the
priest presently restored order, and the work went
THE CONSERVATIVE. 303
on prosperously. Such hints, be sure, are too valu-
able to be lost. If you do not value the Sabbath,\
or other religious institutions, give yourself no con (
cern about maintaining them. They have already /
acquired a market value as conservators of prop-
erty; and if priest and church-member should fail, \
the chambers of commerce and the presidents of i
the banks, the very innholders and landlords of the
county, would muster with fury to their support. }
Of course, religion in such hands loses its es-
sence. Instead of that reliance which the soul sug-
gests, on the eternity of truth and duty, men are
misled into a reliance on institutions, which, the
moment they cease to be the instantaneous crea-,
tions of the devout sentiment, are worthless. Re-
ligion among the low becomes low. As it loses its
truth, it loses credit with the sagacious. They de-
tect the falsehood of the preaching, but when they
say so, all good citizens cry, Hush; do not weaken
the State, do not take off the strait jacket from
dangerous persons. Every honest fellow must keep
up the hoax the best he can; must patronize provi-
dence and piety, and wherever he sees anything
that will keep men amused, schools or churches or
poetry or picture-galleries or music, or what not,
he must ery “ Hist-a-boy,” and urge the game on.
What a compliment we pay to the good SPIRIT \,
with our superserviceable zeal !
Se
a
304 THE CONSERVATIVE.
But not to balance reasons for and against the
establishment any longer, and if it still be asked
in this necessity of partial organization, which
party on the whole has the highest claims on our
sympathy, —I bring it home to the private heart,
where all such questions must have their final arbi-_
trement.. How will every strong and generous
mind choose its ground,— with the defenders of
the old? or with the seekers of the new? Which
is that state which promises to edify a great, brave,
and beneficent man ; to throw him on his resources,
and tax the strength of his character? On which
part will each of us find himself in the hour of
health and of aspiration ?
I understand well the respect of mankind for
war, because that breaks up the Chinese stagnation
of society, and demonstrates the personal merits of
all men. A state of war or anarchy, in which law
has little force, is so far valuable that it puts every
man on trial. The man of principle is known as
such, and even in the fury of faction is respected.
In the civil wars of France, Montaigne alone,
‘among all the French gentry, kept his castle gates
unbarred, and made his personal integrity as good
at least as a regiment. The man of courage and
resources is shown, and the effeminate and base
person. Those who rise above war, and those who
fall below it, it easily discriminates, as well as those
THE CONSERVATIVE. 305
who, accepting its rude conditions, keep their own
head by their own sword. —
But in peace and a commercial state we depend,
not as we ought, on our knowledge and all men’s
knowledge that we are honest men, but we cow-
ardly lean on the virtue of others. For it is al-
ways at last the virtue of some men in the society,
which keeps the law in any reverence and power.
Is there not something shameful that I should owe
my peaceful occupancy of my house and field, not
to the knowledge of my countrymen that I am use-
ful, but to their respect for sundry other repu-
table persons, I know not whom, whose joint virtue
still keeps the law in good odor?
It will never make any difference to a hero what
the laws are. His greatness will shine and accom-
plish itself unto the end, whether they second him
or not. If he have earned his bread by drudgery,
and in the narrow and crooked ways which were
all an evil law had left him, he will make it at
least honorable by his expenditure. Of the past
he will take no heed; for its wrongs he will not
hold himself responsible: he will say, All the mean-
ness of my progenitors shall not bereave me of the
power to make this hour and company fair and for-
tunate. Whatsoever streams of power and com-
modity flow to me, shall of me acquire healing vir-
tue, and become fountains of safety. Cannot I too
VOL. 1. 20 -
}
:
\
}
306 THE CONSERVATIVE.
descend a Redeemer into nature? Whosover here-
fafter shall name my name, shall not record a male-
factor but a benefactor in the earth. If there be
| power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the
| north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall
) glow with a kindlier beam, that I have lived. I
am primarily engaged to myself to be a public ser-
vant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that
there is intelligence and good will at the heart of
things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings.
These are my engagements ; how can your law
further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?
On the other hand, these dispositions establish
their relations to me. Wherever there is worth, 1
shall be greeted. Wherever there are men, are
the objects of my study and love. Sooner or later
all men will be my friends, and will testify in all
methods the energy of their regard. I cannot
thank your law for my protection. I protect it.
It is not in its power to protect me. It is my busi-
ness to make myself revered. I depend on my
honor, my labor, and my dispositions for my place
in the affections of mankind, and not on any con-
ventions or parchments of yours.
But if I allow myself in derelictions and become
idle and dissolute, I quickly come to love the pro-
tection of a strong law, because I feel no title in
myself to my advantages. To the intemperate and
THE CONSERVATIVE. 307
covetous person no love flows; to him mankind
would pay no rent, no dividend, if force were once
relaxed ; nay, if they could give their verdict, they
would say that his self-indulgence and his oppres-
sion deserved punishment from society, and not
that rich board and lodging he now enjoys. The
law acts then as a screen of his unworthiness, and
makes him worse the longer it protects him.
In conelusion, to return from this alternation of
partial views to the high platform of universal and
necessary history, it is a happiness for mankind |
that innovation has got on so far and has so free a)
field before it. The boldness of the hope men en-
tertain transcends all former experience. It calms) *
and cheers them with the picture of a simple and/
equal life of truth and piety. And this hope flow-
ered on what tree? It was not imported from the
stock of some celestial plant, but grew here on the
wild crab of conservatism. It is much that this
old and vituperated system of things has borne so
fair a child. It predicts that amidst a planet peo-
pled with conservatives, one Reformer may yet be ©
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THE TRANSCENDENTALIST.
A LECTURE READ AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, JANUARY, .
1842,
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THE TRANSCENDENTALIST.
THE first thing we have to say respecting what
are called new views here in New England, at the
present time, is, that they are not new, but the very \ /
oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new
times. The light is always identical in its compo-
sition, but it falls on a great variety of objects, and
by so falling is first revealed to us, not in its own,
form, for it is formless, but in theirs; in like man-,
ner, thought only appears in the objects it classi-)
fies. What is popularly called Transcendentalism
among us, is Idealism ; Idealism as it appears in
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THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
GENTLEMEN :
It is remarkable that our people have their intel-
lectual culture from one country and their duties
from another. This false state of things is newly in
a way to be corrected. America is beginning to as-
sert herself to the senses and to the imagination of
her children, and Europe is receding in the same
degree. This their reaction on education gives a
new importance to the internal improvements and
to the politics of the country. Who has not been
stimulated to reflection by the facilities now in pro-
egress of construction for travel and the transporta-
tion of goods in the United States ?
This rage of road building is beneficent for
America, where vast distance is so main a consid-
eration in our domestic politics and trade, inas-
much as the great political promise of the inven-
tion is to hold the Union staunch, whose days
seemed already numbered by the mere inconven-
ience of transporting representatives, judges, and
officers across such tedious distances of land and
344 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
water. Not only is distance annihilated, but when,
as now, the locomotive and the steamboat, like
enormous shuttles, shoot every day across the thou-
sand various threads of national descent and em-
ployment and bind them fast in one web, an hourly
assimilation goes forward, and there is no danger
that local peculiarities and hostilities should be pre-
served.
1. But I hasten to speak of the utility of these
/ improvements in creating an American sentiment.
An unlooked for consequence of the railroad is the
increased acquaintance it has given the American
people with the boundless resources of their own
soil. If this invention has reduced England toa
third of its size, by bringing people so much nearer,
in this country it has given a new celerity to time,
or anticipated by fifty years the planting of tracts
of land, the choice of water privileges, the working
of mines, and other natural advantages. Railroad
| iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the
| sleeping energies of land and water.
The railroad is but one arrow in our quiver,
though it has great value as a sort of yard-stick
and surveyor’s line. The bountiful continent is
ours, state on state, and territory on territory, te
the waves of the Pacific sea ;
_ “Our garden is the immeasurable earth,
The heaven’s blue pillars are Medea’s house.”
o
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 345
The task of surveying, planting, and building upon
this immense tract requires an education and a
sentiment commensurate thereto. A consciousness
of this fact is beginning to take the place of the
purely trading spirit and education which sprang
up whilst all the population lived on the fringe of
sea-coast. And even on the coast, prudent men
have begun to see that every American should be
educated with a view to the values of land. The
arts of engineering and of architecture are studied ;
scientific agriculture is an object of growing atten-
tion ; the mineral riches are explored; limestone,
coal, slate, and iron; and the value of timber-lands
is enhanced.
Columbus alleged as a reason for seeking a con-
tinent in the West, that the harmony of nature re-_
quired a great tract of land in the western hemi-
sphere, to balance the known extent of land in the
eastern; and it now appears that we must estimate
the native values of this broad region to redress the
balance of our own judgments, and appreciate the
advantages opened to the human race in this coun-
try which is our fortunate home. The land is the
appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantas-
tic in our culture. The continent we inhabit is to
be physic and food for our mind, as well as our
body. The land, with its tranquilizing, sanative
influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic and
J
346 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
traditional education, and bring us into just rela-
tions with men and things.
The habit of living in the presence of these in-
vitations of natural wealth is not inoperative ; and
this habit, combined with the moral sentiment
which, in the recent years, has interrogated every
institution, usage, and law, has naturally given a
strong direction to the wishes and aims of active
young men, to withdraw from cities and cultivate
the soil. This inclination has appeared in the most
unlooked for quarters, in men supposed to be ab-
sorbed in business, and in those connected with the
liberal professions. And since the walks of trade
were crowded, whilst that of agriculture cannot
easily be, inasmuch as the farmer who is not wanted
by others can yet grow his own bread, whilst the
manufacturer or the trader, who is not wanted, can-
not, — this seemed a happy tendency. For beside
all the moral benefit which we may expect from the
farmer’s profession, when a man enters it consid-
erately ; this promised the conquering of the soil,
plenty, and beyond this the adorning of the country
with every advantage and ornament which labor,
ingenuity, and affection for a man’s home, could
suggest. |
Meantime, with cheap land, and the pacific dis-
position of the people, everything invites to the arts
of agriculture, of gardening, and domestic archi-
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 347
tecture. Public gardens, on the scale of such plan-
tations in Europe and Asia, are now unknown to
us. There is no feature of the old countries that
strikes an American with more agreeable surprise
than the beautiful gardens of Europe; such as the
Boboli in Florence, the Villa Borghese in Rome,
the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, the gardens at Munich
and at Frankfort on the Main: works easily imi-
tated here, and which might well make the land
dear to the citizen, and inflame patriotism. It is
the fine art which is left for us, now that sculpture,
painting, and religious and civil architecture have
become effete, and have passed into second child-
hood. We have twenty degrees of latitude wherein
_to choose a seat, and the new modes of travelling
enlarge the opportunity of selection, by making it
easy to cultivate very distant tracts and yet remain
in strict intercourse with the centres of trade and.
population. And the whole force of all the arts
goes to facilitate the decoration of lands and dwell-
ings. A garden has this advantage, that it makes
it indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden
makes the face of the country of no account ; let
that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made
a beautiful abode worthy of man. If the land-
scape is pleasing, the garden shows it, —if tame,
it excludes it. A little grove, which any farmer)
can find or cause to grow near his house, will in a
348 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
few years make cataracts and chains of mountains
(quite unnecessary to his scenery; and he is so con-
tented with his alleys, woodlands, orchards and
river, that Niagara, and the Notch of the White
Hills, and Nantasket Beach, are superfluities. And
yet the selection of a fit houselot has the same
advantage over an indifferent one, as the selectiou
to a given employment of a man who has a genius
for that work. In the last case the culture of
years will never make the most painstaking ap-
prentice his equal: no more will gardening give
the advantage of a happy site to a house in a hole
or on a pinnacle. In America we have hitherto
little to boast in this kind. The cities drain the
country of the best part of its population: the
flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into the
towns, and the country is cultivated by a so much
inferior class. The land, — travel a whole day to-
gether, — looks poverty-stricken, and the buildings
/plain and poor. In Europe, where society has an
[aristocratic structure, the land is full of men of the
\best stock and the best culture, whose interest and
‘pride it is to remain half the year on their estates,
/and to fill them with every convenience and orna-
ment. Of course these make model farms, and
model architecture, and are a constant education to
the eye of the surrounding population. [w hatever
events in progress shall go to disgust men with
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 349
cities and infuse into them the passion for country |
life and country pleasures, will render a service to/
the whole face of this continent, and will further
the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, |
the bringing out by art the native but hidden’
graces of the landscape. |
I look on such improvements also as directly
tending to endear the land to the inhabitant. Any
relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or min-
ing it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling
of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who
merely uses it as a support to his desk‘and ledger,
or to his manufactory, values it less. The vast
majority of the people of this country live by the
land, and carry its quality in their manners and
opinions. We in the Atlantic states, by position,
have been commercial, and have, as I said, imbibed
easily an European culture. Luckily for us, now,
that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, |
the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and |
continental element into the national mind, and we)
shall yet have an American genius. How much
better when the whole land is a garden, and the
people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.
Without looking then to those extraordinary social
influences which are now acting in precisely this
direction, but only at what is inevitably doing
around us, I think we must regard the land as a
350 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
commanding and increasing power on the citizen,
the sanative and Americanizing influence, which
promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.
2. In the second place, the uprise and culmina-
tion of the new and anti-feudal power of Com-
merce is the political fact of most significance to
the American at this hour.
We cannot look on the freedom of this country,
in connexion with its youth, without a presentiment
that here shall laws and institutions exist on some
scale of proportion to the majesty of nature. To
men legislating for the area betwixt the two oceans,
betwixt the snows and the tropics, somewhat of the
gravity of nature will infuse itself into the code.
A heterogeneous population crowding on all ships
from all corners of the world to the great gates of
North America, namely Boston, New York, and
New Orleans, and thence proceeding inward to the
prairie and the mountains, and quickly contribut-
ing their private thought to the public opinion,
their toll to the treasury, and their vote to the elec-
tion, it cannot be doubted that the legislation of
this country should become more catholic and cos-
mopolitan than that of any other. It seems so
easy for America to inspire and express the most
expansive and humane spirit; new-born, free, health-
ful, strong, the land of the laborer, of the democrat, |
ot the philanthropist, of the believer, of the saint,
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. oOL
she should speak for the human race. It is the 1”
country of the Future. From Washington, prover-
bially ‘the city of magnificent distances,’ through
all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country
of beginnings, of projects, of designs, of expecta-
tions.
Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Des-
tiny by which the human race is guided, — the
race never dying, the individual never spared, —
to results affecting masses and ages. Men are nar-
row and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not
narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in
their calculated and voluntary activity, but m what
befalls, with or without their design. Only what\
is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love |
and good are inevitable, and in the course of (
things. That Genius has infused itself into nature.
It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small
balance in brute facts always favorable to the side
of reason. All the facts in any part of nature
shall be tabulated and the results shall indicate
the same security and benefit; so slight as to be
hardly observable, and yet it is there. The sphere
is flattened at the poles and swelled at the equa-
tor ; a form flowing necessarily from the fluid state,
yet the form, the mathematician assures us, re-
quired to prevent the protuberances of the conti
nent, or even of lesser mountains cast up at any
852 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
time by earthquakes, from continually deranging
the axis of the earth. The census of the popula-
tion is found to keep an invariable equality in the
sexes, with a trifling predominance in favor of the
male, as if to counterbalance the necessarily in-
creased exposure of male life in war, navigation,
and other accidents. Remark the unceasing effort
throughout nature at somewhat better than the ac-
tual creatures: amelioration in nature, which alone
permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind.
The population of the world is a conditional popu-
lation; these are not the best, but the best that
could live in the existing state of soils, gases, ani-
mals and morals: the best that could yet live ;
| there shall be a better, please God. This Genius
or Destiny is of the sternest administration, though
rumors exist of its secret tenderness. It may be
styled a cruel kindness, serving the whole even to
the ruin of the member ; a terrible communist, re-
serving all profits to the community, without divi-
dend to individuals. Its law is, you shall have
everything as a member, nothing to yourself. For
Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding
economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into
to-morrow’s creation ;—— not a superfluous grain of
sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense
and public works. It is because Nature thus saves
and uses, laboring for the general, that we poor
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 353
particulars are so crushed and straitened, and find
it so hard to live. She flung us out in her plenty,
but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail but
instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates |
it to the general stock. Our condition is like that
of the poor wolves: if one of the flock wound him-
self or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incon-
tinently.
That serene Power interposes the check upon)
the caprices and officiousness of our wills. Its
charity is not our charity. One of its agents is
our will, but that which expresses itself in our will
is stronger than our will. We are very forward to
help it, but it will not be accelerated. It resists
our meddling, eleemosynary contrivances. We de-
vise sumptuary and relief laws, but the principle
of population is always reducing wages to the low-
est pittance on which human life can be sustained.
We legislate against forestalling and monopoly ;
we would have a common granary for the poor ; —
but the selfishness which hoards the corn for high
prices is the preventive of famine ; and the law of
self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation
can be. We concoct eleemosynary systems, and)
it turns out that our charity increases pauperism. \
We inflate our paper currency, we repair commerce }
with unlimited credit, and are presently visited |
with unlimited bankruptcy.
VOL. I. 23
854 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
It is easy to see that the existing generation are
conspiring with a beneficence which in its working
for coming generations, sacrifices the passing one ;
which infatuates the most selfish men to act against
their private interest for the public welfare. We
build railroads, we know not for what or for whom ;
but one thing is certain, that we who build will re-
ceive the very smallest share of benefit. Benefit
will accrue, they are essential to the country, but
that will be felt not until we are no longer country-
men. We do the like in all matters : —
“‘Man’s heart the Almighty to the Future set
By secret and inviolable springs.”
We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem
the waste, we make prospective laws, we found col-
leges and hospitals, for remote generations. We
\ should be mortified to learn that the little benefit
we chanced in our own persons to receive was the
‘utmost they would yield.
The history of commerce is the record of this
beneficent tendency. The patriarchal form of gov-
ernment readily becomes despotic, as each person
may see in his own family. Fathers wish to be
fathers of the minds of their children, and behold
with impatience a new character and way of think-
ing presuming to show itself in their own son or
daughter. This feeling, which all their love and
pride in the powers of their children cannot sub.
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 355
due, becomes petulance and tyranny when the head
of the clan, the emperor of an empire, deals with
the same difference of opinion in his subjects.
Difference of opinion is the one crime which kings
never forgive. An empire is an immense egotism.
“Tam the State,” said the French Lonis. Wher _
a French ambassador mentioned to Paul of Russia
that a man of consequence in St. Petersburg was
interesting himself in some matter, the Czar inter-
rupted him,— “ There is no man of consequence
in this empire but he with whom [| am actually
speaking ; and so long only as I am speaking tc (
him is he of any consequence.” And the Emperor _
Nicholas is reported to have said to his council,
“The age is embarrassed with new opinions; rely
on me gentlemen, I shall oppose an iron will to
the progress of liberal opinions.”
It is easy to see that this patriarchal or family
management gets to be rather troublesome to all
but the papa; the sceptre comes to be a crow-bar. |
And this unpleasant egotism, Feudalism opposes
and finally destroys. The king is compelled to call
in the aid of his brothers and cousins. and remote
relations, to help him keep his overgrown house in
order; and this club of noblemen always come at
last to have a will of their own; they combine to
brave the sovereign, and call in the aid of the peo-
ple. Each chief attaches as many followers as he
856 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
can, by kindness, maintenance, and gifts; and as
long as war lasts, the nobles, who must be soldiers,
rule very well. But when peace comes, the nobles
prove very whimsical and uncomfortable masters ;
their frolics turn out to be insulting and degrading
to the commoner. Feudalism grew to be a bandit
and brigand.
ete ls 8 Trade had begun to ude Trade, a
as_ there is peace, ane as “long as_ there is peace.
The luxury and necessity ‘of the noble fostered it,
And as quickly as men go to foreign parts in ships —
or caravans, a new order of things springs up ; new
command takes place, new servants and new mas-
ters. Their information, their wealth, their corre-
spondence, have made them quite other men than
left their native shore. They are nobles now, and
by another patent than the king’s. Feudalism
had been good, had broken the power of the kings,
and had some good traits of its own; but it had
grown mischievous, it was time for it to die, and as
they say of dying people, all its faults came out.
Trade was the strong man that broke it down and
raised a new and unknown power in its place. It
is a new agent in the world, and one of great func-
tion ; it is a very intellectual force. This displaces
physical strength and instals computation, combin-
ation, information, science, in its room. It calls
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 357
out all force of a certain kind that slumbered in
the former dynasties. It is now in the midst of
its career. Feudalism is not ended yet. Our gov-
ernments still partake largely of that element.
Trade goes to make the governments insignificant,
and to bring every kind of faculty of every individ-
ual that can in any manuer serve any person, ov
sale. Instead of a huge Army and Navy and Ex-
ecutive Departments, it converts Government into
an Intelligence-Office, where every man may find
what he wishes to buy, and expose what he has to
sell; not only produce and manufactures, but art,
skill, and intellectual and moral values. This is
the good and this the evil of trade, that it would
put everything into market; talent, beauty, virtue,
and man himself.
The philosopher and lover of man have much
harm to say of trade; but the historian will see
that trade was the principle of Liberty; that trade.
planted America and destroyed Feudalism; that
it makes peace and keeps peace, and it will abolish, ,
_ slavery. We complain of its oppression of the
poor, and of its building up a new aristocracy on
the ruins of the aristocracy it destroyed. But the
aristocracy of trade has no permanence, is not en-
tailed, was the result of toil and talent, the result
of merit of some kind, and is continually falling,
like the waves of the sea, before new claims of the
858 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
same sort. Trade is an instrument in the hands of
that friendly Power which works for us in our own
despite. We design it thus and thus; it turns out
otherwise and far better. This beneficent tenden-
cy, omnipotent without violence, exists and works.
Every line of history inspires a confidence that we
shall not go far wrong ; that things mend. ‘That is
the moral of all we learn, that it warrants Hope,
the prolific mother of reforms. Our part is plainly
not to throw ourselves across the track, to block
improvement and sit till we are stone, but to watch
the uprise of successive mornings and to conspire
with the new works of new days. Government has
been a fossil; it should be a plant. I conceive that
\the office of statute law should be to express and
\not to impede the mind of mankind. New thoughts,
new things. ‘Trade was one instrument, but Trade
is also but for a time, and must give way to some-
what broader and better, whose signs are already
dawning in the sky.
3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which is
the sequel of trade.
In consequence of the revolution in the state of
society wrought by trade, Government in our times
is beginning to wear a clumsy and cumbrous ap-
pearance. We have already seen our way to
shorter methods. The time is full .of good signs.
Some of them shall ripen to fruit. All this bene
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 359
ficent socialism is a friendly omen, and the swelling |
cry of voices for the education of the people indi-(
cates that Government has other offices than those |
of banker and executioner. Witness the new move-
ments in the civilized world, the Communism of
Hrance, Germany, and Switzerland; the Trades’
Unions ; the English League against the Corn Laws;
and the whole Jndustrial Statistics, so called. In
Paris, the blouse, the badge of the operative, has
begun to make its appearance in the saloons. Wit-) -
ness too the spectacle of three Communities which
have within a very short time sprung up within 8
this Commonwealth, besides several others under- ~
taken by citizens of Massachusetts within the ter-
ritory of other States. These proceeded from a
variety of motives, from an impatience of many
usages in common life, from a wish for greater free-
dom than the manners and opinions of society per-
mitted, but in great part from a feeling that the
true offices of the State, the State had let fall to the
ground; that in the scramble of parties for the
public purse, the main duties of government were
omitted,—the duty to instrucc the ignorant, to
supply the poor with work and with good guidance.
These communists preferred the agricultural life as
the mest favorable condition for human culture ;
but they thought that the farm, as we manage it,
did not satisfy the right ambition of man. The
360 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
farmer, after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom,
thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bank.
rupt, like the merchant. This result might well
seemastounding. All this drudgery, from cock-crow-
fing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mort-
gages and the auctioneer’s flag, and removing from
‘bad to worse. It is time to have the thing looked
SNARE em stnn
into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is
the fool. It seemed a great deal worse, because the
farmer is living in the same town with men who
pretend to know exactly what he wants. On one
side is agricultural chemistry, coolly exposing the
nonsense of our spendthrift agriculture and ruin-
ous expense of manures, and offering, by means of
a teaspoonful of artificial guano, to turn a sandbank
into corn; and on the other, the farmer, not only
eager for the information, but with bad crops and
in debt and bankruptcy, for want of it. Here are
Etzlers and mechanical projectors, who, with the
Fourierists, undoubtingly affirm that the smallest
union would make every man rich ;—and, on the
other side, a multitude of poor men and women
seeking work, and who cannot find enough to pay
their board. The science is confident, and surely
the poverty is real. If any means could be found
'/ to bring these two together !
This was one design of the projectors of the As-
sociations which are now making their first feeble
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 361
experiments. They were founded in love and in
laber. They proposed, as you know, that all men
should take a part in the manual toil, and proposed
to amend the condition of men by substituting har-
monious for hostile industry. It was a noble thought
of Fourier, which gives a favorable idea of his sys-
tem, to distinguish in his Phalanx a class as the
Sacred Band, by whom whatever duties were dis-
agreeable and likely to be omitted, were to be as-
sumed.
At least an economical success seemed certain for
the enterprise, and that agricultural association
must, sooner or later, fix the price of bread, and
drive single farmers into association in self-defence ;
as the great commercial and manufacturing com-
panies had already done. The Community is.
only the continuation of the same movement which |
made the joint-stock companies for manufactures, —
mining, insurance, banking, and so forth. It has \
turned out cheaper to make calico by companies ; |
and it is proposed to plant corn and to bake bread’)
by companies. ? Di J
Undoubtedly, atria male el be trade
by these first adventurers, which will draw ridicule
on their schemes. I think for example that they
exaggerate the importance of a favorite project of
theirs, that of paying talent and labor at one rate,
paying all sorts of service at one rate, say ten cents
362 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
the hour. They have paid it so; but not an in-
‘stant would a dime remain adime. In one hand
it became an eagle as it fell, and in another hand a
\copper cent. For the whole value of the dime is in
/ knowing what to do with it. One man buys with
| it a land-title of an Indian, and makes his posterity
\ princes; or buys corn enough to feed the world ;
or pen, ink, and paper, or a painter’s brush, by
which he can communicate himself to the human
race as if he were fire; and the other buys barley
candy. Money is of no value; it cannot spend it-
\self. All depends on the skill of the spender.
Whether too the objection almost universally felt
by such women in the community as were mothers, to
an associate life, to a common table, and a common
‘nursery, etc., setting a higher value on the private
| family, with poverty, than on an association with
wealth, will not prove insuperable, remains to be
determined.
But the Communities aimed at a higher success
in securing to all their members an equal and
thorough education. And on the whole one may
say that aims so generous and so forced on them
by the times, will not be relinquished, even if these at-
tempts fail, but will be prosecuted until they succeed.
This is the value of the Communities ; not what
they have done, but the revolution which they in-
flicate as on the way. Yes, Government must edu:
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 363
eate the poor man. Look across the country from
any hill-side around us and the landscape seems
to crave Government. The actual differences of ‘|
men must be acknowledged, and met with love and_ |
wisdom. These rising grounds which command
the champaign below, seem to ask for lords, true
lords, / land-lords, who understand the land and its.
uses and the applicabilities of men, and whose
government would be what it should, namely me-
diation between want and supply. How gladly
would each citizen pay a commission for the sup-
port and continuation of good guidance. None
should be a governor who has not a talent for
governing. Now many people have a native skill
for carving out business for many hands; a genius
for the disposition of affairs; and are never hap-
pier than when difficult practical questions, which
embarrass other men, are to be solved. All lies}
in light before them; they are in their element.
Could any means be contrived to appoint only
these! There really seems a progress towards
such a state of things in which this work shall be
done by these natural workmen; and this, not cer-
tainly through any increased discretion shown by
the citizens at elections, but by the gradual con-
tempt into which official government falls, and the
increasing disposition of private adventurers to as-
sume its fallen functions. Thus the national Post
864 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
Office is likely to go into disuse before the private
telegraph and the express companies. The cur-
rency threatens to fall entirely into private hands.
Justice is continually administered more and more
by private reference, and not by litigation. We
have feudal governments in a commercial age. It
would be but an easy extension of our commercial
system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services,
as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer.
If any man has a talent for righting wrong, for ad-
ministering difficult affairs, for counselling poor
farmers how to turn their estates to good husband-
‘ry, for combining a hundred private enterprises
‘to a general benefit, let him in the county-town, or
in Court Street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith,
Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.
How can our young men complain of the pov-
erty of things in New England, and not feel that
poverty as a demand on their charity to make New
England rich? Where is he who seeing a thou-
sand men useless and unhappy, and making the
whole region forlorn by their inaction, and con-
scious himself of possessing the faculty they want,
does not hear his call to go and be their king ?
We must have kings, and we must have nobles.
{Nature provides such in every society, — only let
‘us have the real instead of the titular. Let us
have our leading and our inspiration from the best.
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 365
In every society some_men are _bornto_rule.and—
some to advise. Let the powers be well directed,
directed by love, and they would everywhere be
greeted with joy and honor. The chief is the chief
all the world over, only not his cap and his plume.
It is only their dishke of the pretender, which:
makes men sometimes unjust to the accomplished |.
man. If society were transparent, the noble would
everywhere be gladly received and accredited, and
would not be asked for his day’s work, but would
be felt as benefit, inasmuch as he was noble. That
were his duty and stint,—to keep himself pure
and purifying, the leaven of his nation. I think I
see place and duties for a nobleman in every soci- )
ety ; but it is not to drink wine and ride in a fine)
eoach, but to guide and adorn life for the multi-\
tude by forethought, by elegant studies, by perse-|
verance, self-devotion, and the remembrance of the)
humble old friend, by making his life secretly beau-
tiful.
I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart
and be the nobility of this land. In every age of
the world there has been a leading nation, one of
amore generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens
were willing to stand for the interests of general
justice and humanity, at the risk of being called,
by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantas-
tic. Which should be that nation but these States?
<
866 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
Which should lead that movement, if not New Eng-
land? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young
American? ‘The people, and the world, are now
suffering from the want of religion and honor in
its public mind. In America, out-of-doors all
seems a market; in-doors an air-tight stove of con-
ventionalism. Every body who comes into our
houses savors of these habits; the men, of the mar-
ket; the women, of the custom. I find no expres-
sion in our state papers or legislative debate, in our
lyceums or churches, especially in our newspapers,
of a high national feeling, no lofty counsels that
rightfully stir the blood. I speak of those organs
which can be presumed to speak a popular sense.
They recommend conventional virtues, whatever
will earn and preserve property; always the capi-
talist; the college, the church, the hospital, the
theatre, the hotel, the road, the ship, of the capital-
ist, — whatever goes to secure, adorn, enlarge these
is good; what jeopardizes any of these is damna-
ble. The ‘ opposition’ papers, so called, are on the
same side. They attack the great capitalist, but
with the aim to make a capitalist of the poor man.
The opposition is against those who have money,
from those who wish to have money. But who an-
nounces to us in journal, or in pulpit, or in the
street, the secret of heroism ?
“‘ Man alone
Can perform the impossible.”
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. B67 -
I shall not need to go into an enumeration of
our national defects and vices which require this
Order of Censors in the State. I might not set
down our most proclaimed offences as the worst.
It is not often the worst trait that occasions the
loudest outery. Men complain of their suffering,
and not of the crime. I fear little from the bad
effect of Repudiation; I do not fear that it will
spread. Stealing is a suicidal business; you can-
not repudiate but once. But the bold face and
tardy repentance permitted to this local mischief
reveal a public mind so preoccupied with the love
of gain that the common sentiment of indignation
at fraud does not act with its natural force. The
more need of a withdrawal from the crowd, and a
resort to the fountain of right, by the brave. The
timidity of our public opinion is our disease, or,
shall I say, the publicness of opinion, the absence
_ of private opinion. Good nature is plentiful, but we
want justice, with heart of steel, to fight down the
proud. The private mind has the access to the to-
tality of goodness and truth that it may be a bal-
ance to a corrupt society ; and to stand for the pri-
vate verdict against popular clamor is the office of
the noble. If a humane measure is propounded in
behalf of the slave, or of the Irishman, or the
Catholic, or for the succor of the poor ; that senti-
ment, that project, will have the homage of the
368 THE YOUNG. AMERICAN.
hero. That is his nobility, his oath of knighthood,
to succor the helpless and oppressed ; always to
throw himself on the side of weakness, of youth, of
hope; on the liberal, on the expansive side, never
on the defensive, the conserving, the timorous, the
lock-and-bolt system. More than our good-will we
may not be able to give. We have our own affairs,
our own genius, which chains each to his proper
work. We cannot give our life to the cause of the
‘debtor, of the slave, or the pauper, as another is
(doing ; but to one thing we are bound, not to blas-
'pheme the sentiment and the work of that man, not
to throw stumbling blocks in the way of the aboli-
‘tionist, the philanthropist; as the organs of influence
‘and opinion are swift to do. It is for us to confide
in the beneficent Supreme Power, and not to rely
on our money, and on the state because it is the
guard of money. At this moment, the terror of old
people and of vicious people is lest the Union of
these states be destroyed: as if the Union had any
other real basis than the good pleasure of a major-
ity of the citizens to be united. But the wise and
just man will always feel that he stands on his own
feet; that he imparts strength to the State, not re-
ceives security from it; and that if all went down,
he and such as he would quite easily combine in a
new and better constitution. Every great and
memorable community has consisted of formidable
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 369
individuals, who, like the Roman or the Spartan,
Tent his own spirit to the State and made it great.
Yet only by the supernatural is a man strong; noth-
ing is so weak as an egotist. Nothing is mightier )
than we, when we are vehicles of a truth before (
which the State and the individual are alike ephem- |
eral.
Gentlemen, the development of our American
internal resources, the extension to the utmost of
the commercial system, and the appearance of new
moral causes which are to modify the State, are
giving an aspect of greatness to the Future, which
the imagination fears to open. One thing is plain
for all men of common sense and common con-
science, that here, here in America, is the home of
man. After all the deductions which are to be
made for our pitiful politics, which stake every
gravest national question on the silly die whether
James or whether Robert shall sit in the chair and
hold the purse ; after all the deduction is made for
our frivolities and insanities, there still remains an
organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses
its balance, redresses itself presently, which offers
opportunity to the human mind not known in any
other region.
It is true, the public mind wants self-respect.
We are full of vanity,-of which the most signal
proof is our sensitiveness to foreign and especially
VOL. I. 24
370 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
English censure. One cause of this is our immense
reading, and that reading chiefly confined to the
[productions of the English press. It is also true
that to imaginative persons in this country. there
is somewhat bare and bald in our short history and
unsettled wilderness. They ask, who would live
in a new country that can live in an old? and it is
not strange that our youths and maidens should
burn to see the picturesque extremes of an anti-
quated country. But it is one thing to visit. the
peas and another_to. wish_ to. live. ‘there.
( Would they like tithes to the clergy, and sevenths
) to the government, and Horse-Guards, and licensed
} press, and grief when a child is born, and threaten-
\ ing, starved weavers, and a pauperism now consti-
| tuting one thirteenth of the population? Instead
of the open future expanding here before the eye
of every boy to vastness, would they like‘ the clos-
ing in of the future to a narrow slit of sky, and
that fast contracting to be no future? One thing
for instance, the beauties of aristocracy, we com-
mend to the study of the travelling American.
The English, the most conservative people this side
of India, are not sensible of the restraint, but an
American would seriously resent it. The aristoc-
racy, incorporated by law and education, degrades
life for the unprivileged classes. It is a question-
able compensation to the embittered feeling of a
THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 371
proud commoner, the reflection that a fop, who, by
the magic of title, paralyzes his arm and plucks
from him half the graces and rights of a man, is
himself also an aspirant excluded with the same
ruthlessness from higher circles, since there is no
end to the wheels within wheels of this spiral hea-
ven. Something may be pardoned to the spirit of
loyalty when it becomes fantastic; and something
to the imagination, for the baldest life is symbolic.
Philip I. of Spain rated his ambassador for neg-
lecting serious affairs in Italy, whilst he debated
some point of honor with the French ambassador ;
“You have left a business of importance for a cer-
emony.” The ambassador replied, ‘“ Your Maj-
esty’s self is but a ceremony.” In the East, where
the religious sentiment comes in to the support of
the aristocracy, and in the Romish church also,
there is a grain of sweetness in the tyranny ; but
in England, the fact seems to me intolerable, what
is commonly affirmed, that such is the transcendent
honor accorded to wealth and birth, that no man
of letters, be his eminence what it may, is received
into the best society, except as a lion and a show.
_ The English have many virtues, many advantages,
and the proudest history of the world; but they
need all and more than all the resources of the
past to indemnify a heroic gentleman in that coun-
try for the mortifications prepared for him by the
372 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
system of society, and which seem to impose the
alternative to resist or to avoid it. That there are
mitigations and practical alleviations to this rigor,
is not an excuse for the rule. Commanding worth
and personal power must sit crowned in all compa-
nies, nor will extraordinary persons be slighted or
affronted in any company of civilized men. But
the system is an invasion of the sentiment of jus.
tice and the native rights of men, which, however.
decorated, must lessen the value of English citizen-
ship. It is for Englishmen to consider, not for us;
we only say, Let us live in America, too thankful
for our want of feudal institutions. Our houses
and towns are like mosses and lichens, so slight
and new; but youth is a fault of which we shall
daily mend. This land too is as old as the Flood,
and wants no ornament or privilege which nature
could bestow. Here stars, here woods, here hills,
here animals, here men abound, and the vast ten-
dencies concur of a new order. If only the men
are employed in conspiring with the designs of the
Spirit who led us hither and is leading us still, we
shall quickly enough advance out of all hearing of ©
others’ censures, out of all regrets of our own, into
a new and more excellent social state than history
has recorded.
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