i:ii\3ci:.

sitic o^tiitiott

essays:

second series
III.

BEING VOLUME
OF

EMERSON'S COMPLETE WORKS

ESSAYS
BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

SECOND SERIES

BetD anU KetiseU Utttan

ifeiJ;^i?.....ii3yA,v

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New
York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
(Cfee CiiuersiDe l^res^, <!rambrit>o&

1897

Copyright, 1856 and 18T6,

By RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Copyright, 1883,

B?

EDWARD

W. EMERSON.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton Company.

&

CONTENTS.
I.

The Poet
Experience

.....,.
o .

PAGE
7

II.

47
87

III.

Character

IV.

Manners

115
151

V. Gifts
VI.

Nature

VII. Politics

.........
and Realist

161

VIII. Nominalist

.....
Amorj
Hall

189

213 237

New England

Reformers.

Lecture at

THE POET.
A

moody

child

and wildly wise

eyes,

Pursued the game with joy fid

Which

chose, like meteors, their way,

And

rived the dark with private ray

They

overleapt the horizon's edge,

;

Searched with Apollo's privilege

Through man, and woman, and

sea,

and star
;

Saw Saw

the dance of nature forward far

races,

Through worlds, and

and terms, and times

musical order, and pairing rhymes.

Olympian bards who sung

Divine ideas below,

Which always

find us young,
so.

And

always keep us

THE POET.

Those who
often persons

are esteemed

uiiij)ires

of taste are

who have acquired some knowledge

and have an
if

of admired pictures or sculptures,

clination for whatever
is

in-

elegant

but

you inquire
their

whether they are beautiful

souls,

and whether

own
as
to
if

acts are like fair pictures,

you learn that they

is local,

are selfish and sensual.

Their cultivation

you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot

fire, all

produce

the rest remaining cold.

Their

knowledge of the

fine arts is

some

study of rules

and

particulars, or
is

some limited judgment of color

exercised for

or form, which

amusement or for
minds of our amaThere

show.

It is a proof of the shallowness of the docit lies

trine of beauty as
teurs, that

in the

men seem

to

have

lost the perception of

the instant dependence of form upon soul.

is

no doctrine of forms in our philosophy.

fire is
is

We
ad

were put into our bodies, as

to be carried about
;

put into a pan

but there

no accurate

justment between the spirit and the organ, much

10
less is the latter the

THE POET.
germination of the former.

So

in regard to other forms, the intellectual

men do

not believe in any essential dependence of the material

world on thought and volition.

it

Theologians

think

a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual

of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a con-

meaning
tract,

but they prefer to come again to the solid

historical evidence
;

ground of

and even the poets

are contented with a ci\al and conformed

of living, and to write
safe distance
hio:hest

manner
at a

poems from the fancy,

from

their

own

experience.

But the
to

minds of the world have never ceased

explore the

double meaning, or shall I say the

quadruple or the centuple or

much more manifold

;

meaning, of every sensuous fact

ocles,

Orpheus, EnipedDante,

Heraclitus,

Plato,

Plutarch,

Swe-

denborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and

poetry.

For we are not pans and barrows, nor

fire

even porters of the dren of the

fire,

and torch-bearers, but

it,

childi-

made

of

and only the same

vinity transmuted

and

at

two or three removes,

it.

w^hen

we know
its

least about

And

this

hidden

truth, that the fountains

whence

all tliis

river of

Time and
ideal

creatures floweth

are intrinsically

and
of

beautiful,

draws us

to the consideration

of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the

man
uses,

Beauty

to the

means and materials he

the art in the

and

to the general aspect of

present time.

THE POET.
The breadth
is

11
great, for the poet

of the

problem
stands

is

representative.

He

among
wealth.

partial

men
his

for the complete

man, and apprises us not of

wealth, but of the

common

The young
receive of

man

reveres

men

of genius, because, to speak truly,

is.

they are more himself than he

They
of

the soul as he also receives, but they more.

Nature

enhances her beauty, to the

ej^e

loving men,

from

their belief that the poet is beholding her

shows at the same time.

He

is

isolated

among

his

contemporaries by truth and by his

this consolation in his pursuits, that
all

art,

but with

they wdll draw

live

men

sooner or later.

For

all

men

by truth
art,

and stand

in need of expression.

In love, in

in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games,

to utter our painful secret.

we study
only half

The man

is

himself, the other half

is

his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published,

adequate expression
is
is

rare.

know

not

how

it

that

we need an

interpreter, but the great majorto

ity of

men seem

be minors, who have not yei

come

into possession of their own, or mutes,

who

cannot report the conversation they have had with

nature.

There

is

no

man who

does not anticipate

stars, earth

a suj^ersensual utility in the sun and

and water.

These stand and wait to render him a

peculiar service.

But there is some obstruction or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which

12

THE POET.
tlie

does not suffer them to yield

due

effect.

Too

feeble fall the impressions of nature

on us

to

make

us

artists.

Every touch should

thrill.

Every man
Yet, in cur
sufficient

should be so

much an
rays

artist that

he could report in

conversation what had befallen him.

experience, the

or

appulses have

force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to

reach the quick and compel the reproduction of

themselves in speech.

The poet
sees

is

the person in

whom
others
rience,

these powers are in balance, the

man

with-

out impediment,

who

and handles that which

dream
and
is

of,

traverses the whole scale of expe-

representative of man, in virtue of

being the largest power to receive and to impart.

For the Universe has three

children, born at

one time, which reappear under different names

in every system of thought, whether they be called
cause, operation,

and
;

effect

or,

more

poetically,

Jove, Pluto, Neptune

the Spirit,

or, theologically, the

;

Father,
call

and the Son

but which we

^\'ill

here the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer,

These

stand respectively for the love of truth, for the

love of good,

and for the love of beauty.

These
essen-

three are equal.

tially, so

Each

is

that which he

is,

that he

cannot be surmounted or ana^

lyzed,

and each of these three has the power of the

others latent in him, and his o\mi, patent.

THE POET.
The poet
beauty.
tre.
is Is tlie

13
and represents

sayer, the namer,

He

is

a sovereign, and stands on the cenis

For the world

not painted or adorned, but

;

from the beginning beautiful

and God has not

is is

made some

beautiful things, but Beauty

the cre-

ator of the universe.

Therefore the poet

is

not any

permissive potentate, but

risfht.

emperor in his own

Criticism

is

infested with a cant of materia

skill

alism,
is

which assumes that manual

first

and

activity

the

merit of

all

men, and disparages such

as say

and do

not, overlooking the fact thai:

some

men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into the

world to the end of expression, and confounds them
with those whose province
to imitate the sayers.
is

action but

who

quit

it

But Homer's words are

to

as

costly

and admirable

Homer

victories are to

Agamemnon.

as Agamemnon's The poet does not

wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and

think primarily, so he writes primarily what will

and must be spoken, reckoning the and servants

rials to

others,

though

primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries

;

as sitters or models in the studio of

a painter, or as assistants

who bring

building-mate-

an

architect.
all

For poetry was

written before time was, and

finely organized that
is

whenever we are so

we can
music,
tc

penetrate into that region where the air

we hear

those primal warbiings

and attempt

14
write

THE POET.
them
clown, but

we

lose ever

and anon a word

of

or a verse

and

substitute

something of our own,

and thus miswrite the poem.

delicate ear wi-ite
fully,

The men

more
faith-

down

these cadences

more

and these transcripts, though imperfect, beof the nations.

it is

come the songs

For nature
it is

is

as

truly beautiful as

good, or as
as
it

reasonable,

and must as much appear

known.

must be done, or be
"Words are also ac-

Words and

deeds are quite indifferent

modes
tions,

of the di^ine energy.

and actions are a kind of words.

sign

The
true

and credentials

of the poet are that he

foretold.

announces that which no

man

He
tells
;

is

the
is

and only doctor

he knows and

he

the only teller of news, for he was present and privy

to the appearance

which he describes.

He

is

a be-

holder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and

causal.

For we do not speak now and

of

men

of poetical

talents, or of industry

skill in

metre, but of the

true poet.

I took part in a conversation the other

lyrics,

day concerning a recent writer of

subtle mind,

man

of

whose head appeared

of language

to be a musicskill

box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose

and command
praise.

we

could not sufficiently

But when the question arose whether he

lyrist

was not only a

eternal

but a poet, we were obliged to

confess that he is plainly a contemporary, not an

man.

He

does not stand out of our low

THE POET.
limitations, like a
ning'

15
line, rim-

Chimborazo under the

up from a
its

torrid base through all the climates

of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every lat-

itude on

high and mottled sides

but this gen-

ius is the landscape -garden of a

modern house,

adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred

men and women

and
terraces.

standing and sitting in the walks

We

hear, through all the varied

life.

music, the ground-tone of conventional

poets are

Our
chil-

men

of talents vv^ho sing,

and not the

dren of music.

The argument
primary.

is

secondary, the

finish of the verses is

For

it

is

not metres, but a metre-making argu-

ment
and

that

makes a poem,

a thought
its

so passionate

alive that like the spirit of a plant or

it

an ani-

mal

has an architecture of

own, and adorns

thouo'ht

nature \\dth a

new

thino^.

The
is

and the
in the or-

form are equal in the order of time, but

der of genesis the thought
poet has a

prior to the form.

The

new thought
;

he has a whole new expetell

rience to unfold

he will

us

how

it

was with

him, and

all

men

will be the richer in his fortune.

For the experience

confession,
its

of each

new age

requires a

new

and the world seems always waiting for

poet.

remember when I was young how much

in a

was moved one morning by tidings that genius

youth who sat near

had appeared

me

at table.

He had

left his

vrork

and gone rambling none knew

16
wliitlier,

THE POET.
and had written hundreds
tell
;

of lines, but

could not
therein

whether that which was in him was

he coidd
tell

told

nothing but that

all

was changed,

man,

beast, heaven, earth

!

and

sea.

How

gladly

we

listened

how

credulous

Society-

seemed

to be

compromised.

We

sat in the aurora

of a sunrise wdiich w^as to put out all the stars,

Boston seemed to be at twice the distance

the night before, or was

it

had

Rome,

what

much

farther than that.

was Rome ?
It is

Plutarch and Shak-

speare w^ere in the yellow leaf, and

should be heard

of.

Homer no more much to know that pothat wonderful spirit

still

etry has been written this very da}^ under this very
roof,

by your

side.
!

What
!

has not expired

These stony moments are

I

sparkling and animated

oracles were all silent,
fires
;

had fancied that the

from every pore, these

and nature had spent her

and behold

all night,

fine auroras

have been streaming.

Every one has

and no one

some

interest in the advent of the poet,

it

knows how much

what

may

concern him.
is

We

that the secret of the world

profound, but

know who or

we know not. A momitain ramble, a new style of face, a new person, may put the key into our hands. Of course the
shall be our interpreter,

value of genius to us

is

in the veracity of its report.

;

Talent
adds.

may

frolic

and juggle

genius realizes and

fai

Mankind

in

good earnest have availed so

THE POET.
in understanding themselves

17
their work, that

and

the foremost

news.

It is the truest

watchman on the peak announces his word ever spoken, and the
fittest,

phrase will be the

most musical, and the un-

erring voice of the world for that time^

All that we call sacred history attests that the

birth of a poet
is

the principal event in chronology.

still

Man, never

so often deceived,

v/atches for the

arrival of a brother w^ho can hold

him steady

to

made it his own. With what joy I begin to read a poem which I confide in as an inspiration And now my chains are to be broken I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in
truth until he has
!

which
ent,

I live,

and

opaque, though they seem transparshall see

from the heaven of truth I

and comprehend

my

relations.

That

will reconcile

me

to life and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing.

Life will no more be a noise

now

I shall see

men

and women, and know the signs by which they may

be discerned from fools and satans. be better than
This day shall

my

birthday

then I became an ani-

mal

now

am

invited into the science of the real.

fruition is postponed.

Such is the hope, but the

tener
it falls

Of-

that this

winged man, who

will carry

me into the
and
cloud,
VOL.
still
111.

heaven, whirls

me
as

into mists, then leaps

frisks about with

me

it

were from cloud

to
;

affirming that he
2

is

bound heavenward

18

THE POET.
I,

and

being mj^self a novice,

am

slow in percei"\dng
the heavens, and
skill to rise

that he does not

is

know the way into

fish,

merely bent that I should admire his

a fowl or a flying
;

like

little

way from
shall

the

ground or the water

ing,

but the all-piercing, all-feed-

and ocular
I

air of

heaven that

man

never
old

inhabit.

tumble down again soon into

life of

my

nooks, and lead the

exaggerations as before,

and have

lost

my

faith in the possibility of

any
be.

guide who can lead

me

thither where I

would

But, leaving these \"ictims of vanity, let us, with

new
of

hope, observe

how

nature,

by worthier im-

pulses, has insured the poet's fidelity to his office

announcement and affirming, namely by the

Nature
her crea-

beauty of things, which becomes a 'lew and higher

beauty when expressed.

tures to

offers all

him

as a picture-language.

Being used as
as the carpenclose

a type, a second wonderful value appears in the object,

far better than

cord,

its
if

old value

ter's stretched

you hold your ear

'^

enough,

is

musical in the breeze.

Things more

excellent than every image," says Jamblichus, " are

expressed through images."

Things admit of beis

ing used as symbols because nature

the whole, and in every part.

a symbol, in
line

Every

we can
is
is

draw

in the sand has expression;

its spirit
;

and there
All form

no
an

body without

or genius.

effect of character

all

condition, of the quality oi

THE POET.
the life
;

19
;

all

harmony, of health

and for

this rea-

son a perception of beauty should be sympathetic,

or proper only to the good.

The

beautiful rests on

the foundations of the necessary.

The
:

the body, as the wise Spenser teaches

" So every
spirit, as it is
it

soul

makes

And
So
it

hath in

the

more piire, more of heavenly

light,

the fairer body doth procure

To habit in, and it more fairly diglit, With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For, of the soul, the body form doth take,

For

soul

is

form, and doth the body make.'*

Here we

find ourselves suddenly not in a critical

speculation but in a holy place,

and should go very

warily and reverently.

We

stand before the secret

of the world, there where

Being passes into Appear-

ance and Unity into Variety.

The Universe
Wherever
around
it.

is

the externization of the soul.

is,

the life

that bursts into appearance

is

superficial.

Our The

science

sensual,

and therefore

earth and the

heavenly bodies,
treat,

physics,

and chemistry, we sensually

self-existent
;

as

if

they were
that

but these are the retinue of

Being we have.
" exhibits,

"
in

The mighty heaven,"

its

said

Proclus,

transfigurations, clear

images of the splendor of intellectual perceptions

being

moved

in conjunction with the

unapparent

periods of intellectual natures."

Therefore science

20

THE POET.

always goes abreast with the just elevation of the

man, kee23ing step with religion and metaphysics

or the state of science
is

an index of our self-knowl-

edge.

Since every thing in nature answers to a

if

moral power,

any phenomenon remains brute and

dark

it is

because the corresponding faculty in the

not yet active.
then,
if

observer

is

No wonder

these waters be so deep, that

w^e hover over them wdth a religious regard.

The
if

beauty of the fable j^roves the importance of the

sense; to the poet, and to all others; or,
please, every
tible of these

you

man

is

so far a poet as to be suscep;

enchantments of nature

for all
is

men

have the thoughts whereof the universe

bration.

the cele-

I find that the fascination resides in the

symbol.
it

Who

loves nature ?

Who

does not ?

Is

only poets, and

live

men

of leisure
;

and

cultivation,

who

with her ?

No

but also hunters, farmers,

af-

grooms, and butchers, though they express their

fection in their choice of life
of words.

and not

in their choice

The

writer wonders w^hat the coachman

or the hunter values in riding, in horses

It is not superficial qualities.

and dogs.
His

When

you talk with

him he holds
worship
he
is
is

these at as slight a rate as you.

;

sympathetic

he has no

definitions, but

commanded
feels to

in nature

by the li\dng power

which he

be there present.

No

imitation or
;

playing of these things would content him

he loves

THE POET.
fche

21

earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone, and

iron.

wood, and

A beauty not explicable is

dearer
of.

than a beauty which we can see to the end

is

It

nature the symbol, nature certifpng the super-

natural,

body overflowed by

life

which he worships
of this attachment

with coarse but sincere rites.

The inwardness and mystery

drive

men

of every class to the use of emblems.

The
with

schools of poets

and philosophers are not more

intoxicated with their symbols than the populace

theirs.

In our political parties, compute the

power of badges and emblems.

which they
roll

See the great ball

from Baltimore to Bunker Hill!

In the political processions, Lowell goes in a loom,

and Lynn

in a shoe,

and Salem

in a ship.

Witness
See the
lilies,

the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the hickory-stick, the

palmetto, and all the cognizances of party.

power of national emblems.

which came into credit

Some

stars,

leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure

God knows how, on an

make
poetry,

old

rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at

the ends of the earth, shall

the blood tingle

under the rudest or the most conventional exterior.

The people fancy they hate

poets

and they are aU

and mystics

Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of the divineness of this superior
ase of things,

whereby the world

is

a temple whos<?

22

THE POET.
of the Deity,

walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and com*

mandments
of nature

in this, that there is no

fact in nature
;

which does not carry the whole sense

distinctions

and the

which we make in
used as a symbol.

events and in

affairs, of

low and high, honest and

is

base, disappear

when nature
fit

Thought makes everything

ulary of an omniscient

for use.

The vocabconversation.

man would embrace words

polite

and images excluded from

What would
scene,

be base, or even obscene, to the obillustrious,

becomes

spoken in a new connec-

Hebrew prophets The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and Small and mean things serve as well as offensive. The meaner the type by which a great symbols. law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories of men just as we
tion of thought.

The

piety of the

purges their grossness.

choose the smallest box or case in which any needful

utensil

can be carried.

Bare

lists

of

words

are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited

mind

as

it is

related of

Lord Chatham

that he was

accustomed to read in Bailey's Dictionary when he

was preparing

to

speak in Parliament.

The

poor-

est experience is rich

enough

for all the purposes of

expressing thought.

Why

covet a knowledge of

new

facts?

Day and

night, house

and garden,

few books, a few actions, serve us as well as wouhl

THE POET.
all

23

trades and all spectacles.

We

are far from

having exhausted the significance of the few sjTnbols

we

use.

We

can come to use them yet with a

It does not

terrible simplicity.

need that a poem

should be long.

Every w^ord was once a poem.

is

Every new
defects

relation

new word.

Also we use

and deformities

to a sacred purpose, so ex-

pressing our sense that the evils of the world are

such only to the evil eye.

In the old mythology,

mythologists observe, defects are ascribed to divine

natures, as lameness to Vulcan, blindness to Cupid,

and the

like,

to signify
dislocation

exuberances.

For as
life of

it is

and detachment from the

ugly, the poet,

God

that

makes things

who
re-

re-attaches things to nature

and the Whole,

insight,

attaching even artificial things and violations of

nature, to nature,

by a deeper

disposes
Readrailis

very easily of the most disagreeable

ers of poetry see the factory-village

facts.

and the

way, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape

broken up by these

for these works of art are not

;

yet consecrated in their reading

but the poet sees

them

fall

within the great Order not less than the

beehive or the spider's geometrical web.

Nature

adopts them very fast into her vital

circles,

and the

gliding train of cars she loves like her own.

sides, in

B^
how

a centred mind,

it

signifies

nothing

CQany mechanical inventions you exhibit.

Thougii

24
you add
millions,

THE POET.
and never so surprising, the
fact

of meclianics has not gained a grain's weight.

spiritual fact remains unalterable,

The by many or by
of

few particulars

as

no mountain

is

any appreci-

able height to break the curve of the sphere.

A
first

shrewd country-boy goes

time, and

to the city for

is

the

the complacent citizen

not satisfied

with his

little

wonder.

It is

not that he does not

see all the fine houses

and know that he never saw

such before, but he disposes of them as easily as

the poet finds place for the railway.

The

chief

value of the

new

fact is to

enhance the great and

constant fact of Life, which can dwarf any and

every circumstance, and to which the belt of

wam-

pum and

the

commerce

of

America are

alike.

The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it.
For though and though
life is great,

and

fascinates

and absorbs

all

men
it

are intelligent of the symbols

through which
nally use them.
bols
;

named; yet they cannot origiWe are symbols and inhabit symis

workmen, work, and

tools,

words and things,

;

birth

and

death, all are

emblems

but we sympa-

thize with the symbols,

and being infatuated with

poet,

the economical uses of things,

they are thoughts.

we do not know that by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue

The

THE POET.
Into every

25

dumb and

inanimate object.

He

per-

ceives the independence of the thought on the symbol, the stability of the thought, the accidency

and

fugacity of the symbol.

As

the eyes of Lyncaeus

turns,

were said to see through the earth, so the poet

the world to glass,
right series

and shows us

all

things in their
bet-

and procession.

For through that

ter perception he stands one step nearer to things,

and

sees the flowing or

is

metamorphosis
;

perceives

that thought

multiform
is

that within the form of

it

every creature

a force impelling

to ascend into

a higher form

and following with

his eyes the life,

life,

uses the forms which express that

and

so his

speech flows with the flowing of nature.

All the

facts of the animal economy, sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth, are

symbols of the passage of

the world into the soul of man, to suffer there a

change and reappear a new and higher

uses forms according to the
to the form.
life,

fact.

He

and not according

The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation and animaThis

is

true science.

tion, for

he does not stop at these

facts,

but employs

them

as signs.

He knows why the plain or meadow

call

of space

was strown with these flowers we

stars
;

suns

and moons and

why the

great deep
;

is

adorned

with animals, with men, and gods

for in every

word he speaks he
thought.

rides

on them as the horses of

26

THE POET.
By
virtue of this science
tlie

poet

is

the

Namer
after

or

Language-maker, naming things sometimes

their appearance, sometimes after their essence,

and

giving to every one

its

own name and not

intellect,

another's,

thereby rejoicing the

which delights in
poets
is

detachment or boundary.

The

made

all

the

words, and therefore language

history, and, if

the archives of

we must say it, a sort of tomb of For though the origin of most of our the muses. words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke
of
genius,
it

and obtained currency because

symbolized the world to the
first

for the

moment
and
est

speaker

to the hearer.

The etymologist
poetry.

finds the dead-

word

to

have been once a

brilliant picture.

Language

is fossil

As
is

the limestone of the

continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of

animalcules, so language
tropes,

made up

of images or

which now, in their secondary

use,

have long

ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

poet names the thing because he sees
it,

But the
or comes

one step nearer to

sion or

it

than any other.

art,

This expres-

naming
of the
is

is

not

but a second nature,

grown out

first,

as a leaf out of a tree.

What

we

call

nature
;

a certain self-regulated motion or

all

change

and nature does

things by her ovtq

hands, and does not leave another to baptize hei

but baptizes herself

and

this

through the meta^

that a certain poet

morphosis again.
described
it

remember
;

to

me

thus

THE POET.
Genius
is

27

the activity which repairs the decays

of things, whether wholly or partly of a material

and

finite kind.

Nature, through

all

her king-

doms, insures herself.

the poor fungus
;

Nobody

cares for planting

so she shakes do^vTi

from the

gills

of one agaric countless spores,

any one of which,

agaric of this

being preserved, transmits new billions of spores

to-morrow or next day.

The new

hour has a chance which the old one had not.

This atom of seed
is

thrown into a new place, not

its

subject to the accidents which destroyed

parent

two rods

off.

She makes a man

and having

brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the

risk of losing this

wonder at a blow, but she deself,

taches from
eafe

him a new
to

that the kind

may
is

be
exto

from accidents

which the individual

of the poet has

posed.

So when the soul

come

ripeness of thought, she detaches

and sends away

from

it

its

poems or songs,
is

fearless, sleepless,

deathless progeny, which

not exposed to the acciof time

;

dents of the weary

kingdom

fearless,

vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the

virtue of the soul out of which they

came) which
irrecovera-

carry

them

fast

and

far,

and

infiix

them

bly into the hearts of men.

These wings are the

beauty of the poet's

soul.

The

songs, thus flying

immortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by

clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far

28
greater numbers

THE POET,
and threaten
to devour

tLem

but

these last are not winged. short leap they fall

At the end of a very plump down and rot, having recame no

infinite

ceived from the souls out of which they

beautifid wings.

But the melodies

of the poet as

cend and leap and pierce into the deeps of

time.

So
speech.

far the bard

taught me, using his freei

But nature has a higher end, in the production of new individuals, than security, namely
ascension^ or the passage of the soul into higher

forms.

knew

in

my
He

younger days the scidptor

was, as I remember, unable

who made

the statue of the youth which stands in

the public garden.

to tell directly

what made him happy or unhappy,

tell.

but by wonderful indirections he could

rose one day, according
to

He

his habit, before the

dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the

eternity out of which
after,
it

came, and for

many days
and
lo

he strove to express

this tranquillity,

his chisel

had fashioned out of marble the form

is

of

a beautiful youth. Phosphorus, whose aspect

that
it

such

is

said all persons w^ho look on

it

become
mood,

silent.

The poet

also resigns himself to his

is

and that thought which agitated him

pression
organic, or the

expressed,

but alter idem^ in a manner totally new.

is

The

ex.

new type which

things

THE POET.
themselves take wlien liberated.
jects paint their
As., in

29
the sun, ob-

images on the retina o the eye, so

they, sharing the aspiration of the

whole universe,
es-

tend to paint a far more delicate copy of their

sence in his mind.

Like the metamorphosis of

is

things into higher organic forms

into melodies.

their change;
its

Over everything stands

daemon'

or soul, and, as the form of the thing

is reflected

by the

eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected

by a

melody.

The
which

sea, the

mountain-ridge, Niagara, and

every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-cantations,

sail like

odors in the

air,

and when
he

any man goes by with an ear

sufficiently fine,

overhears them and endeavors to write

down the

notes without diluting or depraving them.

And
some

herein

is

the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's

faith that the

poems are a corrupt version

which they ought
to

of

text in nature with

tally.

be made to

A rhyme

in one of our sonnets should not

be

less pleasing

than the iterated nodes of a sea-

shell, or the

resembling difference of a group of

of the birds is
;

flowers.

The pairing

an

idyl,

not

tedious as our idyls are

a tempest
;

is

a rough ode,
its

without falsehood or rant

a summer, with
is

harvest sown, reaped, and stored,

an epic song,
parts.

subordinating

how many admirably executed

and we

Why

should not the symmetry and truth that modpartici-

ulate these, glide into our spirits,

pate the invention of nature

30
This
insiglit,

THE POET.
which expresses
is

itself

by what

is

called Imagination,

a very high sort of seeing,

intellect

which does not com.e by study, but by the

being where and what
it

sees

or cu'cuit of things through forms, and so

by sharing the path making

of things is

them translucid
silent.

to others.

The path

Will they

suffer a speaker to
;

go with them ?
is

A spy they will

suffer.

not suffer

a lover, a poet,

the
will

transcendency of their

own

nature,

him they

The

condition of true naming, on the poet's

part, is his resigning

himself to the divine aura

which breathes tln'ough forms, and accompanying

that.

It

is

a secret which

every intellectual

man

quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed

and conscious

intellect

he

is

capable of a new
itself),

energy (as of an

intellect

doubled on

by
is

abandonment to the nature of things ; that beside

his privacy of

power as an individual man, there

risks, his

a great public power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at

aU

human

doors,

and suffering

the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through

him

then he

is

caught up into the

life

of the Universe,
is

his speech is thunder, his

thought

law, and his

animals.

intelligible as the plants and The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or ^' with the flower of the mind " not with the in<

words are universally

THE POET.
feellect

31
re-

used as an organ, but with the intellect

leased
rection

from

all service
its

and suffered

to take its di-

from

celestial life; or as the ancients

were wont to express themselves, not with

alone but with the intellect inebriated

intellect

by

nectar.
his

As

the traveller

who has

lost his

way throws

reins on his horse's neck

and

trusts to the instinct

of the animal to find his road, so

must we do with
this instinct,
;

the divine animal who carries us through this world.

For

if

in

any manner we can stimulate

new passages are opened for us into nature the mind flows into and through things hardest and
highest,

and the metamorphosis

is

is possible.

This

the reason

why bards

love wine, mead,

narcotics, coffee, tea, opium, the

fumes of sandal-

wood and

tobacco, or whatever other procurers of

animal exhilaration.

All

men
;

avail themselves of

such means as they can, to add this extraordinary

power to their normal powers

ing, theatres, travelling, war,
politics, or love,
.

and

to this

end they
gaming,

prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, danc-

mobs,

fires,

or science, or animal intoxication,

which

are several coarser or finer 2'2^asi-mechan-

ical substitutes for

the true nectar, which

is

the rav-

ishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the

fact.

These are auxiliaries

to the centrifugal ten-

dency of a man, to his passage out into free space,

and they help him

to escape the custody of that

body

32
in whicli

THE POET.
he
is

pent up, and of that jail-yard of

is

in-

dividual relations in which he

enclosed.

Hence

a great number of such as were professionally expressers of Beauty, as painters, poets, musicians,

and
a

actors,

have been more than others wont to lead

life

of pleasure

and indulgence
;

all

but the few

who

received the true nectar

and, as
it

it

was a spu^

rious

mode

of attaining freedom, as

was an eman-

cipation not into the heavens but into the freedom

of baser places, they

were punished for that advan-

tage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration.

But never can any advantage be taken of nature by trick. The sj^irit of the world, the great calm
ceries of

presence of the Creator, comes not forth to the sor-

opium or
That

of wine.

The sublime

vision

comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and

chaste body.
is

not an inspiration, which

we

owe and

to narcotics, but fury.

some counterfeit excitement

Milton says that the lyric poet

may

drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet,

he who shall smg of the gods and their descent

unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl.

For poetry
It is

is

not

'

Devil's wine,' but God's wine.

with this as

it is

with toys.

We

fill

the hands
of

and nurseries of our children with

dolls,

all

manner

drums, and horses

withdrawing their eyes

from the plain face and

the sun,

sufficing objects of nature,

and moon, the animals, the water, and

THE POET.
Stones,

33

which should be their

living should be set

toys.

So the

poet's

ha,bit of

on a key so low that

the

common

influences

should delight him.

;

His
the

cheerfulness should be the gift of the simlight

air should suffice for his inspiration,

and he should
suffices

be tipsy with water.

That

spirit

quiet hearts, which seems to

which come forth

to such

from every dry knoll of sere

grass,

from every pine=

poor and hunIf thou
fill

stump and half-imbedded stone on which the dull

March sun
gry,

shines,

comes forth

to the

and such

as are of simple taste.

thy brain with Boston and

New

York, with fashthou shalt find

w^aste of the

ion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded

senses with wine

and French

coffee,

no radiance of wisdom in the lonely

pinewoods.

If the imagination intoxicates the poet,

inactive in other men.
in the

it is

not

The metamorphosis excites beholder an emotion of joy. The use of

symbols has a certain power of emancipation and

exhilaration for all men.

We seem to be touched by a wand which makes us dance and run about

We
are like persons

happily, like children.

who
air.

come out
This
is

of a cave or cellar into the

open

the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, forms.

and
gods.

all poetic

Poets are thus liberating

Men
III.

have really got a new sense, and found

3

within their world another world, or nest of worlds

VOL.

34
for, the

THE POET.
metamorpliosis once seen,
I will not

we

divine that

it

does not stop.

this
ics,

now

consider

how much
is

makes the charm

of algebra

and the mathemat

it

which also have their tropes, but

felt

in

every definition; as when Aristotle defines si^ace

to be

an immovable vessel in which things are con-

tained ;

or when Plato
;

defines a line to be a flow-

ing point

or figure to be a

bound of

solid

and

many the like. What a joyfid sense we have when Vitruvius announces the
of artists that no architect can build

of freedom

old opinion

any house

well

who does not know something

Socrates,
is

of anatomy.

When
soul

in Charmides, tells us that the

cured of

its

maladies by certain incantations,

reasons,

and that these incantations are beautiful

from which temperance
is

generated in souls ; when

Plato calls the woi^d an animal, and Timasus affirms that the plants also are animals
;

or affirms
his root,

man

to
is

be a heavenly
his head,

tree,
;

growing with

which

upward
writes,

man, following him,

and, as George Chap-

" So in our tree of man, whose nervie root

Springs in his top "

;

flower which

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as "that white marks extreme old age " when Pro;

clus calls the universe the statue of the intellect

iivhsn

Chaucer, in his praise of

'

Gentilesse,' com-

THE POET.
pares good blood in

35
fire,

mean

condition to

wHcli,
this

though carried to the darkest house betwixt

and the mount of Caucasus,

ral office

will yet hold its natuif

and burn
it

as bright as

twenty thousand
in the
evil,

men

did

behold

when John saw,

world through

Apoca=

lypse, the ruin of the

and the
her

stars fall

from heaven as the

;

figtree casteth

untimely fruit
alogue of

when ^sop

reports the whole cat

common

daily relations through the mas;

querade of birds and beasts

we take the cheerand

its

ful hint of the immortality of our essence

versatile habit

and

escapes, as

when

the gypsies say

of themselves "it is in vain to

hang them, they

cannot die."

The

poets are thus liberating gods.

The

ancient

British bards

had for the title of their order, " Those who are free throughout the world." They
they

make free. An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward when we arrive at the precise sense of the author. I
are free, and

think nothing

is

of

any value in books excepting

If a

the transcendental

and extraordinary.

man

is

inflamed and carried

away by

his thought, to that

degree that he forgets the authors and the public

and heeds only

like

this
let

one dream which holds him

an insanity,
all

me

read his paper, and you

criti-

may have

the arguments and histories and

36
cism.

THE POET.
All the value which attaches to P5i:hagoras,

Paracelsus, Cornelius

Agrippa, Cardan, Kepler,

in-

Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other who

troduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as

angels, devils,

magi 3,
is

astrology, palmistry,

mesmer-

ism,

and

so on,

the certificate

ture from routine, and that

we have of deparhere is a new ^dtness.

like a ball

That also
magic of
seems;

is

the best success in conversation, the

liberty,

which puts the world

in our hands.

How

cheap even the liberty then

how mean

to study,

when an emotion comnations,

municates to the intellect the power to sap and up-

heave nature

how

great the perspective

times, systems, enter

and disappear

like threads in

tapestry of large figure and

delivers us to dream,
lasts

many

colors

dream

and while the drunkenness

we

will sell our bed, our philosophy, our re-

ligion, in

our opulence.
is

There

good reason why we should prize

this

liberation.

The

fate

of

the poor shepherd, who,

blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a

drift within

a few feet of his cottage door,

is

an

emblem The
are

of the state of
life

man.

On

the brink of the

waters of

and

truth,

we
if

are miserably dying.

inaccessibleness of every thought but that

in, is

we
it

wonderful.
as remote
farthest.

What

you come near to

are nearest as
is

you are
you are

when you

when
;

Every thought

also a prison

THE POET.
every heaven
is

37
Therefore we love

also a prison.

the poet, the inventor,

who

in

any form, whether in

an ode or in an action or in looks and behavior

has yielded us a

new

thought.

He
all

unlocks our

chains and admits us to a

new

scene.

This emancipation

is
it

dear to

men, and the

power to impart
Therefore

it,

as

must come from greater

is

depth and scope of thought,

lect.

a measure of

intel-

all

books of the imagination en-

dure, all which ascend to that truth that the writer

sees nature beneath him,

and uses

it

as his expothis vir-

nent.

Every verse or sentence possessing

its

tue will take care of

ligions of the

own

immortality.

The

re-

world are the ejaculations of a few

imaginative men.

But the quality of the imagination is not to freeze. The poet did not stop
or the form, but read their

to flow,

and

at the color

meaning

neither

may
the

he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects

exponents of his new thought.

Here

is

difference betwixt the poet

last nails

and the mystic, that the

a symbol to one sense, which was a true

sense for a
false.
xs

moment, but soon becomes old and

all

For

symbols are fluxional

all

language

vehicular and transitive,

and

is

good, as ferries
as farms

and horses

are, for conveyance, not

and

houses are, for homestead.

the mistake of

Mysticism consists in

an accidental and individual symbol


38

THE POET.
The morning-redness haphim
for truth

for an universal one.

pens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob

Behmen, and comes

faith
;

to stand to

and

and, he believes, should stand for the same

realities to

every reader.

But the

first

reader pre
child,

fers as naturally the

symbol of a mother and

or a gardener

and

his bulb, or a jeweller polishing

a gem.

Either of these, or of a myriad more, are

equally good to the person to

nificant.

whom

they are

sig-

Only they must be held

use.

lightly,

and be

very willingly translated into the equivalent terms

which others
told,

And

the mystic must be steadily

is just

All that you say

as true without the

it.

tedious use of that symbol as with

Let us have

little

algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,

universal signs, instead of these village symbols,

and we

shall

both be gainers.

The

history of

hierarchies seems to
consisted in

show that all religious error making the symbol too stark and solid,
an excess of the organ

and was

at last nothing but

of language.

Swedenborg, of
I do not

all

men

in the recent ages, stands

eminently for the translator of nature into thought.

know

the

man

in history to

whom

things

stood so uniformly for words.

Before him the

\netamorphosis continually plays.

Everything on

which his eye

nature.

rests,
figs

obeys the impulses of moral

eats

The

become grapes whilst he

THE POET.
them.

39

When
The

some of

his angels affirmed a truth,

the laurel twig which they held blossomed in their

hands.
like

noise which at a distance

appeared

gnashing and thumping, on coming nearer was

found to be the voice of disputants.

one of his visions, seen in heavenly
like dragons,

The men

in

light,
;

appeared

and seemed

in darkness

but to each
the light

other they appeared as men, and

when

from heaven shone into their cabin, they complained of the darkness, and were compelled to

shut the

window that they might

this perception in

see.

There was

him which makes

terror,

che poet or seer ly that the

an object of awe and

society of

name-

same man or

men may wear

Cer-

one aspect to themselves and their companions,

and a

different aspect to higher intelligences.

tain priests,

whom

he describes as conversing very

learnedly together, appeared to the children

who
mind

were at some distance, like dead horses

the like misappearances.

and many

And

instantly the

inquires whether these fishes under the bridge, yon-

der oxen in the pasture, those dogs in the yard, are

immutably
to

fishes,

oxen, and dogs, or only so appear

me, and perchance to themselves appear upright

;

men

and whether I appear

as a

man

to all eyes.

The Bramins and Pythagoras propounded the same question, and if any poet has witnessed the transformation he doubtless found it in harmony with

40
various experiences.

THE POET.

We liave

all

seen changes as

considerable in wheat and caterpillars.

He

is

the

poet and shall draw us with love and terror,

sees through the flowing vest the firm nature,

who
and

can declare

it.

I look in vain for the poet

whom
life,

I describee

'We do not with

sufficient plainness or sufficient

profoundness address ourselves to

nor dare we
If

chaunt our own times and social circumstance.

we
us

filled

the

day with bravery, we should not

it.

shrink from celebrating

Time and nature peld

all

many

gifts,

but not yet the timely man, the new

reconciler,
is

religion,

the

whom

things

await.

Dante's praise

that he dared to write his auto-

biography in colossal cipher, or into universality.

We

have yet had no genius in America,

mth

tyran-

nous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials,

and saw,

in

the

barbarism and

materialism of the times, another carnival of the

same gods whose picture he

Homer
ism.

then in the Middle

so much admires in Age then in Cahdn;

Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, Methodism and Unitarianism, are flat and dull to
dull people, but rest

on the same foundations

of

wonder as the town of Troy and the temple of Delphi, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logroll*
ing,

our stumps and their

politics,

our

fisheries,

our Negroes and Indians, our boats and our repu'

THE POET.
diations, the

41

wrath of rogues and the pusillanimity

of honest men, the northern trade, the southern

planting, the western clearing,

Oregon and Texas,

is

are yet unsung.

Yet America

poem

in our

eyes

its

ample geography dazzles the imagination,

If I have not
gifts in

and

it

will not wait long for metres.

found that excellent combination of

my
my-

countrymen which I

seek, neither could I aid

self to fix the idea of the

poet by reading

now and

then in Chahners's collection of ^yq centuries of

English poets.

These are wits more than poets,

though there have been poets among them.

But
Milhis-

when we adhere
our
ton
difficulties
is

to the ideal of the poet,

we have
and

even with Milton and Homer.

too literary,

and Homer too

literal

torical.

But
cism,

am

not wise enough for a national

little

criti-

and must use the old largeness a

longer,

to discharge

my

errand from the muse to the poet

concerning his

art.

Art

is

the path of the creator to his work.

The

paths or methods are ideal and eternal, though few

men
The

ever see them

not the artist himself for years,

or for a lifetime, unless he come into the conditions.

painter, the scidptor, the composer, the epic

rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire,

to express themselves symmetrically
ly,

namely

and abundant-

not dwarfishly and

f ragmentarily.

They found

42
or put themselves

THE POET.
in

certain conditions,

as,

the

painter and sculptor before some impressive

figures
;

human

the orator, into the assembly of the peoas

ple

and the others in such scenes

intellect
;

each has

found exciting to his

feels the

and each presently

with w^onder,

new

desire.

He
is

hears a voice, he sees a

apprised,
in.

beckoning.

Then he

what herds of daemons hem him

He
He

can no

more
it is

rest

he says, with the old painter, "

forth of me."
flies

By God
pursues

in

me and must go

a beauty, half seen, which

before him.

poet pours out verses in every solitude.

The Most of
;

the things he says are conventional, no doubt

but

by and by he says something which

beautiful.

is

original

and

That charms him.

yours, this
it is

He would
mine
that
; ;
'

say noth-

ing else but such things.

In our way of talking

is
;

we say That
'

is

but the poet

as strange

knows well that

and beautiful
this

not his
as to

it is

to

him

you

he would fain hear

the like eloquence at length.

Once having

tasted
it,

immortal

ichor,

he cannot have enough of

and as an admirable creative power

intellections, it is of the last

exists in these

importance that these

little

things get spoken.

said
!

What

of all

we know

is

What
!

drops of

all the sea of

our science
that these

are baled up are exposed,

and by what accident

so

it is

when

many

secrets sleep in nature

Hence the

necessity of

speech and

song

hence

THE POET.
these throbs

43
orator,

and heart-beatings in the

ejaculated as Logos, or
poet, but persist.

at

the door of the assembly, to the end namely that

thought

may be
not,

Word.
'

Doubt
stuttering

Say

It is in

me, and shall

out.'

Stand

there,

balked and dumb,

and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand

rage draw out of thee that
is

and

strive, until at last

dream-^ovfQv which every night shows thee

thine

own

a power transcending

all limit
is

and privacy,

and by virtue of which a man

the whole river of electricity.
creeps, or grows, or exists,
arise
ing.

the conductor of

Nothing walks, or
meanno

which must not in turn

his

and walk before him as exjDonent of

Comes he

to that power, his genius is

longer exhaustible.

All the creatures by pairs and

by
to
is

tribes

pour into his mind as into a Noah's ark,

to people

come forth again

a new world.

This

like the stock of air for our respiration or for

;

the combustion of our fireplace

gallons, but the entire

not a measure of
if

atmosphere

wanted.

And

therefore the rich poets, as

speare,
their

Homer, Chaucer, Shaklimits to

lifetime,

and Raphael, have obviously no

works except the limits of their

and

resemble a mirror carried through the street, ready

to render

an image of every created thing.

!

poet

new

nobility

is

conferred in groves

and pastures, and not in

blade any longer.

castles or

by the sword-

The

couditions are hard, but

44
equal.

THE POET.
Thou
only.

shalt leave

tlie

world, and

know

the

muse

Thou
all

shalt not

know any

longer the

times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of

men,
of

but shalt take

from the muse.

For the time

towns

is

tolled

from the world by funereal chimes,

but in nature the universal hours are counted by

succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by

growth of joy on

joy.

God

wills also that thou ablife,

dicate a manifold

and duplex

and that thou be

Others shall
all

content that others speak for thee.

be thy gentlemen and shall represent

courtesy

and worldly

life

for thee

others shall do the great

and resounding actions

also.

Thou

shalt lie close

hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the

Capitol or the Exchange.

The world

is full

of re;

nunciations and apprenticeships, and this

is

thine

thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long

season.

This

is

the screen and sheath in which

Pan has
shalt be

protected his well-beloved flower, and thou

known

only to thine own, and they shall

console thee with tenderest love.

And

thou shalt

not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in

thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal.

And

this is the

reward

that the ideal shall be real

to thee,

and the impressions of the actual world

shall fall like

summer

rain, copious,

but not troubleshalt

some to thy

inviilnerable essence.

Thou

have

the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for

THE POET.

45

thy bath and navigation, without tax and without

envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own,

and thou
lord
air

shalt possess that wherein others are only

!

Thou true land-lord seaWherever snow falls or water flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown -y^dth stars, wherever are forms with
tenants and boarders.
!

lord

transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into

celestial space,

wherever

is

danger, and awe, and

love,

there

is

Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for

thee,

and though thou shouldst walk the world over,

thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or iofnoble.

! ;

'

EXPERIENCE.

The
In

lords of

life,

the lords of

lifo,

I saw them pass,

theu'

own

guise,

Like and unlike,

Portly and grim,

Use and

Surprise,

Surface and Dream,

Succession swift, and spectral "Wrong,

Temperament without a

tongue.

And

the inventor of the

game
;

Omnipresent without name

Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west

Little

man,

least of all.
tall,
:

Among
Walked

the legs of his guardians

about with puzzled look

Him

by the hand dear Nature took

Darling, never
will
!

Dearest Nature, strong and kind,

Whispered,

'

mind
face,
!

To-morrow they

wear another

The founder

thou

these are thy race

IL

EXPERIENCE.

"Wheke do we
that
it

find ourselves ?

In a

series of

which we do not know the extremes, and believe

has none.
;

We
;

wake and

find ourselves

on

a
to

stair

there are stairs below us, which

we seem

have ascended

there are stairs above us,

sight.

many

a one, which go upward and out of

But the
lethe

Genius which according to the old

the door

belief stands at

by which we

enter,

and gives us the

to drink, that

too strongly,

we may tell no tales, mixed the cup and we cannot shake off the lethargy
Sleep lingers
all all

now

at noonday.

our lifetime
in the

about our eyes, as night hovers

of the fir-tree.
life is

day

boughs

All things s^dm and

glitter.

Our

not so

much

threatened as our perception.

Ghostlike

we

glide through nature,

and should not

know our
fit

place again.

Did our
fire

birth fall in

some

of indigence

and frugality

in nature, that she

so liberal of her earth

was so sparing of her

that
it

and

appears to us that we lack the affirmative

principle,
VOL. HI,

and though we have health and reason,

4

50
yet

ILLUSION.

we have no

superfluity of spirit for

new

creation?

We have enough to live and bring

our Genius were a
like millers
little

the year about,

but not an ounce to impart or to invest.

Ah
!

that

more

of a genius

We are
when
water.

on the lower

levels of a stream,

the fa^ctories above

them have exhausted the

We too fancy that the upper people must have raised

their dams.

knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know We do not know to-day whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished and much was begun in us. All our days are
If

any

of us

so unprofitable while they pass, that

't is

wonderful
this

where or when we ever got anything of

which
it

we

call

wisdom, poetry, virtue.

We

never got

on any dated calendar day.

Some heavenly days

like those

must have been intercalated somewhere,

that

Hermes won with

dice of the

Moon, that
Every

Osiris

might be born.

It is said all

martp-doms looked
shij^
is

mean when they were

suffered.

romantic object, except that we

sail in.

Embark,
life

and the romance quits our

every other
trivial, sail

vessel

and hangs on

in the horizon.
to record
it.

Our

looks
to

and we shun

Men

seem

have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual re=

treating

and reference.

'

Yonder uplands are

rich

EXPEBIENCE.
pasturage, and

51
fertile
'

my

neighbor

lias

meadow,

bat

my

field,'

says the querulous farmer,

only holds

the world together.'

I quote another man's saying

unluckily that other withdraws himself in the same

way, and quotes me.

to degrade to-day
;

'T

is

the trick of nature thus

a good deal of buzz, and somein.

;

where a result slipped magically

agreeable to the eye until
it is

Every roof

is

lifted

then we find

tragedy and moaning

women and
lethe,
if

hard-eyed husask,

bands and deluges of

*

and the men

in society ?
?

What 's

the news

'

as

the old were so bad.

How many
many
much
our time
is

individuals can
?

we count
opinions

how

actions

how many

So much of
and so
history

preparation, so

much

is

routine,

retrospect, that the pith of each

man's genius

contracts itself to a very few hours.

of literature

The

take

the net result of Tiraboschi,

War ton,
and

or Schlegel

So

is

sum
;

of very
all

few ideas
wide

of very

few original

tales

the rest being

variation of these.

in this great society

lying around us, a critical analysis would find very

few s]3ontaneous actions.

It is

almost

all

custom

and gross

sense.

There are even few opinions, and

these seem organic in the speakers,

and do not

dis-

turb the universal necessity.

What opium
last

is

instilled into all disaster

it,

It
is

shows formidable as we approach

no rough rasping
friction,

but there

at

but the most slippery

52
sliding'

ILLUSION.
surfaces
gentle,
"
;

Dea

is

we

fall soft

on a thouglit

Ate

Over men's heads walking aloft,

With tender feet

treading so soft."

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but

half so
in

it

is

not

bad with them

as they say.

There are moods

hope that here

which we court

suffering, in the

and edges But it turns out to be scene-painting and The only thing grief has taught me is counterfeit.
at least
shall find reality, sharp peaks

we

of truth.

to

know how

shallow

it is.

That, like

all the rest,

plays about the surface, and never introduces

into the reality, for contact with

me

which we woidd

even pay the costly price of sons and lovers.

it

Was

Boscovich who found out that bodies never come

in contact ?

Well, souls never touch their objects.

An

innavigable sea washes with silent waves be-

tween us and the things we aim at and converse

with.

Grief too will

make

us idealists.

In the

death of

my
it

son,
lost

now more than two

a beautiful estate,

years ago, I
I

seem

to

have

no more.

cannot get

nearer to me.

If to-morrow I should

be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great
inconvenience to me, perhaps, for
it

many

years

but

would leave me as

it

found

me, neither
it

better

nor worse.

So

is it

with this calamity ;

does not

EXPERIENCE.
fcoueli

68

me

something which

I fancied

was a part of

me, which could not be torn away without tearing

me nor enlarged without from me and leaves no scar.

one step into real nature.

enriching me, falls off

It

was caducous.
wdio

grieve that grief can teach

me

nothing, nor carry

me

The Indian
nor
fire

was

laid under a curse that the

wind should not blow

burn him,
is

on him, nor water flow

a type of us
rain,
all.

to him,

The

dearest events are summer-

and we the Para coats that shed every drop.

is left

Nothing

us

now but
dodge

death.

We look to that
is

with a grim satisfaction, saying There at least

reality that will not
us.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects,

which

lets

them

slip

through our fingers then

when we

clutch hardest, to be the most unhand-

some part of our condition.

to be observed,
fools

Nature does not

like

and

likes that

we shoidd be her

and playmates.

We may have the sphere for

make
;

our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy.

Direct strokes she never gave us power to
all

our blows glance,

all

our hits

are

accidents.

Our
ual.

relations to each other are oblique

and

cas-

Dream
to illusion.

delivers us to dream,

and there

is

no end

Life

is

a train of moods like a string

of beads,

and as we pass through them they provo

54

TEMPERAMENT.
own hue, and each shows only what lies in its From the mountain you see the mountain. animate what we can, and we see only what
Nature and books belong to the eyes
It

to be many-colored lenses wliicli paint the world

their

focus.

We
we

animate.

that see them.

depends on the mood of the

man

whether he shall see the sunset or the fine

poem.

There are always sunsets, and there

;

is

al-

ways genius

but only a few hours so serene that

we can
less

relish nature or criticism.

depends on structure or
is

The more or temperament. Tem-

perament
strung.

the iron wire on which the beads are

Of what

use
?

is

fortune or talent to a cold

and defective nature

or discrimination a

Who

cares what sensibility

if

man

has at some time shown,

he

falls asleep in his chair ? or it

if

he laugh and gig-

gle ? or

he apologize

or

is

infected with ego?

tism ? or thinks of his dollar ? or cannot go by food

or has gotten a child in his boyhood ?

Of what

use

is

genius,

if

the organ

is

too convex or too con-

cave and cannot find a focal distance within the

actual horizon of

human

life ?

Of what
him
the

use, if the

brain

is

too cold or too hot,

and the man does not

to experi-

care enough for results to stimulate

ment, and hold him up

finely

in

it ?

or

if

web

is

too

woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so

that life stagnates from too

due outlet?

Of what

use

much reception without to make heroic vows of

EXPERIENCE.
amendment,
if

55
is

the

same old law-breaker

to

keep

them?
yield,

What
when

cheer can the religious

is

sentiment

that

suspected to be secretly depend-

ent on the seasons of the year and the state of the

blood

knew a

witty physician

who found

the
if

creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that

there was disease in the liver, the
Calvinist,

man became a
became

and

if

that organ was sound, he

is

a Unitarian.

Very mortifying

the reluctant ex-

perience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility

neutralizes the promise of genius.

We

see

young

men who owe

us a

new

world, so readily and lav-

ishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt

they die young and dodge the account; or

live

if

they

they lose themselves in the crcwd.

also enters fully into the system

Temperament
of illusions

and shuts us
see.

in a prison of glass

which

we cannot

There

is

an optical
which

illusion about
all crea-

every person we meet.

In truth they are

tures of given temperament,

will appear in a

given character, whose boundaries they will never

pass
;

but we look at them, they seem

is

alive,

and we

presume there
it

impulse in them.
;

In the moment
it

seems impidse

in the year, in the lifetime,

turns out to be a certain uniform time which the

revolving barrel of the music-box must play.

resist the conclusion in the

Men
it

morning, but adopt

as the evening wears on, that temper pi-evaUs over

66

TEMPERAMENT.
is in<

everything of time, place, and condition, and

consumable in the flames of

fications the

religion.

Some
if

modi-

moral sentiment avails to impose, but

its

the individual texture holds

dominion,
tiie

not to

bias the moral judgments, yet to fix

activity

measure of

and

of enjoyment.
it is

I thus express the law as

read from the platit

form of ordinary

life,

but must not leave

without

noticing the capital exception.

is

For temperament
any one

a power which no

man

willingly hears

praise but himself.

On

the platform of physics

we
I

cannot resist the contracting influences of so-called

science.

Temperament puts

all divinity to rout.

know

the mental proclivity of physicians,

I hear

the chuckle of the phrenologists.

Theoretic kid-

nappers and slave-drivers, they esteem each

the victim of another,
finger

man
his

who winds him round

of his being; and,
liis

by knowing the law

by

such cheap signboards as the color of

beard or

the slope of his occiput, reads the inventory of his

fortunes and character.

The

grossest ignorance

does not disgust like this iinpudent knowingness.

The physicians say they are not

they are
thinness
:

materialists

but

Spirit
O

is
!

matter reduced to an extreme

so thin

But the
which
is

definition of spirits
!

itual should be, that

own emdence*
what
to relig-

What
foD
I

notions do they attach to love

One would

not willingly pronounce these

EXPERIENCE.

67

words in their hearing, and give them the occasion

to profane them.

I saw a gracious gentleman

who

adapts his conversation to the form of the head of

the

man

he talks with
its

I had fancied that the value

;

of life lay in

inscrutable possibilities

in the

fact that I never

know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me. I carry the

ke^^s of

my

castle in

my

hand, ready to throw them

at the feet of

my

lord,

whenever and in what

is

dis-

guise soever he shall appear.

neighborhood, hidden
preclude

I know he among vagabonds.

in the

Shall I
seat

my

future

by taking a high

and

kindly adapting

my
I

conversation to the shape of

to that, the doctors
'

heads?

When

come

shall

buy me for a

cent.

But,
;

sir,

medical history
! '

the report to the Institute

distrust the facts

the proven facts

-I

and the inferences.

Temperaan opposite

ment

is

the veto or limitation-power in the consti-

tution, very justly applied to restrain

excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as

a bar to original equity.

When

virtue

is

in presits

ence, all subordinate powers sleep.

level,

On

own
I
so-

or in view of nature, temperament

if

is final.

see not,

one be once caught in this trap of

called sciences,

any escape for the man from the

Given

links of the chain of physical necessity.

such an embryo, such a history must follow.

this

On

platform one lives in a sty of sensualism^ and

58

SUCCESSIOX.
to suicide.

would soon come

that the creative

But

it

is

impossible

power should exclude

is

itself.
is

Into

every intelligence there

closed,
tellect,

a door which

never
in-

through which the creator passes.

The

seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover

of absolute good, intervenes for our succor,

and at

one whisper of these high powers we awake from

ineffectual struggles with this nightmare.
it

We hurl

into its

own

hell,

and cannot again contract our-

selves to so base a state.

The
w^ould

secret of the illusoriness

is

in the necessity

of a succession of

moods or

objects.
is

Gladly we
quicksand.
:

anchor,

but the anchorage

is

This onward trick of nature

I^ei'o si

too strong for us

muove.

When

at night

I look

at

the
to

moon and stars, I seem hurry. Our love of the

nence, but health of

stationary,
real

and they
to

draws us

perma-

body

consists in circulation,

and sanity
tion.

of

mind

in variety or facility of associa-

We need
is

change of objects.

Dedication to

one thought
insane,

quickly odious.
;

We

house with the

and must humor them

then conversation

dies out.

Once
in
;

I took such delight in Montaigne

that I thought I should not need any other

book

before that,

ShaksiDcare

then in Plutarch

then in Plotinus
IQ

at one time in
;

Bacon

afterwards
I turn the

Goeths

even in Bettine

but

now

EXPERIENCE.
pages of either of them
cherish their genius.
laiiginclly, whilst
;

59
I
still

So with pictures

each will
it

bear an emphasis of attention once, which

retain,

cannot

though we fain would continue to be pleased

in that manner.
%UTQ?> that

How
it
;

strongly I have felt of pic

well,

when you have seen one

you

you must
it

take your leave of

I have

shall never see

again,

had good lessons from pictures which I have

since seen without emotion or remark.

deduc-

tion

must be made from the opinion which even the

wise express on a

new book

or occurrence.

Their

opinion gives

me

tidings of their
fact,

mood, and some

is

vague guess at the new

but

nowise to be

trusted as the lasting relation between that intellect

and that

tiling.

The
Alas

child asks,

'Mamma, why
told
it

don't I like the story as well as

when you
But
?

me

yesterday

'

child

it is

even so with the

will
it

oldest

cherubim of knowledge.

answer

thy question to say. Because thou wert born to a

whole and this story

is

a particular

The reason
intellect), is
it

of the pain this discovery causes us

it

(and we make

late in respect to

works of art and

the plaint of tragedy which

murmurs from

in re-

gard to persons, to friendship and love.

That immobility and absence of

elasticity

which
in the

we

find in the arts,

we

find with

more pain

artist.

There

is

no power of expansion in men.

Our

friends early appear to us as representatives oi

60
certain

SUCCESSTON.
ideas

which they never pass or exceed.

They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take the single step that woukl bring them there. A man is like a bit of
Labrador
in
spar,

which has no

lustre as

you turn

it

your hand until you come to a particular angle

it

then

shows deep and beautiful

colors.

There

is

no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but

each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful

men

consists in adroitly keeping themselves

shall be oftenest to
call it

where and when that turn

practised.

be

We

do what we must, and

by

the best names

we

can,

and would

fain have the

praise of having intended the result which ensues.

I cannot recall any form of

fluous sometimes.

man who
in.

is

not super-

But

is

not this pitiful?

Life

is

not worth the taking, to do tricks

Of

course

it

needs the whole society to give the

symmetry we

seek.

The

party-colored wheel must

revolve very fast to appear white.

Something

is

earned too by conversing with so

defect.

In

fine,

whoever

loses,
is

much folly and we are always of

the gaining party.

Divinity

behind our failures

and

follies also.

The plays

of children are non-

sense, but very educative nonsense.

So

it is

with

the largest

and solemnest

things, with

commerce,
his-

government, church, marriage, and so with the

tory of every man's bread, and the ways by which

EXPERIENCE.
he
IS

61
no-

to

come by

it.

Like a bird which alights

where, but hops perpetually from bough to bough,

is

the

woman, but
for

Power which abides in no man and in no for a moment speaks from this one, and another moment from that one.
fineries or pedantries?

But what help from these

What help from thought ? Life is not dialecticSo We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough
of the futility of criticism.

thought and written

Our young much on labor and

people have
reform, and

for all that they have written, neither the world nor

themselves have got on a step.

Intellectual tasting If a

of life will not supersede muscular activity.

man

should consider the nicety of the passage of a

piece of bread

down

his throat, he

would

starve.
life sat

At
on

Education-Farm the noblest theory of

the noblest figures of young

men and
It

maidens, quite

powerless and melancholy.

pitch a ton of hay
;

would not rake or

it

would not rub down a horse

it

and the men and maidens

left pale

and hungry.

A political orator
ises to

wittily

compared our party prom-

western roads, which opened stately enough,

with planted trees on either side to tempt the traveller,

but soon became narrow and narrower and

tree.

ended in a squirrel-track and ran up a

does culture with us
;

it

ends in headache.
life

So Un-

speakably sad and barren does

look to thosa

62
wiio a

SURFACE.
few months ago were dazzled with the
" There
splen^

dor of the promise of the times.

is

now

no longer any right course of action nor any seKdevotion left

criticism

among the Iranis." Objections and we have had our fill of. There are objec=
and
action,

tions to every course of life

and the
of

practical

wisdom

infers

an indifferency, from the

omnipresence of objection.
things preaches indifferency.
self

The whole frame

Do

not craze your-

with thinking, but go about your business anyLife

is

where.
sturdy.

not intellectual or

critical,

but

Its chief

good

is

for well-mixed people

find,

who can enjoy what they

very sense
uals,

without question.

Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her

when they
to

say, " Children, eat

your

vict-

and say no more

is

of it."

To

fill

the hour,

on

that

happiness

fill

the hour and leave no crev-

ice for a repentance or an approval.

We live amid
to skate well

surfaces,

and the true

art of life

is

them.

Under

the oldest mouldiest conventions a

man

of native force pros]3ers just as well as in the

skill of

newest world, and that by

treatment.
self is

handling and
Life
it-

He

can take hold anywhere.

a mixture of power and form, and will not

bear the least excess of either.

To

finish the

mo-

ment, to find the journey's end in every step of the

road, to live the greatest

number

of good hours,

is

wisdom.

It is not the part of

men, but of fanatics,

EXPERIENCE.
or of mathematicians
if

63
say
tliat

you
it

will, to
is

the

shortness of

life

considered,

not worth caring

whether for so short a duration we were sprawling

in

want or

sitting high.

Since our
Fiv^e

office is

with
to-

moments,

let

us husband them.
to

minutes of

day are worth as much

next millennium. our own, to-day.
well
are.
;

me

as five

mmutes

in the

Let us be poised, and wise, and Let us

treat the

men and women

;

treat

them

as if they were real

perhaps they

Men

live in their fancy, like

drunkards whose
for successful la-

hands are too

bor.
last I

soft

and tremulous

It is a

tempest of fancies, and the only bal-

laiow

is

a respect to the present hour. With-

out any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of

shows and

politics,

I settle myself ever the firmer in

postjDone

the creed that

we should not

and
are,

refer

and

wish, but do broad justice

where we

by whom-

soever
ions

we

deal with, accepting our actual compan-

and circumstances, however humble or odious,

as the mystic officials to

whom

the universe has

us.

delegated

its

whole pleasure for

If these are

mean and malignant,

to the heart

their contentment,
is

which

is

the last victory of justice,

a more satisfying echo

than the voice of poets and the casual

I think that how-

S}Tnpathy of admirable persons.

ever a thoughtfid

man may
any

suffer

from the defects

a

and absurdities
affectation

of his
to

company, he cannot without

set of

deny

men and women

64

SURFACE.

sensibility to extraordinary merit.

The

coarse and
if

frivolous have

an instinct of superiority,
it

they

have not a sympathy, and honor

pricious

in their blind ca-

way with
fine

sincere homage.

The
and
to

in such as with

young people despise life, but in me, me are free from dyspepsia, and
is

whom

a day

a sound and solid good,

it

is

great excess of politeness to look scornful and to

cry for company.

tle

eager and sentimental, but leave

am grown by sympathy a litme alone and

it

I should relish every hour and what

brought me,

the potluck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room.
cies.

am

thankful for small mer-

I compared notes with one of

my

friends
is

who

expects everything of the universe and

is less

dis-

appointed when anything

than the best, and

I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting

nothing, and
goods.

am

always

full of

thanks for moderate

I accept the clangor I find

and jangle of contrary

tendencies.
also.

my

account in sots and bores

They
spare.

give a reality to the circumjacent pic-

ture which such a vanisliing meteorous appearance

can

ill

In the morning I awake and find the

old world, wife, babes, and mother, Concord and

Boston, the dear old spiritual world and even the

dear old devil not far

off.

If

we

will take the

good

we

find,

asking no questions, we shall have heaping

measures.

The

great gifts are not got by analysis.

EXPERIENCE.
Everything good
is

65

on the highway.
is

The middle

region of our being

the temperate zone.

We

may

climb into the thin and cold reahn of pure

lifeless science, or sink into that of
is

geometry and
sensation.
of
life,

Between these extremes

the equator

of thought, of spirit, of poetry,

a narrow

belt.

Moreover, in popular experience everytliing

is

good

on the highway.

A collector peeps into all

for a landscape of Pous;

the picture-shops of
sin,

Europe

a crayon-sketch of Salvator

but the Transfig-

uration, the Last

Judgment, the Communion of St

or the

Jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are

on the walls of the Vatican, the

Louvre, where every footman

Uffizii,

may

see

them; to

say nothing of Nature's pictures in every street, of

sunsets

and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of

absent.

the

human body never

A collector recently
Ham-

bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakspeare
let
;

but for nothing a school-boy can read

secrets of highest

and can detect

concernment

yet unpublished therein.

I think I will never read

any but the commonest books,

patient of so public a life

the Bible, Homer,

Then we
are im-

Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton.

and

planet,

and run hither and

and thither for nooks and

bee-hunters.
VOL.
III.

secrets.

The imagination

delights in the woo<l craft of Indians, trajipers,

We

fancy that we are strangers, and

5

66

SURFACE.

not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the

wild

man and

the wild beast and bird.

But the

exfly-

clusion reaches

them

also

reaches the climbing,

ing, gliding, feathered

and four-footed man.

bittern,

and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and

Fox when

nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world

than man, and are just such superficial tenants of

the globe.

Then

the

new molecular philosophy

is all

shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and

atom, shows that the world
inside.

outside

it

has no

is

no

The mid-world saint. The

favor.

is best.

Nature, as

we know

her,

lights of the church, the ascetics,

Gentoos, and corn-eaters, she does not distinguish

by any

She comes eating and drinking and

darlings, the great, the strong, the

sinning.

Her

beautiful, are not children of our

law

do not come

out of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food,

nor punctually keejD the commandments.

will be strong with her strength

If

we
har-

we must not
"VYe
all

bor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too

from the consciences of other nations.

set

must

up the strong present tense against

to come.

the ru-

mors of wrath, past or

are unsettled which
settle
;

So many things

it is

of the first imj)ortance to

and, pending
do.

their settlement,
o-oes

we

will

do

as

we

Whilst the debate

forward on the

equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a

EXPERIENCE.
century or two,
shop. right
sell
is

67

New and Old England may keep

and international
in the interim
coj^y-

Law
to

of copyright

be discussed, and

we

will

our books for the most we can.

Expediency of

literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writ-

ing

down a

thought,

is

questioned

much

is

to say

on both

sides,

and, while the fight waxes hot, thou,

dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line

every hour, and between whiles add a

line.

Right

to hold land, right of property, is disputed,

and
is

the conventions convene, and before the vote

taken, dig

away

in your garden,

and spend your

all

earnings as a waif or godsend to

beautiful purposes.
skepticism,

serene and

Life

itself is

a bubble and a

and a sleep within a

as they will,

sleep.

Grant

it,

and

as

much more
I

but
;

thou, God's

darling

heed thy private dream

thou wilt not be

;

missed in the scorning and skepticism

there are

enough of them

stay there in thy closet and toQ

until the rest are agreed

sickness, they say,

what

to

do about

it.

Thy

and thy puny

habit require that

thou do this or avoid that, but

is

know
Thou

that thy life

flitting state,

a tent for a night, and do thou,

art sick, but

sick or well, finish that stint.

shalt not be worse,

and the universe, which holds

of the

thee dear, shall be the better.

Human

life

is

made up

two elements,

power and form, and the proportion must be inva-

68
riably kept
if

SURFACE.
we would have
its
it

sweet and sound.

Each
cess

of these elements in excess

defect.

makes a mischief
exif

as hurtful as
;

Everything runs to
is

every good quality

noxious

unmixed,

and, to carry the danger to the edge of ruin, nature causes each man's peculiarity to superabound.

Here, among the farms, we adduce the scholars as

examples of

this treachery.

tims of expression.

They are nature's vic You who see the artist, the
and
find their life

orator, the poet, too near,

no

more
ers,

excellent

than that of mechanics or farmpartiality,

and themselves victims of

but quacks,

very hol-

low and haggard, and pronounce them

heroes,

failures, not

conclude
you
out.

very reasonably

that these arts are not for man, but are disease.

Yet nature
ture

will not bear

Irresistible na-

made men

such,

and makes legions more

of

such, every day.

You

love the boy reading in a

;

book, gazing at a drawing or a cast

these millions
writers

yet what are

who read and

?

behold, but incipient

and sculptors

Add

little

more

of that

quality which
seize the

now

reads and sees, and they will

chisel.

pen and

And

if

one remembers
artist,

how
is

innocently he began to be an

he per-

ceives that nature joined with his enemy.

A man

a golden impossibility.
a hair's breadth.
is

The

line

he must walk

is

The

wise through excess oi

wisdom

made a

fool.

EXPERIENCE.

69
it,

How
selves,

easily, if

fate

would

suffer

we

miglit

keej) forever these beautiful limits,

and adjust ourIn the

street

once for
of

all,

to the perfect calculation of the

kingdom
and
ness that

known

cause and

effect.

in the newspapers, life appears so plain a busi^

manly

resolution

and adlierence
all

to the
inis

multiplication-table

through
!

weathers will

sure success.
it

But ah presently comes a day, or

its

only a half-hour, with

angel-whispering,

which discomfits the conclusions of nations and of

years!

To-morrow again every thing looks

sense
as rare as genius,
is

real

and angular, the habitual standards are

reinstated,

common
of genius,

is

is

the basis

and experience
;

hands and feet to every

enterprise

and

yet,

he who should do his busi-

ness on this understanding would be quickly bankrupt.

Power keeps

quite another road than

will
;

the

turnj)ikes of choice

and

namely the subterraof

life.

nean and
is

invisible tunnels

and channels

It

ridiculous that

we

are diplomatists, and doctors,

;

and considerate people

these.

there are no dupes like

Life

is

a series of surprises, and would not

if it

be worth taking or keeping

were not.

God
us,

delights to isolate us every day,

and hide from us

the past and the future.

We

would look about

but with grand politeness he draws down before us

an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another

behind us of purest sky.
'

You

will not

remember,^

70 he seems to say,
*

SURPRISE.
and you
will not expect.'

All

good conversation, manners, and

action,

come from
her
lives
;

a spontaneity which forgets usages and makes the

moment
by pulses

great.

Nature

hates

calculators

methods are saltatory and impulsive.

;

Man

our organic movements are such

and

the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory

and alternate and the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by cas;

ualties.

Our

chief experiences have been casual.

The most

attractive class of people are those

who

are powerful obliquely and not by the direct stroke

men

of genius, but not yet accredited

one gets the

cheer of their light without paying too great a tax.

Theirs
light,

is

the beauty of the bird or the

art.

morning

and not of
is

In the thought of genius

;

there
is

always a surprise

and the moral sentiment

it is

well called " the newness," for

never other

as

new
;

to the oldest intelligence as to the

child

" the kingdom that cometh without obserIn like manner, for practical success,

young

vation."

there must not be too

much

design.

man

will

not be observed in doins^ that which he can do

best.

There

is

a certain magic about his pro]Derest

action which stupefies your powers of observation,

so that though
it is

done before you, you mst not

of

it.

The

art of life has a pudency,

and

w^ill

not

be exposed.

Ever}^

man

is

an impossibility

untij

EXPERIENCE.
he
is

71

born

every thing impossible until we see a

of piety agree at last with the

success.

The ardors

coldest skepticism,

that

nothing

is

of us or our
will not spare

works,

that

all is of

God.

Nature

us the smallest leaf of laurel.

All writing comes

by the grace of God, and all doing and having, I would gladly be moral and keep due metes and
bounds, which I dearly love, and allow the most to
the will of

man

but 1 have set

my heart

on honesty

in this chapter,

and I can

see nothing at last, in

less of vital force

success or failure, than

more or

supplied from the Eternal.

The

results of life are

The years teach uncalculated and uncalculable. much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes
of
it is

all,

but an unlooked-for

result.

The

individual
things,

always mistaken.

He

designed

many

and drew
done
is

in other persons as coadjuall,

tors, quarrelled

with some or
is
;

blundered much,
little

and something
out somewhat
ised himself.

all

are a

advanced,
It turns

but the individual

always mistaken.

new and very

unlike what he prom-

The

ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of

the elements of

human
,

life

to calculation, exalted
is

Chance into a di\^nity

but that

to stay too long

72
at the spark,

REALITY.
which
is

glitters truly at

one point, but

the universe
fire.

warm with
of

the latency of the

same

The miracle
will

life

which

will not

be ex-

pounded but

remain a miracle, introduces a

new

element.

In the growth of the embryo, Sir

I think noticed that the evolution
point, but coactive

Evcrard
three or

Home
more

was not from one central

points.

from

Life has no memory.

That
from a

which proceeds in succession might be remembered,

but that which
is

coexistent, or ejaculated

deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious,

knows not
forms and

its

own

tendency.

So

is it

with

us,

now

skeptical or without unity, because

effects all

immersed in

seeming to be of equal yet

religious, whilst in the re-

hostile value,

and now

ception of spiritual law.

tions,

Bear with these

distrac-

with this coetaneous growth of the parts;

will.

they will one day be memhers^ and obey one

On

that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our

attention

and hope.
trivial

Life

is

hereby melted into an

expectation or a religion.

Underneath the inhar-

monious and
fection
;

particulars, is a musical per-

the Ideal journeying always with us, the

heaven without rent or seam.

Do

but observe the

I converse with

mode

of our illumination.
if

When

a profound mind, or

at

any time being alone I

sat-

have good thoughts, I do not at once arrive at

isfactions,

as when, being thirsty, I drink water ; oi

EXPERIENCE.
go to the
prised of
of
life.

73

fire,

being cold

no

but I

am

at first ap-

my
By

vicinity to a

new and

excellent region

persisting to read or to think, this re-

gion gives further sign

flashes of light, in

of itself, as

it

were in
its

sudden discoveries of
if

pro-

found beauty and repose, as

ered
it

the clouds that cov-

parted at intervals and showed the ap-

proaching traveller the inland mountains, with the

tranquil
eternal

meadows spread

at

their base,

whereon

flocks graze

and shepherds pipe and dance.

is

But every

insight from this realm of thought

felt as initial,

and promises a

sequel.

do not

make

it

I arrive there, and behold what was there

I

already.

make

no

I clap

my

hands in
open-

infantine joy

and amazement before the

of innumerable ages,

first

ing to
love

me
of

of this august magnificence, old with the

and homage
life,

young with

the

life

the sunbright
it

Mecca
!

of the desert.

And what

a future

opens

I feel a

new

heart
I

beating with the love of the

new

beauty.

am

ready to die out of nature and be born again into

this

in

new yet unapproachable America I have found the West

:

" Since neither

now nor yesterday began

first

These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can

A man be
If I

found who their

life as
is

entrance knew."

have described
that there

a flux of moods, I must

now add

that in us which changes not

r4

REALITY.
all sensations

and which ranks

and
is

states of

mind.

The

consciousness in each
identifies

man
;

a sliding scale,

him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body life above life, in The sentiment from which it infinite degrees. sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not what you have done or forwhich
borne, but at whose

command you have done

or for-

borne

it.

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost,

are quaint

these
stiU

names, too narrow to cover this un-

bounded

substance.

The

baffled intellect

must

kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named,

ineffable cause,

which every

fine genius

has

es-

sayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as,

Thales by water, Anaximenes by air, Anaxagoras by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the moderns by love; and the metaphor of each has become a national religion. The Chinese Mencius
has not been the least successful in his generalization.

"I

fully understand language," he said,

" and nourish well

my

vast-flowing ^dgor."

beg to ask what you

said his companion.

call

"I vast-flowing ^^gor

?

"

"The

explanation,"
is

replied

Mencius, "is
great,

difficult.

This vigor

supremely

and

in the highest degree unbending.

Nourwill
fill

ish

it

correctly

and do

it

no injury, and

it

up the vacancy between heaven and

earth.

This

EXPERIENCE.
rigor accords with

75

and

assists justice

and reason,
writ-

and leaves no hunger."

ing
ing,

In our more correct

name

we

give to this generalization the

of Be

and thereby confess that we have arrived as far we can go. Suffice it for the joy of the universe that we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present so much
as as prospective; not for the affairs on

which

it

is

wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor.

Most
ulty
;

of life seems to be

mere advertisement of
sell

fac-

information
;

is

given us not to

ourselves

cheap

that

we
is

are very great.

So, in particidars,

our greatness

alwaj^s in a tendency or direction,

It is for us to believe in the rule,

not in an action.

not in the exception.

The noble

are thus

known

from the ignoble.

the sentiments,
it is

So

in accepting the leading of

not what

we

believe concerning

the immortality of the soul or the like, but the universal impulse to believe^ that
is

the material cir-

cumstance and
of the globe.

is

the principal fact in the history

Shall

we

describe this cause as that

which works directly ?

or needful
of

The
1

spirit is

not helpless
plentiful

mediate organs.
effects.

It has

powers and direct

explaining, I

am

explained without

am

felt

without acting, and where I

just persons are satisfied

am

not.

Therefore

all

with their own praise.

They

refuse

to

explain

themselves, and are content that new^ actions should

76
do them that
office.

REALITY,

They

believe that

we com*
and

municate without speech and above

that no right action of ours
is

sj)eech,

quite unaffecting to
;

our friends, at whatever distance

of action
is

for the influence

not to be measured by miles.

Why

should I fret myself because a circumstance has

occurred which hinders

expected
?

my

presence where I was'

If I

am

not at the meeting,

my

pres-

ence where I

am

should be as useful to the com-

monwealth of friendship and wisdom, as would be

my
ity

presence in that place.

of

I exert the

same qualto fall

power

in

all

places.
;

Thus journeys the

mighty Ideal before us

into the rear.

it

never was

known

No man

ever came to an experience

is

which was
better.

satiating,

but his good

!

tidings of a

In liberated moOnward and onward ments we know that a new picture of life and duty
is

already possible

the elements already exist in

of a doctrine of life which

many minds around you

shall transcend

any written record we have.

The

new statement
shall

will comprise the skepticisms as well

as the faiths of society,

and out

of unbeliefs a creed

be formed.

For skepticisms are not

gratui-

tous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement,

and the new philosophy must take

of them,

them

in

and make affirmations outside

as
it

just as

much

must include the

oldest beliefs.

It is very imhappy, but too late to be helped, the

EXPERIENCE.
discovery

77

we have made

that

covery

is

called the Fall of

we exist. That disMan. Ever afterwards

we suspect our instruments. we do not see directly, but

torting lenses which

We have learned that

mediately, and that

we
dis-

have no means of correcting these colored and

we

are, or of

computing the

amount
objects.

of their errors.

Perhaps these subject;

lenses have a creative

power

perhaps there are no

;

Once we

lived in

what we saw

now, the
threatens
art, per-

rapaciousness of this

new power, which

to absorb all things, engages us.

Nature,

sons, letters, religions, objects, successively timible

in,

and God

is

but one of

literature are subjective

every good thing

is

Nature and its ideas. phenomena every evil and a shadow which we cast. The
;

street is full of humiliations to the proud.

As

the

fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery and

make them wait on

grins which the

his guests at table, so the chaoff as

bad heart gives

or

bubbles, at

once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the

street,

shopmen

bar-keepers
is

in

hotels,

and and

threaten or insult whatever

insultable in us.

threatenable

'T

is

the same with our idolatries.

is

People forget that

horizon,

it

the eye which

makes the

and the rounding mind's eye which makes

this or that
ity,
*'

man

a type or representative of humanof

is

with the

name

hero or saint.
a good

Jesus, the

providential man,"

man on whom many

78

SUBJECT OR THE ONE.

tliat

people are agreed

effect.

these oj)tical laws shall take

By

love on one part and

by forbearance
it is

to

press objection on the other part,

settled that

for a time

him in the centre of the him the properties that will But the longest love attach to any man so seen. The great and or aversion has a speedy term.

we

will look at

horizon,

and ascribe

to

crescive self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants

all

relative existence

and ruins the kingdom of

Marriage (in what
is

mortal friendship and love.

called the spiritual world)
is

impossible, because of

the inequality between every subject and every object.

The

subject

is

the receiver of Godhead, and

at every comparison

must

feel his

being enhanced
in energy, yet

by that

cryptic might.
this

Though not

by presence,

magazine of substance cannot be

;

otherwise than felt

nor can any force of intellect

attribute to the object the proper deity

which sleeps

or wakes forever in every subject.

Never can love

every

make
There

consciousness and ascription equal in force.

will

be the same

guK between
of the soul.

me
pri-

and thee

as between the original

is is

and the

picture.

The

universe

the bride
partial.

All

vate sympathy
like globes,

Two human

beings are

which can touch only in a point, and

whilst they remain in contact all other points of

each of the spheres are inert

their turn

must

also come, and the longer a particular union lasts

EXPERIENCE.
the

79

more energy

of appetency the parts not in union

acquire.

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor

doubled.
chaos.

Any
The

invasion of
is

its

unity would be

soul

not twin-born but the only

begotten, and though revealing itself as child in

time, child in appearance,
sal
is

of a fatal

and univerbelieve in

power, admitting no

co-life.

Every day, every

act betrays the ill-concealed deity.

We

ourselves as

we do not

believe in others.

We
we
an

percall
in-

mit

all

things to ourselves, and that which

sin in others is

experiment for

us.

It is

stance of cur faith in ourselves that

men
;

never

speak of crime as lightly as they

tliink

or every
is

man

thinks a latitude safe for himself which

no-

wise to be indulged to another.

differently

The

act looks very

;

on the inside and on the outside

its

in its in the

quality and in

consequences.

Murder

murderer

is

no such ruinous thought as poets and

it
;

romancers will have

fright

it

does not unsettle

him or
;

him from
it

his ordinary notice of trifles

;

it is

an act quite easy to be contemplated

sequel

but in

its

turns out to be a horrible jangle

all relations.

and confair

founding of

Especially the crimes

that spring from love

seem right and

from

the actor's point of view, but

destructive of society.

when acted

are found

No man

at last believes

that he can be lost, or that the crime in

him

is

aa

80

SUBJECT OR THE ONE.

Because the
intellect qual-

black as in the felon.

ifies

in oiu' o^vn case the

is

moral judgments.

For

there

no crime

to the intellect.

That

is

antino-

mian or hypernomian, and judges law

fact.

as well as

" It

is

worse than a crime,

it

is

a blunder,"

said Napoleon, speaking the language of the intellect.

To

it,

the world

is

a problem in mathematics

or the science of quantity,

and

it

leaves out praise

and blame and

comj^arative.

all

If

weak emotions. All stealing is you come to absolutes, pray who

speculate),

does not steal ?

sin (even

Saints are sad, because they behold

when they

from the point of

intellect
;

view of the conscience, and not of the

ijonf usion of
is

thought.
;

Sin, seen

from the thought,

a diminution, or less
it is

seen from the conscience

or will,
it

pravity or had.

The

intellect

names

shade, absence of light, and no essence.

it

The
evil.

conscience must feel

as essence, essential

This

it is

not

it

has an objective existence, but no

subjective.

Thus
itself.

inevitably does the universe wear our color,

fall successively into the subject
;

and every object

The

subject exists, the subject enlarges

all

things sooner or later fall into place.

I see
;

As

I am, so

use what language

we
;

anything but what we are

we can never say Hermes, Cadmus, Cowill,

lumbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are the mind's minis

ters.

Instead of feeling a poverty when we encoun*

EXPERIENCE.
fcer

81

a great man,

let

us treat the

new comer

like a

travelling geologist

who

passes through our estate

or anthracite,

and shows us good

strong

slate, or limestone,

in our brush pasture.

The
is

partial action of each

is

mind

in

one direction
it

a telescope for the

objects on

which

pointed.

But every other

part of knowledge

is

to be

pushed to the same ex=

travagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericitjo

Do

you

see that kitten chasing so prettily her

own

tail?

If

you could look with her eyes you might

hundreds of figures peris-

see her surrounded with

forming complex dramas, with tragic and comic

sues, long conversations,

many

characters,
it is

many ups
only puss

and downs
and her
end
ing,
its

of fate,

and meantime
was a

tail.

How

long before our masquerade will

noise of tambourines, laughter,

shall find it

and shout-

and we

solitary
it

performance ?

subject

and an

object,

takes so

much
it is

to

make
ler

the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude

adds nothing.

What

imports

it

whether

Kep-

and the sphere, Columbus and America, a reader

his book, or puss with her tail?

and

It is true that

aU the muses and love and

religion

hate these developments, and will find a

way

to

pimish the chemist who publishes in the parlor the

secrets of the laboratory.
little

And we

cannot say too

of our constitutional necessity of seeing things

tinder private aspects, or saturated with our humors.

82

SUBJECT OR THE ONE.

yet
is

And

the Gocl

tlie

native of these bleak rocks.

of

That need makes in morals the capital virtue

self-trust.

We must hold hard to this poverty, howmore

cold and so far mourn-

ever scandalous, and by more vigorous self -recoveries,

after the sallies of action, possess our axis

firmly.
ful
;

The
it is

life of

truth

is

but

not the slave of tears, contritions and

It

perturbations.

does not attempt another's work,

facts.

nor adopt another's

It is a

main

lesson of

wisdom
facts

to

know your own from

another's.

I have

learned that I cannot dispose of other people's

;

but I possess such a key to

my own

as per-

suades me, against

all their denials, that

they also
is

have a key to
ing men,

theirs.

sympathetic person

placed in the dilemma of a swimmer

among drownif

who

all

catch at him, and

he give so

much
vices,

as a leg or a finger they will

to be saved

drown him.
of their

They wish

from the mischiefs

vices.

but not from their

Charity would be

wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms.

wise and hardy physician mil say.
tliat^

Come

out of

as the first condition of advice.

this

In

our talking America we are ruined by our

all sides.

good nature and listening on

pliance takes
ful.

This com-

away the power

forthright.

of being greatly use-

A man
and

should not be able to look other than

directly
Is

preoccupied attention

the only answer to the importunate frivolity of

EXPERIENCE
makes
swer,
their wants frivolous.

83

other people; an attention, and to an aim wliich

This

is

a divine an-

and leaves no appeal and no hard thoughtSo

In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides of ^schylus,

Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Furies

sleep

on the threshold.

The

face of the

god ex=

presses a shade of regret

and compassion, but is calm

politics, into

with the conviction of the irreconcilableness of the

two spheres.

He

is

born into other

the eternal and beautiful.

The man

at his feet asks

for his interest in turmoils of the earth, into

his nature cannot enter.

which

And the Eumenides there

The god is

lying express pictorially this disparity.

surcharged with his di\ane destiny.

Illusion,

Temperament, Succession, Surface, Sur-

prise, Reality, Subjectiveness,

these

are threads
life.

on the loom of time, these are the lords of

dare not assume to give their order, but I

name

them

as I find

them

in

to claim

any completeness for

is

my way. I know better than my picture. I am a

I can very

fragment, and this

confidently

a fragment of me.

announce one or another law, which

relief

throws

itself into

and form, but I

to

am

too

young yet by some ages

sip for

compile a code.

I gospolitics.

my

hour concerning the eternal

I have seen

many

fair pictures not in vain.

A won

derful time I have lived in.

am

not the novice I

84

EXPERIENCE,
Let who
ask

was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago.

will ask

Where
This

is

the fruit

I find a private fruit

sufficient.

is

a fruit,

that I should not

it

for a rash effect

from meditations, counsels and the

I should feel
pitiful to

hiving of truths.

demand
deep

a result on this town and county, an overt effect

on the instant month and year.

The
All I

effect is

and secular
tion
I

as the cause.

It

works on periods in

which mortal lifetime

;

is lost.
:

know

is

recep-

am and

have

but I do not get,

and when

I have fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did

not.

I worship with wonder the great Fortune.

My reception

has been so large, that I

am

not an-

noyed by receiving
I say to the Genius,

this or that superabundantly.

if

he will pardon the proverb,

In for a mill, in for a million. When I receive a new gift, I do not macerate my body to make the account square, for if I should die I could not make the account square. The benefit overran the merit
the first day,

and has overrun the merit ever

since.
re-

The merit
ceiving.

itself, so-called, I

reckon part of the

Also that hankering after an overt or practical

effect

seems to

me an

apostasy.

In good earnest

am

willing to spare this most unnecessary deal of

doing.

Life wears to

me

a visionary face.

Harda People

est roughest action is visionary also.

It is but

choice between soft

and turbulent dreams.

EXPERIENCE.
disparage knowing and the intellectual
life,

85

and
if

urge doing.

am

very content with knowing,

only I could know.

That
suffice

is

an august entertaina great while.

ment, and would

me

To
this

know a
world.

little

would be worth the expense of

I hear always the law of Adrastia, " that

every soul which had acquired any truth, should be

safe

from harm until another period."

know

that the world I converse with in the city I ob-

and

in the farms, is not the world I think.

serve that difference,

and

shall observe

it.

One
dis-

day I

shall

know
But

the value and

law of this

crepance.

I have not found that

much was
make

gained by manipular attempts to realize the world

of thought.

Many

eager persons successively

this

an experiment in
ridiculous.

way, and make themselves

They acquire democratic manners, they

mouth, they hate and deny.

foam

at the

I observe that in the history of

Worse, mankind there is

never a solitary
their

example

of

success,

taking

own
?

tests of success.

I say this polemically,

or in reply to the inquiry,

Why
me

not realize your

despair which
;

world

But

far be

from

the

prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism

there never

since

was a right endeavor but

it

succeeded.
last.

Patience and patience,

we

shall

wdn at the

We

must be very suspicious of the deceptions

element of time.
It takes a

of the

good deal of

86

EXPERIENCE.

time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars,

and a very

little

time to entertain a hope and

life.

an insight which becomes the light of our

hold with our wives, and these things
pression, are forgotten next

We
im-

dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the house-

make no

week

but, in the soli-

tude to which every

man

is

always returning, he

has a sanity and revelations which in his passage

into

new worlds he

will carry with him.

Never

mind

the ridicule, never

!

mind

the defeat
is

up again,

old heart

it
;

seems to say,

there

victory yet

for all justice

and the true romance which the

world exists to realize will be the transformation of

genius into practical power.

CHARACTER.

The sun

set
;

but set not his hope s

Stars rose

his faith

was

earlier

up

Fixed on the enormous galaxy,

Deeper and older seemed

his eye

And matched
The

his sufferance sublime

taciturnity of time.

He

spoke,

and words more

soft

than rain

Brought the Age of Gold again

His action won such reverence
sweet;i

As

hid

all

measure of the

feat.

"Work of

his

hand
the fact

He

nor commends nor grieves

itself

Pleads for

As Her

unrepenting Nature leaves

every
act.

m.
CHAEACTER.

HAVE

read that those who listened to Lord

Chatham

felt that there

was somethino'
said.

finer in the

man

than any thing which he

It has

been

complained of our brilliant English historian of tho

French Revolution that when he has told

facts about

all his
esti-

Mirabeau, they do not justify his

genius.

mate of

his

The

Gracchi, Agis,

Cle-

omenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes, do not

n the record
leigh, are

of facts equal their

own fame.
of

Sir

Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Rap

men

of great figure

and

few deeds.

We

cannot find the smallest part of the personal

weight of Wasliington in the narrative of his exploits.

The

authority of the

name

of Scliiller

is

too great for his books.

This inequality of the

anecdotes
is

reputation to

the works or the

not

accounted for by saying that the reverberation

is

longer than the thunder-clap, but somewhat re-

sided in these

men which

begot an expectation that

outran

all their

performance.

The

largest part of

90
their

CHARACTER.
power was
latent.

This

is

that which

we

call

Character, a

reserved force, which acts directly

It
is

by presence and without means.

Genius, by whose impulses the

conceived

of as a certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or

man
;

is

guided but
is

whose counsels he cannot impart

which

com=

pany
or
if

for him, so that such

men

are often solitary,

they chance to be

social,

do not need society

but can entertain themselves very well alone.

The
and

purest literary talent appears at one time great, at

another time small, but character

is

of a stellar

undiminishable greatness.
talent or

by eloquence,
His

What this man

others effect by

accomplishes by
j)ut

some magnetism.
forth."
periority,

" Half his strength he

not

victories are

by demonstration

of su-

and not by crossing

of bayonets.

He
af-

conquers because his arrival alters the face of

fairs.

"

lole

how

did you

know

that Hercules

was a god ? "

content the

" Because," answered lole, " I was

eyes fell on him.

moment my

When
him

I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see

offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the chariot-race

;

but Hercules did not wait for a contest

sat,

he conquered whether he stood, or walked, or whatever thing he did."

or

Man,

ordinarily a jDen-

dant to events, only half attached, and that awkwardly, to the world he lives
in, in

these examples
to be

appears to share the

life of things,

and

an

ex-

CHARACTER.

91

pression of the same laws which control the tides

and the

sun,

numbers and

quantities.
illustration

But
where
stand

to use a

more modest

and nearer
elections,

home, I observe that in our

this element, if it
its

political
all,

appears at

can only

occur in
its

coarsest form,

we

sufficiently under-

The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely the power to make his talent They cannot come at their ends by sendtrusted.
incomparable
rate.

ing to Congress a learned, acute, and fluent speaker,

if

he be not one who, before he was appointed by

the people to represent them,

was appointed by
fact,

Almighty God

to stand for

persuaded of that fact in

invincibly himself, so that the

a
faith in a fact.

most confident and the most violent persons learn

that here
is

resistance

on which both impudence

and

terror are wasted,

namely

The

men who

carry their points do not need to inquire

of their constituents

what they should

say, but are

;

themselves the country which they represent

no-

where are
true as in
infusion.

its

emotions or opinions so instant and

;

them

nowhere so pure from a

selfish

The constituency at home hearkens to

and

their words, watches the color of their cheek,

therein, as in a glass, dresses its own.

Our
manly

public
force.

assemblies are pretty good tests of

Our frank countrymen

of the west

and south have

92

CHARACTER.

a taste for character, and like to

know whetker

tke

New
the

Englander

is

a substantial man, or whether

hand can pass through him.

force appears in trade.

The same motive

State, or letters

There

are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the

;

and the reason why

is

this or that

man
man;

is

fortunate
is

not to be told.
tell

It lies in the

that

all

anybody can

you about

it.

See liim and you will

ceeds, as, if

know

as easily

why he

suc-

you see Napoleon, you would compreIn the new objects we recognize

hend

his fortune.

the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, and not

dealing with
tions of

it

at second hand,
else.

through the percep-

somebody

Nature seems to authorize

private agent as her factor

trade, as soon as

you see the natural merchant, who

appears not so

much a

and Minister of Commerce.

to put

His natural probity

combines with his insight into the fabric of society

him above tricks, and he communicates to all his own faith that contracts are of no private The habit of his mind is a referinterpretation.
and he
inspires resj^ect

ence to standards of natural equity and public ad-

vantage

and the wish

to

deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor

which attends him, and for the

intellectual pastime
ability affords.

which the spectacle of so much

This immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the Southern Ocean his wharves and the

CHARACTER.

93

Atlantic Sea his familiar port, centres in his brain

only

and nobody

in the universe can

make

his
lie

place good.

In his parlor I see very well that

has been at hard work this morning, with that

knitted
desire

brow and
to

that settled humor, which all his

off.

be courteous cannot shake

firm acts have been

I
;

see

plainly

how many

done

how
I

many
when
see,

valiant

noes have this day been spoken,

others would have uttered ruinous yeas.

skill

with the pride of art and

of masterly

arithmetic and power of remote combination, the

consciousness of being an agent

the original laws of the world.
that none can supply him,

and playfellow

of

He

too believes

and that a man must be

it

born to trade or he cannot learn it. This virtue draws the mind more when
pears in action to ends not so mixed.
It

ap-

works

with most energy in the smallest companies and in

private relations.

In

all cases it is

an extraordi-

nary and incomputable agent.

ical

The
it.

excess of phj^s-

strength

is

paralyzed by

Higher natures
cer-

overpower lower ones by affecting them with a

tain sleep.

The

faculties are locked up,

is

and

offer

no resistance.

Perhaps that

the universal law.

to itseK,

When
it

the high cannot bring

it,

up the low

benumbs

as

man charms down

the resistance

of the lower animals.

similar occult power.

Men How

exert on each other a

often has the influence

94

CHARACTER.
tlie tales

of a true master realized all

river of

of

magic

eyes

command seemed to run down from his into all those who beheld him, a torrent of
all

strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which

pervaded them with his thoughts and colored

events with the hue
of his mind.

"

What means
of the

did you employ

"

was the question asked

wife of Concini, in regard to her treatment of Mary of Medici and the answer was, " Only that influ;

ence which every strong mind has over a weak

one."

Cannot Caesar
Is

in irons shuffle off the irons

and transfer them

so the turnkey?
table a

to the person of

an iron

Hippo or Thrahandcuff so immu-

bond

Suppose a slaver on the coast of

Guinea should take on board a gang of negroes which should contain persons of the stamp of Toussaint

L'Ouverture

or, let

us fancy, under these

of

swarthy masks he has a gang

chains.

Washingtons

in

When

they arrive at Cuba, will the rela-

tive order of the ship's

company be the same

iron ?
Is there

Is

there nothing but rope and

no

love,

no reverence ?
supposed

Is there never a glimpse of right

in a poor slave-captain's

mind and cannot

;

these be

available to break or elude or in any

manner overmatch the

iron ring ?

tension of an inch or two of

This
all

is

a natural power, like light and heat, and

it.

nature cooperates with

The reason why we

CHARACTER.
feel
is

95

one man's presence and do not feel another's

as simple as gravity.

Truth

is

the summit of
it

being; justice is the application of

to affairs.

All individual natures stand in a

to the purity of this

scale,

according
will of

element in them.

The

the pure runs

as

down from them into other natures^ water runs down from a higher into a lower ves^
This natural force
is

sel.

no more

to

be withstood
can drive a
it

than any other natural force.

stone

We

upward

for a

moment

into the air, but

;

is

yet true that all stones will forever fall

and what-

ever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft,

or of a
prevail,
lie

which somebody credited,

it is

justice

must
it-

and

the privilege of truth to

is

make

seK believed.
individual

Character

this

moral order seen

through the medium of an individual nature.

is

An

an encloser.

Time and
is

space, liberty
left at large

and

necessity, truth

and thought, are

no longer.

Now,

the universe

a close or pound.

All things exist in the

ners of his soul.

man

tinged with the manquality

;

With what

is

in

him he

infuses all nature that he can reach

nor does he

tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at

how long a
o\\ti

curve soever,

all his

regards return into his

all

good at

last.

He

animates

he can, and he sees

only what he animates.

He

encloses the world, as

the patriot does his country, as a material basis for

his character,

and a theatre for

action.

A healthy

96

CHARACTER.
and the True, as
;

soul stands united with the Just

the magnet arranges itself with the pole

so that he

stands to all beholders like a transparent object be^

twixt them and the

sun,

and whoso journeys

to-

wards the sun, journeys towards that person.

is

He

thus the

medium

of the highest influence to all

who

are not on the same level.

Thus men

of char-

acter are the conscience of the society to which they

belong.

The natural measure

ance of circumstances.
as
it is

of this

power

is

the resistlife

Impure men consider

it is

reflected in opinions, events,

and persons.
done.

They cannot
its

see the action until

Yet
its

moral element preexisted in the actor, and

quality as right or

wrong
is

it

was easy to

predict.

Everything in nature

bipolar, or has a positive

is

and a negative
a
spirit

pole.
fact,

There

a male and a female,

Spirit is

and a

a north and a south.

is

the positive, the event

the negative.

Will

is

the

north, action the south pole.

Character

may be
It

ranked as having
feeble
pole.

its

natural place in the north.

shares the magnetic currents of the system.

souls are

The

drawn

to the

south or negative

They look at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to be lovely, but to be
loved.

Men of

character like to hear of their faults

;

the other class do not like to hear of faults

they

CHARACTER.
worship events
;

97

secure to tliem a fact, a connection,

a certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask

no more.
lary
;

The hero

sees that the event

is

ancil-

it

must follow him.

A given

order of events

has no power to secure to him the satisfaction

which the imagination attaches to

goodness escapes from any
set

it

the soul of

of

circumstances

whilst prosperity belongs to a certain mind,

will introduce that

and
its

power and victory which

is

natural fruit, into any order of events.

No change
supersti-

of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

We
tions

boast our emancipation from

;

many
it is

but

if

we have broken any

idols

through

a transfer of the idolatry.

What
;

have I gained,

that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Neptune, or a

mouse

to

Hecate

that I do not tremble

before the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or

the Calvinistic Judgment-day,
ion, the public opinion as

if
;

quake

at opin-

we

call it

or at the threat

of assault, or contumely, or
erty, or mutilation, or at the

bad neighbors, or pov-

rumor

of revolution, or
it

of

murder
at ?

If I quake,

what matters form

what I

quake

Our proper

vice takes

in one or

another shape, according to the sex, age, or temper-

ament

we are capable of fear, The covetousness or the raalignity which saddens me when I ascribe it to soof the person, and,
if

will readily find terrors.

ciety, is

my own.

am

always environed by myself.

98

CHARACTER.
tHe other part, rectitude
is

On
is

a perpetual victory,

celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, which

joy fixed or habitual.

It is disgraceful to fly

to events for confirmation of our truth

and worth.
of the

The

capitalist

does not run every hour to the broker

to coin his advantages into current

money

realm

he

is satisfied

to read in the quotations of

the market that his stocks have risen.

The same

transport which the occurrence of the best events in

the best order would occasion me, I must learn to
taste purer in the perception that

my

position

is

every hour meliorated, and does already

those events I desire.

command
is

That exidtation

only to

be checked by the foresight of an order of things

so excellent as to throw all our prosperities into

the deepest shade.

The

face which character wears to

me
is

is

self-

sufficingness.

I revere the person

who

riches

so that I cannot think of

exiled, or

him

as alone, or poor, or

unhappy, or a

client,

but as perpetual pa-

tron, benefactor,

and

beatified

man.

Character

is

centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or

overset.

A
is

man

should give us a sense of mass.

Society
its
if

frivolous,

and shreds

its

day into scraps,

conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

I go to see an ingenious

But
my-

man
;

I shall think

self

poorly entertained

if

he give

me

nimble pieces

of benevolence

and

etiquette

rather he shall stand

CHARACTER.
Btoutly in his place

99
if it

and
;

let

me apprehend

were

only his resistance

a

know

that I have encountered

new and

positive quality;
It is

great

refreshment

for both of us.

much

that he does not accept

the conventional opinions and practices.

That non-

conformity will remain a goad and remembrancer,

and every inquirer

the
that
first
is

will

have
is

to dispose of him, in

place.

There

nothing real or useful

not a seat of war.

Our

houses ring with

it

laughter and personal and critical gossip, but

helps
is
little.

But the

uncivil, unavailable

man, who
it

a problem and a threat to society,

whom

can-

not let pass in silence but must either worship or

hate,

and

to

whom
;

all parties feel related,

both

the leaders of opinion

tric,

and the obscure and eccen-

he helps
is

he puts America and Europe in

the wrong, and destroys the skepticism which says,

'

man

doll, let

us eat and drink,

't is

the best

we can
known.

do,'

by illuminating
in

the untried

and unheads

Acquiescence

the

establishment and

aj)peal to the public, indicate infirm faith,

which are not

built, before

clear,

and which must

see a house
it.

they can comprehend the plan of

The wise man not only

the

leaves out of his thought

many, but leaves out the few.

Fountains, the

self-moved, the absorbed, the

commander because

he

is

commanded, the assured, the primary,

;

they

are good
of

for these

announce the instant presence

supreme power.

100

CHARACTER.
action should rest mathematically on our

Our

substance.

In nature there are no false valuations.

of water in the ocean
in
-

pound

tempest has no

more gravity than

midsummer pond.

All

things work exactly according to their quality and

according to their quantity

attempt nothing they

cannot do, except

man

only.

He

has pretension
force.

he wishes and attempts things beyond his

read in a book of English memoirs,

" Mr.

Fox

(afterwards Lord Holland) said, he must have the

Treasury ; he had served up to

it."

it,

and would have

quite
so equal,

Xenophon and
it

his

Ten Thousand were

it
;

equal to what they attempted, and did

that

was not suspected

to

be a grand and inimitafact unrepeated,

ble exploit.

Yet there stands that

it

a high- water mark in military history.

attempted
since,

Many
to
it.

have
It is

and not been equal

only on reality that any power of action can be

based.
tutor.

No
I

institution will be better than the insti-

knew an amiable and accomplished person

who undertook a practical reform, yet I was never able to find in him the enterprise of love he took in
hand.

He

adopted

it

by ear and by the underAll

standing from the books he had been reading.

his action

was

tentative,

a piece of the city carried

city
still,

out into the

fields,

and was the

and na

new

fact,

and could not

inspire enthusiasm.

Had

there been something latent in the man, a terribla

CHARACTER.

101

andemonstrated genius agitating and embarrassing

his
is

demeanor, we had watched for

its

advent.

It

not enough that the intellect should see the evils

their remedy.

and

We

shall still postpone our ex-

istence,

nor take the ground to which we are enonly a thought and not a spirit

titled, whilst it is

that incites us.

We have

not yet served up to

life,

it.

These are properties of

and another

trait is

the notice of incessant growth.

telligent

Men
also

should be in-

and

earnest.

They must

make us

feel

that they have a controlling

happy future opening

misconceived and

before them, whose early twilights already kindle

in the passing hour.

The hero
he
is

is

misreported

he cannot therefore wait to unravel

;

any man's blunders

ing

again on his road, addto his

>\dll

new powers and honors

domain and new

bankrupt you
if

claims on your heart, which

you have loitered about the old things and have not
kept your relation to him by adding to your wealth.

New

actions are the only apologies

and explanato offer

tions of old ones

which the noble can bear

or to receive.

If your friend has displeased you,

you

shall not sit

all

already lost

down to consider it, for he has memory of the passage, and has
burden you with blessings.
works.

doubled his power to serve you, and ere you can

rise

up again

will

We

have no pleasure in thinking of a benevois

lence that

onlv measured bv

its

Love

is

102
inexhaustible,

CHARACTER.
and
if

its

estate

is

wasted,

its

gran-

ary emptied,

still

cheers and enriches, and the man,

though he

sleep,

seems to purify the

air

and

his

house to adorn the landscape and strengthen the

laws.

People always recognize

is

this difference.

We
It is

know who
the

benevolent, by quite other means than

amount

of subscription to soup-societies.

only low merits that can be enumerated.

Fear,

when your
well,

friends say to you what you have done

it

and say

through

but when they stand with

uncertain timid looks of respect and half-dislike,

and must suspend

you may begin
the present.

their

judgment for years

Those who

to come,

to hope.

live to the fu-

ture must always appear selfish to those wdio live to

Therefore

it

was

droll in the

good

Riemer, who has ^vlitten memoirs of Goethe, to

make out a list of his donations and good so many hundred thalers given to Stilling,
to Tischbein
;

deeds, as,
to Hegel,

a lucrative place found for Professor

Voss, a post under the

Grand Duke
&c., &c.

for Herder,

a pension for Meyer, two professors recommended

to foreign universities
;

The
is

longest

list

of specifications of benefit

woidd look very

if

short.

A man
so.

is*

a poor creature

he

to

be measured

For

all

these of course are exceptions,

life

and the
benefac-

rule
tion.

and hodiernal

of a

good man
is

is

The

true charity of Goethe

to

be inferred

from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the

CHARACTER.
way
in

103
"

which he had spent

his fortune.

Each

hon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold.

million of

Half a

my own

money, the fortune I inherited,

my

salary

and the large income derived from

my

writings for fifty years back, have been expended

to instruct

me
is

in

what I now know. I have besides

seen," &c.
I

own

it

but poor chat and gossip to go to

simple and rapid power,

enumerate

traits of this

and we are painting the lightning with charcoal

but in these long nights and vacations I like to
console myself so.

Nothing but

itself

can copy

it.

A word warm

from the heart enriches me.

I surliterary

render at discretion.
genius before this

How
of

death-cold
life!

is

fire

These are the

it

touches that reanimate

my

heavy soul and give

I find,

eyes to pierce the dark of nature.

I

where
rich.

thought myself poor, there was I most

Thence comes a new

intellectual exaltation, to be

again rebuked by some

ter.

new

exhibition of charac-

Strange alternation of attraction and repul!

sion
it
;

Character repudiates

intellect, yet
is

excites

and character passes into thought,

published
of moral

so,

and then

is

ashamed before new flashes

worth.

Character
of

is

nature in the highest form.

it

It is

no use to ape
is

or to contend with

it.

Some-

what

possible of resistance,

and of

persistence,

104

CHARACTER.
creation, to
tliis

and of

power,

wliicli will

foil all

emulation.

This masterpiece
ture's

is

best where
it.

no hands but nais

have been laid on

Care

taken that the

greatly-destined shall slip

up

into life in the shade,

with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch and blazon

every new thought, every blushing emotion of young
genius.

Two

persons lately, very young children

of the most high God, have given

me

occasion for

thought.
sanctity

When

I explored the

source of their
it

and charm for the imagination,

'

seemed
;

as

if

each answered,

From my nonconformity

never listened to your people's law, or to what they

call their gospel,

and wasted

my

time.

was con-

tent with the simple

rural poverty of

my own;

hence this sweetness

of that
;

is

pure of

my work never reminds jo\x And nature advertises that.'

America she
and con-

me

in such persons that in democratic

wiU not be democratized.

stitutionally sequestered

How

cloistered

from the market and from

this morning that I sent away some wild flowers of these wood-gods. They these fresh draughts are a relief from literature, from the sources of thought and sentiment as we read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first

scandal

It

was only

lines of written prose

and verse of a nation.

How

captivating

is

their devotion to their favorite books,

whether ^schylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or Scott,

'

CHARACTER.
as feeling that they

105

have a stake in that book

who
the

touciies that, touches

total

them

and
the

especially

solitude

of

the

critic,

Patmos of

thought from which he writes, in unconsciousness

of

any eyes that

shall
still,

ever read this writing.

as angels,

Could they dream on

to

and not wake

!

comparisons and to be flattered

Yet some

natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and

wherever the vein of thought reaches down into

the profound, there
is

no danger from vanity.

Sol-

emn

friends will w^arn

them

of the danger of the

head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets,

but they can afford to smile.

remember the

in-

dignation of an eloquent Methodist at the kind ad-

monitions of a Doctor of Divinity,

'

My friend,
But
I

man can

neither be praised nor insulted.'

;

forgive the counsels

they are very natural.

remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was. Have you been victimized in being
brought hither ?
*

or, prior to that,

?

answer

me

this,

Are you

victimizable

As
and

I have said. Nature keeps these sovereignties

in her

own hands, and however

pertly our sermons

credit,

disciplines

would divide some share of and puts the wisest

in the

and teach that the laws fashion the

goes her

citizen,

she

own

gait

wrongo
as

She makes very

light of gospels

and prophets,

106

CHARACTER.

one who has a great

many more

to produce

and no
a class

excess of time to spare on any one.

There

is

of men, individuals of which appear at long intervals, so

eminently endowed with insight and virtue

that they have been unanimously saluted as divine^

and who seem

to

be an accumulation of that power

we

consider.

Divine persons are character born,

or, to

borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are

victory organized.
ill-will,

They

are usually received with

because they are

a bound to the

new and because they set exaggeration that has been made of
Nature

the personality of the last divine person.

never rhymes her children, nor makes two

alike.

men

When we

see a great

man we

fancy a re-

semblance to some historical person, and predict

the sequel of his character and fortune
;

a result

which he
solve the

is

sure to disappoint.

None

will ever

problem of

his character according to our

prejudice, but only in his

own high unprecedented

;

way. Character wants room

must not be crowded

on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got

in the

press of affairs or

on few occasions.
It

It

needs perspective, as a great building.

may not,

probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we

should not require rash explanation, either on the

popular ethics, or on our own, of

I look on Sculpture as history.
the

its action.

I do not think

A-poUo and the Jove impossible in flesh and

CHARACTER.
blood.

107
artist

Every

trait

which the
life,

recorded in
his copjo

stone he

had seen

in

and better than

We

have seen

many

counterfeits, but

believers in

great men.

How

we are born easily we read in

old books,

when men were

few, of the smallest

action of the patriarchs.

We

require that a

man

should be so large and columnar in the landscape,

that
it

should deserve to be recorded that he arose,

his loins, and departed to such a The most credible pictures are those of men who prevailed at their entrance, and
;

and girded up
place.

majestic

convinced the senses

as

happened

to the eastern

magian who was sent

or Zoroaster.

to test the merits of Zertusht

When

the

Yunani sage arrived

at

Balkh, the Persians

tell us,

Gushtasp appointed a

day on which the Mobeds of every country should

assemble, and a golden chair was placed for the

Yunani
sembly.

sage.

Then

the beloved of

Yezdam, the
chief, said,

prophet Zertusht, advanced into the midst of the as-

The Yunani

sage,

on seeing that
lie,

" This form and this gait cannot

truth can proceed from them."

and nothing but

it

Plato said

was

impossible

not to believe in the children of the

gods, " though they should speak without probable

or necessary arguments."

I should think myself

very unhappy in

my

associates if I could not credit

the best things in history.

"

John Bradshaw," says

Milton, " appears like a consul, from

whom

the

108

CHARACTER.
;

fasces are not to depart with the year

so that not
lire,

on the tribunal only, but throughout his

you

would regard him as

kings."
I find
it

sitting

in

judgment upon
it is

more

credible, since

anterior

information, that one

man

should knoio heaven^ as

the Chinese say, than that so

many men

should

know

the world.

"

The

virtuous prince confronts

the gods, without any misgiving.

He

w^aits

a hun-

dred ages

till

a sage comes, and does not doubt.

He who

confronts the gods, without any misgiving,

;

knows heaven

he who waits a hundred ages until

a sage comes, without doubting, knows men. Hence

the virtuous prince moves, and for ages shows empire the way."

But there
is

is

no need

to seek

remote

examples.

He

a dull observer whose experience

has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as

well as of chemistry.

The

coldest precisian cannot

influ-

go abroad without encountering inexplicable

ences.

graves
secrets

One man fastens an eye on him and the of the memory render up their dead; the that make him wretched either to keep or to
;

betray must be yielded

another, and
to

he cannot

speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their

cartilages
;

the entrance of a friend adds grace,

boldness,

and eloquence

him

and there are

per-

sons he cannot choose but remember,

who gave a

transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled

another

life in his

bosom.

CHARACTER.
Wliat
is

109

so excellent as strict relations of amity,

this

when they spring from

and the furniture
faith

deep root

The

suf-

ficient reply to the skeptic

who doubts
is

the power

of

man,

in that possibility of

joyful intercourse with persons, which

makes the
I

and practice of
life

all

reasonable men,

know

nothing which

has to offer so satisfying as the

subsist,

profound good understanding which can

after

much exchange

of good offices, between

two

virtuous men, each of

sure of his friend.
It

whom
is

is

sure of himself

and

a happiness which post-

pones

all

other gTatifications, and makes politics,

and commerce, and churches, cheap.

For when

men

shall

meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a

stars, clothed

shower of

with thoughts, with deeds,

should be the festival of

with accomplishments,
nature which
ship,
all

it

things announce.
is

Of such

friend-

love in the sexes

the

first

symbol, as all

other things are symbols of love.

to the best

Those relations

men, which, at one time, we reckoned

the romances of youth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid enjoyment.
If
it

were possible to
!

live in

right

relations

with

men

if

we could abstain from asking any=

thing of them, from asking their praise, or help, or

pity,

and content us with compelling them through

!

the virtue of the eldest laws

Could we not deal

one person,

with a few persons,

^\^th

after

110

CHARACTER.
make an experiment of we not pay our friend the Could
of
silence,

the unwritten statutes, and

their efficacy ?

compliment of

truth,

of forbearing?
If

Need we be so eager lated, we shall meet.

cient world that

to seek It

him ?

we

are re-

was a tradition

of the an-

no metamorphosis could hide a

god from a god

runs,

and there

is

a Greek verse which

" The Gods are to each other not unknown."

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity

they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise
:

When

each the other shall avoid,

Shall each by each be most enjoyed.

Their relation

is

not made, but allowed.

The gods
Olymif

must
pus,

seat themselves without seneschal in our

and

as they can instal themselves

by

seniority

divine.

Society

is

spoiled

if

pains are taken,

the

associates are brought a mile to meet.

And

if it

be not society,
jangle,

it

is

a mischievous, low, degrading

best.

though made up of the

is

All the great-

ness of each

kept back and every foible in pain-

ful activity, as if the

Olympians should meet

to ex-

change snuff-boxes.
Life goes headlong.

We
if

chase

some

flying

scheme, or

we

are hunted
us.

by some fear or com-

mand behind

But

suddenly we encounter a

CHARACTER.
friend,
;

Ill

we pause our heat and hurry look foolish enough now pause, now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources The moment is all, in all noble relaof the heart.
;

tions.

A divine person is the

friend
is

prophecy of the mind

the

hope of the heart.

Our

beatitude

waits for the fulfilment of these two in one.

The
is

ages are opening this moral force.

All force
is

the

shadow or symbol
strong as
write their
it

of that.
its

Poetry

joyful

and

draws

inspiration thence.

Men

names on the world

as they are filled

;

with

this.

History has been mean

;

our nations
:

have been mobs we have never seen a man that divine form we do not yet know, but only the dream and prophecy of such we do not know the majestic
:

manners which belong

exalt the beholder.

to him,

which appease and

We

shall one

day see that the

most private

is

the most public energy, that quality

atones for quantity, and grandeur of character acts

in the dark,

and succors them who never saw

is

it.

What

greatness has yet appeared

beginnings and

encouragements to us in this direction.

of those

The

history

gods and saints which the world has writ-

ten and then worshipped, are documents of character.

The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth who owed nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the

112

CHARACTER.

pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendoi

around the facts of his death which has transfigured

every particular into an universal s}Tnbol for the
eyes of mankind.
highest fact.
the senses
;

This great defeat

is

hitherto oui^
victory to

But the mind requires a

which

a force of character which will convert

;

judge, jury, soldier, and king

will rule ani=

mal and mineral

agents.
If

virtues,

and blend with the courses and

of moral

of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars,

we cannot

attain at a

bound

to these gran-

deurs, at least let us do

them homage.

In

society,

high advantages are set down to the possessor as

disadvantages.
It requires the

more wariness
and

in

our private estimates.

friends the failure to

I do not forgive in
fine character

my
to at

know a

entertain
last that

it

with thankful hospitality.

When

which we have always longed for is arrived

^vith

and shines on us
lestial land,

glad rays out of that far ce-

then to be coarse, then to be critical

and

treat such a visitant with the jabber

and

sus-

picion of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems

to shut the doors of heaven.

This

is

confusion, this

the right insanity,

its

when

the soul no longer

its

knows
that

own, nor where

Is there

its allegiance,

religion, are

due.

any

religion but this, to

know
it

wherever in the wide desert of being the holy

senti=

ment we cherish has opened

into a flower,

blooms

CHARACTER.
for

113
;

me ?

if

none sees

it,

I see

it

am

aware,
it

if

alone, of the greatness of the fact.

Whilst
Nature

blooms,

I will keep sabbath or holy time,

and suspend
is

my

gloom and

my

folly

and

jokes.

indulged

by the presence of
household virtues

this guest.

There are many

that can discern
is in-

eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and

;

there are

many

Genius on his starry track, though the mob

capable
;

but when that love which

is all-suffering,
it-

all-abstaining, all-aspiring,
self that it will

which has vowed to

be a wretch and also a fool in this

soil its

world sooner than

pliances,

white hands by any com-

comes into our

streets

and houses,
its face,

only

the pure and aspiring can

know

and the
it.

only compliment they can pay VOL. m. 8

it is

to

own

MANNERS.

" How near

to

good

is

what

is

fair

Which we no
But with the

sooner see,
lines

and outward

air

Our

senses taken be.

Again yourselves compose,

And now

put

all

the aptness on

Of Figure,
That

that Proportion
disclose
;

Or Color can
if

those silent arts were

lost,

Design and Picture, they might boast

From you
Of

a newer ground.

Instructed by the heightening sense

dignity and reverence
their true motions found."

In

Ben

Jonson.

IV,

MANNEES.

Half
other

tlie

world,

it

is

said,

knows not how the

Our Exploring Expedition saw human their own wives bones; and they are said to eat and children. The husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is To set up their housephilosophical to a fault. haK
live.

the Feejee islanders getting their dinner off

keeping nothing

is

requisite

but

two or three

earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat

which

is

the bed.

The

house, namely a tomb,

is

ready without rent or taxes.

No

rain can pass

is

through the

roof,

and there
is

is

no door, for there

lose.

no want of one, as there

as there are

nothing to

If the

house do not please them, they walk out and enter

another,
several hundreds
at

their

command.
zoni,

"It

is

somewhat singidar," adds Belthis account, " to talk of

to

whom we owe
among
people

happiness

who
of."

live

in sepulchres,

among

the corpses and rags of an ancient nation

which they know nothing

In the deserts of

118

MANNERS.
still

Borgoo the rock-Tibboos

cliff-swallows,

dwell in caves, like

of these negroes
is

and the language

compared by

their neighbors to the

shrieking of

bats and to the whistling of birds.

Again, the Bor-

noos have no proper names

individuals are called

after their height, thickness, or

quality,

other accidental

and have nicknames merely.

But the

salt,

the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these
horrible

regions are visited, find their

way

into

countries where the purchaser and consumer can

hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals

and man-stealers
self
silk,

countries where

man

serves him-

with metals, wood, stone, glass, giun, cotton,

and wool
laws,

honors himself with architecture

to

writes

and contrives

execute

his

will

through the hands of many nations; and, especially, establishes

a select society, running through

intelligent

all the countries of

men, a seK-consti-

tuted aristocracy, or fraternity of the best, which,

without written law or exact usage of any kind,

perpetuates
itself,

colonizes every new-planted

its

isl-

and and adopts and makes

anywhere appears.

own whatever

per-

sonal beauty or extraordinary native endowonent

What
that,

fact

more conspicuous
is that,

in

modern

history
is

than the creation of the gentleman ?

Chivalry

and loyalty

and, in English literature

half the drama,

and

all

the novels, from Sir Philip

MANNERS.
Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint
this figure.

119

The

word gentleman^ which,

like the

word

Christian,

must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding centuries by the importance attached to
it,

is

a homage to personal and incommunicable

Frivolous and fantastic additions have

properties.

got associated with the name, but the steady interest of

mankind

in

it

must be attributed
it

to the valu

able properties which

designates.

An

element

which

unites all

the most forcible persons of every

to

country,

each other, and once

felt if

makes them intelligible and agreeable is somewhat so precise that it is

an individual lack the masonic
sign,

at

cannot be any casual product, but must be an average result of the character and faculties universally

found in men.
;

It

seems a certain permanent

is

average

as the atmosphere

a permanent compo-

sition, whilst so

many

gases are combined only to

be decompounded.

Comme

ilfaut^
:

is

the French-

man's description of good society

as

we must

he.

It is a spontaneous fruit of talents

and

feelings of

precisely that class

who have most

vigor,

who take

the lead in the world of this hour,

and though far

as

from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and

highest tone of

human

feeling,

it

is

good as the

whole society permits

spirit,

it

to be.

It is

made

of the
is

more than

of the talent of

men, and

compound

result into

which every great force

en-

120
ters as

MANNERS.
an ingredient, namely
virtue, wit, beauty,

wealth, and power.

There

is

something equivocal in

all

the words in
so-

use to express the excellence of

cial cultivation,

manners and

because the quantities are fluxional,

and the
cause.

last effect is

assumed by the senses as the

correlais

The word gentleman has not any

gejitilesse
is

tive abstract to express the quality.

Gentility

mean, and

obsolete.

But we must
sinister

keep alive in the vernacular the distinction he-

tween fashion, a word of narrow and often

meaning, and the heroic character which the gentle-

man

imports.
;

The usual words, however, must be

respected

they will be found to contain the root

of the matter.

The

point of distinction in

all this

class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion,

and

the like,

is

that the flower

and

fruit,

not the grain

of the tree, are contemplated.

is

It is beauty

which

the aim this time, and not worth.

The

result is

now

in question, although our words intimate well

enough the popular feeling that the appearance

supposes a substance.
truth, lord of his

The gentleman
actions,
;

is

man

of

own

and expressing that

lordship in his behavior

not in any maimer de-

pendent and

servile, either

on persons, or opinions,

or possessions.
force, the

Beyond

this fact of truth

and

real

lence

word denotes good -nature or benevomanhood first, and then gentleness. The

MANNERS.

121

popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease

and fortune
dispense the

but that

is

a natural result of perthey should possess and

sonal force and love,

tliat

goods of the world.

In times of
fall in

violence, every eminent person

must

with

many
worth
at all

opportunities to approve his stoutness

;

and

therefore every man's

name

that

emerged

from the mass

in the feudal ages, rattles in

our ear like a flourish of trumpets.

force never goes out of fashion.

But personal
is still j)ar-

That

amount and
is

to-day,

and

in the

moving crowd
and
reality are

of

good

society the

men

of valor

known

rise to their natural place.

The competition
and
trade, but

transferred from

war

to politics

the personal force appears readily enough in these

new arenas. Power first,

or no leading class.

In

politics

and

in trade, bruisers

and pirates are of better promise

than talkers and clerks.

of

God knows
;

that all sorts

gentlemen knock at the door

but whenever

used in strictness and with any emphasis, the name

will

be found to point at original energy.

It de=

scribes a

man

standing in his

own

right

and work-

ing after untaught methods.

In a good lord there

must

first

be a good animal, at least to the extent

of yielding the incomparable advantage of animal

spirits.

The

ruling class

must have more, but

they must have these, gi\^ng in every company the

122

MANNERS.
makes things easy
to be

sense of power, which

done which daunt the wise.

ergetic class, in their friendly
is full

The
and

society of the enfestive meetings,

of courage

and of attempts which intimidate

the pale scholar.

is

The courage which

girls exhibit

like

a battle of Lundy's Lane, or a sea-fighto

The

intellect relies

on memory to make some sup-

plies to face these

memory
The

is

But a base mendicant with basket and

extemporaneous squadrons.

badge, in the presence of these sudden masters.

rulers of society

must be up

to the

work
:

of the

world, and equal to their versatile office

the right Caesarian pattern,
affinity.

men

of

who have

great range of

am
it
;

far

from believing the timid maxim

for

of

Lord Falldand (" that

to

ceremony there must

go two

since a bold fellow will go through

the cunningest forms"), and

am

of

oj)inion that

the gentleman

is

the bold fellow whose forms are

;

not to be broken through

and only that plenteous

is

nature

is

rightfid master
it

which

the complement

of whatever person

converses with.
is
;

My

gentle-

man

gives the law where he

he will outpray

saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field,

and outshine

all

courtesy in the hall.

He

is

good
|

company
so that

for pirates

and good with academicians

it is

useless to fortify yourself against

all

him

he has the private entrance to

minds, and 1

oould as easily exclude myself, as him.

The

fa^

MANNERS.
mous gentlemen
this

123

of Asia
;

and Europe have been of

strong type

Saladin, Sapor, the CiJ, Julius

Caesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles,

est personages.

and the

lordli-

They

sat very carelessly in their

chairs,

and were too excellent themselves,

at a high rate.
is

to value

any condition

A plentiful fortune
the world
;

reckoned necessary, in the

popular judgment, to the completion of this

man

of

and

it is

a material deputy which walks

first

through the dance which the

is

has

led.
is,

Money
it-

not essential, but this

mde

affinity

which tran-

scends the habits of clique and caste and makes

self felt

by men

of all classes.

If the aristocrat is

only valid in fashionable circles and not with truck-

men, he
the

will never

be a leader in fashion

and

if

man

of the people cannot speak on equal terms

with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall

perceive that he
der,
is

already really of his

own

or-

he

is

not to be feared.

Diogenes, Socrates,
of the best blood

and Epaminondas, are gentlemen

who have chosen

the condition of poverty

when
I use

that of wealth was equally open to them.

these old names, but the

men

I speak of are

my

contemporaries.

Fortune will not supply

to every

generation

one of these well - appointed knights,

but every collection of

ple of the class;

men

furnishes some exam-

and the

politics of this country,

and the trade of every town, are controlled by these

124

MANNERS.

hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention

to take the lead,

and a broad sjTnpathy which puts

them

in fellowship wdth crowds,

and makes

their

action popular.

The manners
ciation of these

of

this

class

are

observed and

caught with devotion by

The assomasters with each other and with

of taste.

men

men
ble

intelligent of their merits, is

mutually agreea-

and stimulating.

The good forms, the happiest

expressions of each, are repeated and adopted.

swift consent

By

everything superfluous
is

is

dropped,

everything gracefid

renewed.
to

Fine manners
the

show themselves formidable

man.

uncultivated

They

are a subtler science of defence to

;

parry and intimidate

skill of the

but once matched by the

other party, they drop the point of the

sword,
finds

points

and fences disappear, and the youth

transparent atmosjDhere,
less

himself in a more
life is

wherein

troublesome game, and not a

misunderstanding

rises

between the players.

Manaid our

ners aim to facilitate

life, to

get rid of impediments

and bring the man pure

ling,

to energize.

They

dealing and conversation as a railway aids travel-

by getting

rid of all avoidable obstructions of

to be

the road

and leaving nothing

conquered but
fixed,

pure space.

These forms very soon become

and a

fine sense of propriety is cultivated

it

with the

more heed that

becomes a badge of

social

and

MANNERS.
civil

125
Fasliion,

distinctions.

Thus grows up
tlie

an

equivocal semblance,
fantastic

most

puissant, the

most
fol-

and

frivolous, tlie

most feared and

lowed, and which morals and violence assault in

vain.

There

exists a strict relation

between the

class of

power and the exclusive and polished

last are

circles.
first.

always

filled or filling

from the

The The

strong

men

usually give some allowance even to

the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find

in
it.

Napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer

of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the Fau-

bourg

St.
is

Germain

doubtless with the feeling that

to

fashion

a homage

men

of his stamp.
all

Fashion,

though in a strange way, represents

tue.

manly

vir-

It is virtue

gone to seed

it is

a kind of post-

humous honor.
Past.

It does not often caress the great,

:

but the children of the great

it

is

a hall of the

It usually sets its face against the great of

this hour.

Great

men

are not

commonly
:

in

its

halls

they are absent in the field

they are workof their

ing, not triumphing.

Fashion

is

made up

children

of those

who through
means

the value and vir-

tue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name,

marks

of distinction,

of cultivation

and gennot

erosity,

and

in their physical organization a certain

if

health and excellence which secure to them,

the highest

power

to work, yet high

power to

enjojo

126

MANNERS.
class of

The
ity

power, the working heroes, the Cortez,

is

the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this

the festiv-

and permanent celebration

is

of such as they ; that

fashion

funded talent

is
;

Mexico, Marengo, and

that the brilliant

Trafalgar beaten out thin

names

of fashion run back to just such busy

names

as their

own,

fifty

or sixty years ago.

They

are the sowers,

their sons shall

be the reapers, and their sons, in

the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the

harvest

to

new

competitors with

keener eyes and stronger frames.

cruited from the country.
said, every legitimate
cile.

The

city is reit

In the year 1805,

in

is

monarch

Europe was imbeout, rotted,

The
fields.

city

would have died

it

and
town

exjDloded, long ago, but that

was reinforced from

which came
to

the

It is only country
is

day before yesterday that

city

and court

to-day.

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results.

These mutual selections are indestructible.

provoke anger in the least favored
class,

If they

and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority by the strong hand and
kill

them, at once a

new

class finds itself at the top,

as certainly as
if

cream

rises in

a bowl of milk

and

the i^eople should destroy class after class, until

left,

two men only were

one of these would be the

leader and would be involuntarily served and copied

by the

other.

You may

keep

this D?inority out

MANNERS.
of sight

127
tenacious of I
life,

and out of mind, but

this tenacity,

it is

and

is

one of the estates of the reahn.

am

the

more struck with

matters, that
in its rule.

when
for

I see

its

work.

It respects the administration of

such unimportant

we should not look

any durability

We

sometimes meet

men under some

moral
all

strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a

religious

movement, and

feel that the

senti-

ment

rules

man and
and

nature.

We
;

think

other

distinctions

ties will

be slight and fugitive, this

yet

of caste or fashion for example

come from
is,

year to year and see

how permanent
life of

that

in this
it

Boston or

New York

man, where too

has

not the least countenance from the law of the land.

Not

in Egyi^t or in India a firmer or

more impasties

sable line.

Here are

associations
it,

whose

go

over and under and through

a meeting of mer-

chants, a military corps, a college class, a fire-club,

a professional association, a
convention
;

political,

a religious

the persons

seem to draw inseparaits

bly near; yet, that assembly once dispersed,

members

will not in the year

meet again.

Each

returns to his degree in the scale of good society,

porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen.

The

objects of fashion

may

be frivolous, or fashion

may be

objectless, but the nature of this

union and

selection

can be neither frivolous nor accidental.

in that perfect graduation de*

Each man's rank

128

MANNERS.

pends on some symmetry in his structure or some

agreement in
ciety.

liis

structure to the

symmetry of

so-

Its doors

unbar instantaneously

to a natu-

ral claim of their

own
and

land.

A natural

gentleman

finds his

way

in,

will

keep the oldest patrician

Fashion un-

out

who has

lost his intrinsic rank.

;

derstands
riority of

itself

good-breeding and personal supe-

whatever country readily fraternize with

those of every other.

The

chiefs of savage tribes

have distinguished themselves in London and Paris

by the purity

of their tournure.

To

say what good of fashion

reality,

and hates nothing

so

we much
is

can,

it

rests

on

as pretenders

to exclude

and mystify pretenders and send them

'

into everlasting

Coventry,'

its

delight.

We
of the
least

contemn in turn every other

world
;

gift of
little

men
own

but the habit even in

and the

matters of not appealing to any but our

sense

of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry.

it

There

is

almost no kind of self-reliance, so

be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not

occasionally adopt
saloons.

and give
soul
is

it

the freedom of

its
if

A sainted
so will

always elegant, and,

it will, passes

unchallenged into the most guarded

ring.
crisis

But

Jock the teamster

pass, in

some

that brings
is

him

thither,

and find favor, as

long as his head

stance,

not giddy with the

new
to

circumId

and the iron shoes do not wish

dance

MANNERS.
waltzes

129
nothing settled

and

cotillons.

For

tliere is

in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the

energy of the individual.

ball,

The maiden

at her first

the countryman at a city dinner, believes that

is

there

a ritual according to which every act and

compliment must be performed, or the failing party

must be

cast out of

tliis

presence.

Later they learn

their

that good sense

and character make

own forms

every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or

refuse
it,

stay or go,

sit

in a chair or sprawl with

children on the floor, or stand on their head, or

what

else soever, in
is

new and

aboriginal

that strong will

always in fashion,

let

be unfashionable.

All that fashion

way and who will demands is

;

composure and seK-content.

fectly well-bred

A circle

of

men

per-

would be a company of

sensible

persons in which every man's native manners and

character appeared.
quality, he is nothing.

If the fashionist have not this

We are
in a

such lovers of

self-

reliance that
will

we excuse

man many

sins if

he

show us a complete

satisfaction in his position,

which asks no leave

to be, of mine, or to

any man's

good opinion.

But any deference

some eminent

man
to

or

woman

of the world, forfeits all privilege

is

of nobility.

He

an underling: I have nothing

do with him; I will speak with his master.

man

should not go where he cannot carry his whole

sphere or society with him,

not bodily, the whole

180
circle

MANNERS.
of his
friends,

but atmospherically.

He
atti-

should preserve in a new company the same

tude of mind and reality of relation which his daily

associates

draw him

to, else

he

is

shorn of his best

beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club,

" If you could see Vich Ian

Vohr with
if

his tail

on
his

"

But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry

belongings in some fashion,

not added as honor,

then severed as disgrace.

There will always be in society certain persons

who

are mercuries of

its

approbation, and whose

glance will at any time determine for the curious

their standing in the world.

These are the chamAccept their coldness

berlains of the lesser gods.

as an

omen

of grace with the loftier deities,

all their privilege.

and

allow them

They

are clear in

their office, nor could they be thus formidable with-

out their

own

merits.

But do not measure the imand

portance of this class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor

shame.

They pass

also at their just rate

circles

for
a^

how
sort

can they otherwise, in

which

exist as

of herald's office for the sifting of character ?

As

the

first

thing

man

requires of

man

is reality,

so that appears in all the forms of society.

We

pointedly, and by name, introduce the parties to

each other.
that this
is

Know you

before all heaven and earth,

this is

Andrew, and

Gregory,

they

MANNERS.
look each other in the eye
;

131

they grasp each other's

It is a
;

hand, to identify and signalize each other.

great satisfaction.

A gentleman
many

never dodges

his

eyes look straight forward, and he assures the other

party, first of
is it
all,

that he has been met.

visits

For what

that
Is

we
it

seek, in so

and hospitals

ties ?

your draperies, pictures, and decoranot insatiably ask.

tions ?

Or do we
?

Was

man

in the house

hold where there

is

may easily go into a great house^ much substance, excellent proand

taste,

vision for comfort, luxury,

and yet not

who shall subormay go into a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. It
encounter there any Amphitryon
dinate these appendages. I

was therefore a very natural point

etiquette that a gentleman

of old feudal
visit,

who

received a

though

it

were of his sovereign, should not leave

his roof, but shoidd wait his arrival at the door of his house.

No

house, though
is

it

were the Tuileries

or the Escurial,

good for anything without a

master.

And

hospitality.
self

we are not often gratified by this Every body we know surrounds himyet

with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gar-

dens, equipage
to interpose
it

and

all

manner

of toys, as screens

between himself and his guest.

if

Does
na

not seem as

man was

of a very sly, elusive

so

tore,

and dreaded nothing

much

as a full rert

132

MANNERS.
It were un

contre front to front with his fellow ?

merciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of these

screens,

which are of eminent convenience, whether

is

the guest

too great or too

friends

little.

We

call to-

gether

many

who keep each

other in play,

or by luxuries and ornaments w^e amuse the

people,

young
whose
at the

and guard our retirement.

realist

Or

if

perchance

a searching
eye

comes to our

gate, before

we have no

care to stand, then again

ourselves as

we run

to our curtain,

voice of the

and hide Lord God

Adam

in the garden.

Cardinal

Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, defended himself

from the glances of Napoleon by an immense

Napoleon remarked them,
to rally

pair of green spectacles.

and speedily managed

them

off

and yet

Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough, with

eight hundred thousand troops at his back, to face

a pair of f reebom eyes, but fenced himself with

quette and within triple barriers of reserve
as all the world
;

eti-

and,

knows from Madame de

Stael,

was
rich

wont,

when he foimd

himself observed, to discharge

his face of all expression.

But emperors and

men

are

by no means the most

skilful masters of

good manners.

No

rentroU nor army-list can dig;

nify skulking and dissimulation

and the

first

point

of courtesy must always be truth, as really all the

forms of good breeding point that way.

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's trans*

MANNERS.
ration,

133

Montaigne's account of his journey into

Italy,

and am struck with nothing more agreeably

His

than the self-respecting fashions of the time.

arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of

France,

is

an event of some consequence.

Wher-

ever he goes he pays a visit to whatever prince or

gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty

to himself

and

to civilization.

When he leaves any

hung up
as a per-

house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he

causes his arms to be painted and

petual sign to the house, as was the custom of gen-

tlemen.

The complement

of this graceful self-respect,

and

that of all the points of good breeding I most re-

quire and insist upon,

is

deference.

I like that I
fel-

every chair should be a throne, and hold a king.

prefer a tendency to stateliness to an excess of
lowship.

Let the incommunicable objects of nature

isolation of

and the metaphysical

dependence.
I would have a
filled

Let us not be too

man teach us inmuch acquainted.

man

enter his house through a hall

with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he

self-

might not want the hint of tranquillity and

poise.

We

should meet each morning as from for-

eign countries, and,

spending the day together,

should depart at night, as into foreign countries.

In

all

things I would have the island of a

man

in-

violate.

Let us

sit

apart as the gods, talking from

134

MANNERS.
all

peak to peak
affection

round Olympus.
this religion.

No
This

degree of
is

need invade
to

mj^rrh

and rosemary
much,
is

keep the other sweet.

Lovers

should guard their strangeness.

all slides into

If they forgive too

It
i

confusion and meanness.

easy to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette

but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate

fine
qualities.
is

A
who

gentleman makes no noise

is

lady

serene.

Proportionate
fill

our disgust at

those invaders

a studious house with blast

and running, to secure some paltry convenience.

Not

less I dislike

a low sympathy of each with his

neighbor's needs.

Must we have

a good understandas foolish people

ing with one another's palates?

who have

lived long together

know when each wants

if

salt or sugar.

I pray

my

companion,

he wishes

for bread, to ask

me

for bread,

and

if

he wishes for

sassafras or arsenic, to ask

me

for them,
alread}^

and not

to

hold out his plate as

if

knew

Every

nat-

ural function can be dignified by deliberation and

privacy.

Let us leave hurry

to slaves.

The com-

pliments and ceremonies of our breeding shoidd recall,

however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny.

flower of courtesy does not very well bide
if

The

handling, but

we dare

to
its

open another leaf and

conformation,

explore what parts go to

we

shall

find also an intellectual quality.

To

the leaders of

men, the brain

as well as the flesh

and the heart

MANNERS.
must furnish a proportion.
coarsely

135
is

Defect in manners

usually the defect of fine perceptions.

Men are too

made

for the delicacy of beautiful carriage

It is not quite
sufficient to good-

and customs.
breeding', a

union of kindness and independence.

of,

We

imperatively require a perception

to beauty in our companions.

and a
vir-

homage

Other

tues are in request in the field

certain degree of taste
is

and workyard, but a

not to be spared in those

we

sit

with.

I could better eat with one

who did

not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven

and unpresentable person.

Moral
and

qualities rule the

world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.

The same discrimination

with less rigor, into
all

of

fit

fair

runs out,

if

parts of

life.

The average
sense, acting It

spirit of the energetic class is

good

under certain limitations and to certain ends.

entertains every natural gift.
it

Social in

its

nature,
It

respects everything which tends to unite men.

delights in measure.

The

love of beauty

is

mainly

the love of measure or proportion.

The person who

flight.

screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses

with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to

If

you wish

to

be loved, love measure.

You must
if

have genius or a prodigious usefulness

hide the want of measure.
in to polish

you

will

This perception comes

of the social into genius

and perfect the parts

Society will pardrn

Btrument.

much

and

136

MANNERS.

special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention,

it

loves

what

is

conventional, or what belongs to

coming together.

That makes the good and bad

of

manners, namely what helps or hinders fellowship.

For fashion
company.

is

not good sense absolute, but relative

not good sense private, but good sense entertaining

It hates corners

and sharp points

of

character, hates

quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary,

;

and gloomy people

peculiarities

hates whatever can interfere

;

with total blending of parties

whilst

it

values all

as in the highest degree refreshing,

which can consist with good fellowship.

And
is

be-

sides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility,

the direct splendor of intellectual power

ever

welcome
its

in fine society as the costliest addition to

its credit.

rule

and

The dry light must

but
it

shine in to adorn our festival,

will

must be tempered and shaded, or that Accuracy

is

also offend.

essential to beauty,

and

quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick

perceptions.
precise.

One may be

too punctual and too

He must

leave the omniscience of busi-

ness at the door, w^hen he comes into the palace of

beauty.

Society loves Creole natures, and sleepy

languishing

manners, so that they cover sense,

the air of drowsy
;

grace and good-will:

strength,

which disarms criticism

perhaps because such a

person seems to reserve himself for the best of the

MANNERS.
game, and not spend himseK on surfaces
;

137
an ignorshifts,

ing eye, which does not see the annoyances,

and inconveniences that cloud the brow and smother

the voice of the sensitive.

Therefore besides personal force and so

much
al-

perception as constitutes unerring taste, society de-

mands
nature,

in

its

patrician

class
it

another element

ready intimated, which

significantly terms good-

expressing

all

degrees of generosity, from

the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige,

up

to

the heights of magnanimity and love.

Insight

we

must have, or we

shall

ruu against one another and

;

miss the way to our food

but intellect

is

selfish

and barren.

The

secret of success in society is

a
is

certain heartiness

and sympathy.

man who

not happy in the

in his

company cannot
fit

find

any word
All his

memory
is

that will
little

the occasion.

information

impertinent.

A man

who

is

happy

there, finds in every turn of the conversa-

tion equally lucky occasions for the introduction of

that which he has to say.

The

favorites of society,

and what

it calls

whole souls, are able

men and

of

more
pany

spirit

than wit, who have no uncomfortable

egotism, but
;

who

exactly

fill

the hour and the com-

contented and contenting, at a marriage or a

funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shoot-

ing-match.

EnTland, which

is

rich in gentlemen,

furnished, in the beginning of the present century.

138
a good model of
in

MANNERS.
tliat

genius wliich the world loves,

to his great abilities the

Mr. Fox, who added

social disposition

most

and

real love of

men.

Par-

liamentary history has few better passages than the

debate in which Burke and

House

of

Commons

Fox separated in when Fox urged on his

moved
to tears.

the old

friend the claims of old friendship with such ten-

derness that the house was

other anecdote
is

An-

so close to

my

matter, that I must

hazard the story.

tradesman who had long

dunned him for a note of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting gold, and demanded
payment
:

" No,"
;

said Fox, " I

owe
;

this

money

to Sheridan

it is

a debt of honor

if

an accident

should happen to me, he has nothing to show."

" Then," said the creditor, " I change

my

debt into

a debt of honor," and tore the note in pieces.

Fox

thanked the

man

for his confidence

and paid him,

saying, " his debt

was

of older standing,

and Sheri-

dan must wait."

Lover of

liberty, friend of the

Hindoo, friend of the African

great personal popularity
;

slave,

he possessed a

and Napoleon said of

him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, " Mr. Fox will always hold the first place in an
assembly at the Tuileries."

We may easily
courtesy,

seem ridiculous
insist

in our eulogy of
its

whenever we

on benevolence as

foundation.

The painted phantasm Fashion

rises to

MAXNERS.
east a species of derision

139
say.

on what we

But 1
to Fash-

will neither be driven

from some allowance

ion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief

that love
that, if
this.
is

the basis of courtesy.

;

we can

but by

all

We must obtain means we must affirm

is

Life owes

much

of its spirit to these sharp

contrasts.

Fashion, which affects to be honor,

often, in all

men's experience, only a ballroom-code.

it is

Yet

so long as

the highest circle in the imagiis

is

nation of the best heads on the planet, there

something necessary and excellent in

not to be supposed that

it

for

it

men have
;

agreed to be the

dupes of anytliing preposterous

and the respect

which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and

sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which details of

high

life

are read, Ketray the imiversality

I know that a we should enter

of the love of cultivated manners.

comic disparity woidd be

the acknowledged
terrific
'

felt, if

first

circles

'

and apply these

standards of justice, beauty, and benefit to

actually found there.

the

individuals

Monarchs

and heroes, sages and

Fashion has
tion
is

lovers, these gallants are not.

many

classes

and many

rules of proba-

and admission, and not the best alone.

There

not only the right of conquest, which genius pre*

tends,

the

individual demonstrating his natural

;

aristocracy best of the best

but

less claims will lions,

pass for the time.-

for Fashion

loves

and

140

MANNERS.
company.
This

points like Circe to her horned

gentleman

is this
is

afternoon arrived from

Eide,

Denmark

who came yesterday from Bagdat here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the earth and Monsieur Jovaire, who came
and that
; ; ;

my Lord

do"\,\Ti

this
;

morning

in a balloon

Mr. Hobnail, the

reformer

and Reverend Jul Bat, who has con;

verted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school

and Signor Torre

del Greco, wdio extinguished Veit

suvius by pouring into

the
;

Bay of Naples
is

Spahi,

the Persian ambassador

exiled

and Tid AYil Shan, the

the

nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle

new
and

moon.
dens

But

these are monsters of one day,

to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and

;

for in these

rooms every chair

is

waited

for.

The

artist,

the scholar, and, in general, the clerisy,

win their way up into these places and get represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest.

Another mode

is

to pass

through

all

the degrees,

spending a year and a day in

being steeped in Cologne

St. Michael's

Square,

w^ater,

and perfumed, and

dined, and introduced, and properly grounded in

all

the biography and politics and anecdotes of the

boudoirs.

Yet these
offices

fineries

may have

grace and wit.

Let

there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and

of temples.

Let the creed and command*

; :

MANNERS.

141

ments even have the saucy homage of parodyc The

forms of politeness universally express benevolence
in superlative degrees.
.

What
false

if

they are in the

self=

mouths of
ishness ?

selfish

men, and used as means of

if

What

the

gentleman almost

bows the true out of the world ?

as civilly to exclude all others

What
from

if

the false

gentleman contrives so to address his companion

his discourse,
?

and

also to

make them

feel

excluded

Real

seris

vice will not lose its nobleness.

All generosity
;

not merely French and sentimental

nor

is

it

to

be concealed that living blood and a passion of

kindness does at last distinguish God's gentleman

from Fashion's.
is

The epitaph

of Sir

Jenkin Grout

not wholly unintelligible to the present age

"

Here

lies

Sir Jenkin Grout,

his
:

who loved
his

his friend
ate, his

and persuaded

enemy

what

mouth

hand paid
stored:
if

for

what

his servants robbed, he re-

woman gave him

:

pleasure, he sup-

ported her in pain

he never forgot his children

his finger,

and whoso touched

whole body."
terly extinct.

drew

after
is

it

his

Even
There

the line of heroes

is still

not ut-

ever some admirable

person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf,

who

jumps in

to rescue a

drowning man
charities
;

there

is still

some absurd inventor of

land

some guide and

of Po-

comforter of runaway slaves

;

some friend

some Philhellene

some fanatic who plants

142
sliade-trees for the

MANNERS.
second and
is

tliird
;

generation,
well-conill

and orchards when he

cealed piety
;

grown old some

in

some

just

man happy

an

fame

some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune and

imj)atiently casting

them on other

shoulders.
it

And

these are the centres of society, on which

for

returns

fresh

impulses.
is

These are the creators of

Fashion, which
of behavior.
in the

an attempt to organize beauty

beautiful

The

and the generous

of

are,

theory,
:

the

doctors and apostles

this

church

Scipio,

and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sid-

ney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant

heart
deed.

who worshipped Beauty by word and by The persons who constitute the natural
its

aristocracy are not found in the actual aristocracy,

or onl}^ on

edge; as the chemical energy of the

spectrum
spectrum.
chals,

is

found to be greatest just outside of the

Yet that

is

the infirmity of the senes-

who do not kno^v their sovereign when he The theory of society suj^poses the existappears.
ence and sovereignty of these.
their coming.
" It says

It di\dnes afar ofE

with the elder gods,

As Heaven and Earth are fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, thongh once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth,
In form and shape compact and beautiful;
So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads;

A power,

more strong

in beauty,

born of us,

MANNERS.
And
fated to excel us, as

14B
pass

we

In gloiy that old Darkness:

for,
That
first in

't is

the eternal law,

first in

beauty shall be

might/'

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society there is

a narrower and higher

circle,

concen-

tration of its light,

there

is

and flower of courtesy, to which always a tacit appeal of pride and referits

ence, as to

inner and imperial court

chivalry.

the parlia-

ment

of love

and

And

this is constituted

of those persons in

whom

heroic dispositions are

so-

native
ciety,

with the love of beauty, the delight in

and the power

to embellish the passing day.

If the individuals

who compose

the purest circles of

aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries,

should pass in review, in such manner as

that

behavior,

we coidd at leisure and critically inspect their we might find no gentleman and no lady;
and
Be-

for although excellent specimens of courtesy

high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage,

in the particulars

we should

detect offence.

cause elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

There must be romance of character, or the most

fastidious exclusion of impertinencies will not avail.
It

must be genius wliich takes that direction

as rare in fiction as
in fact.

it

must be not courteous, but courtesy.

havior
is
it is

High be
Scott
is

praised for the fidelity vAih.

which he painted the

144

MANNERS,
classes.
la-

demeanor and conversation of tLe superior

Certainly, kings
dies,

and queens, nobles and great

to

had some right

complain of the absurdity

that

had been put

in their

mouths before the days

of Waverley;

but neither does Scott's dialogue

bear criticism.

His lords brave each other in

is

smart epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue

in costume, and does not
please
life.

on the second In Shakspeare

reading

it is

not

warm

with

alone the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dia-

logue

is

easily great,

and he adds

to so

many

titles

that of being the best- bred

in Christendom.

man

in

England and

Once

or twice in a lifetime

we

are permitted to enjoy the

in the presence of a

charm
or

of noble manners,

man

woman who have no

bar in their nature, but whose character emanates

freely

in their
is

word and

gesture.

A
form
:

beautiful

form

better than a beautiful face; a beautiful

is

behavior

better than a beautifid

it
;

gives

a higher pleasure than statues or pictures

finest of the fine arts.

it is

the

A man

is

but a

little tiling

in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the

moral quality radiating from his countenance he

may

abolish

aU considerations

of magnitude,

and
I

in his

manners equal the majesty of the world.

have seen an individual whose manners, though

wholly within the conventions of elegant
society,

were never learned there, but were original and

MANNERS.
commanding and held out one who did not need ity
;

145

protection and prosper-

the aid of a court-suit,

but carried the holiday in his eye;

who

exhilarated

the fancy by flinging wide the doors of

of existence;

new modes
eti-

who shook

off

the captivity of

quette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured

and

free as
if

Robin Hood
need be,

emperor,

calm,
fields,

yet with the port of an

serious,

and

fit

to

stand the gaze of millions.

The open
lic

air

and the

the street and pub-

chambers are the places where

;

Man

executes his

will

let

him yield or

divide the sceptre at the door

of the house.
ior,

Woman,

with her instinct of behav-

instantly detects in

man

a love of

trifles,

any
of

coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want

that large, flowing, and

magnanimous deportment
have been friendly to
it

which

is

indispensable as an exterior in the hall.

institutions

Our American
her,

and

at this

moment
it

I esteem
excels in

a chief felicity

of this country, that

tain

women.

cer-

awkward

consciousness of inferiority in the

to the

men may give rise Woman's Eights.

new
and

chivalry in behalf of
let

Certainly

her be as

much

better placed in the laws

in social

forms as the

most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in

her inspiring and musical nature, that I

believe only herself can

served.
VOL. lU.

show us how she shall be The wonderful generosity of her senti-

146

MANNERS.
raises her at times into heroical

ments

and godlike

regions,

and

verifies the pictures of

Minerva, Juno,

or Pol}Tnnia; and by the firmness with which she

treads her upw^ard path, she convinces the coarsest
calculators that another road exists than that which
their feet

know.

But besides those who make

muses and of
fill

good

in our imagination the place of

Del23hic Sibyls, are there not

women who

our

vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the

wine runs over and

fills

the house with perfume

;

who
we

insj)ire

us with courtesy
;

who unloose our

tongues and we speak

see ?
;

who

anoint our eyes and

We say things w^e

;

never thought to have

said

for once, our walls of habitual reserve vanw^e

ished and left us at large

were children playSteep

for

ing with children in a wdde

us,

field of flowers.

we

cried,

in

these influences,

for

days,

weeks, and

we
it

shall

be sunny poets and will write

out in many-colored words the romance that you

are.

Was

Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his

Persian Lilla, She was an elemental force, and astonished

me by

her amount of

life,

when

I saw her

day after day radiating, every

instant,
?

redundant
sol-

joy and grace on all around her

She was a

vent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous persons into one society

:

like air or water,

an element
it

of such a great range of affinities that

combines
she
iB

readily with a thousand substances.

Where

MANNERS,
present all others will be

147

more than they are wont

She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she She had too much sympathy and did, became her.
desire to please, than that

you could say her man-

marked with dignity, yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven poets, but all the poems For of the seven seemed to be written upon her.
ners were

though the bias of her nature was not to thought,

but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her

own

nature as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart,

warming them by her sentiments

by dealing nobly with

believing, as she did, that

all, all

would show themselves noble.

that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or

know

Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to

those

who look

at the

contemporary facts for

is

sci-

ence or for entertainment,

to all spectators.

not equally pleasant

The

constitution of our society

makes

it

a giant's castle to the ambitious youth

their
it

who have not found

names enrolled

in

its

Golden Book, and whom

learn that
ative
:

has excluded from

its

coveted honors and privileges.

its

They have
is

yet to
rel-

seeming grandeur

shadowy and
;

it is
Vv^ill

great

by

their allowance

its

proudest

gates

fly

open at the approach of their courage

148

MANNERS.
virtue.

and

For the present

distress,

however, of

those

who

are predisposed to suffer from the tyr-

annies of this caprice, there are easy remedies.

To
most
susval-

remove your residence a couple of

four, will

miles, or at

ceptibility.

commonly relieve the most extreme For the advantages which fashion
streets namely.
;

ues are plants which thrive in very confined localities,

in a

few

Out

of this precinct

they go for nothing

are of no use in the farm, in

the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in

friendshij), in the

heaven of thought or

virtue.

But we have lingered long enough painted courts. The worth of the thing
must vindicate our
thing that
is

in

these

signified

taste for the

emblem.

Every-

called fashion

and courtesy humof honor,

bles itself before the cause

and fountain

creator of titles and dignities,

of love.

namely the heart

fire,

This

is

the royal blood, this the

which, in

all countries

and contingencies,

will
all

work
that

after its kind

and conquer and expand

approaches
fact.

it.

This gives new meanings to every

This impoverishes the rich, suffering no granits

deur but

own.

What

is rich ?

Are you

rich

enough to help anybody ? to succor the imf ashionable and the eccentric? rich enough to

make

the

Canadian in
sul's

his

wagon, the itinerant with his con*

''

paper which commends him

To

the chari

MANNERS.
table," the swarthy Italian with his

149
few broken

words of English, the lame pauper hunted by overseers

from town

to town, even the poor insane or

besotted wreck of
ception of

woman, feel the noble exyour presence and your house from the
or
;

man

general bleakness and stoniness

to

that they were greeted with a voice which

make such feel made

is

them both remember and hope

reasons
?

What
it,

vulgar

but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive

What

is

gentle, but to allow

and give
an

their heart

and yours one holiday from the national

caution

Without the

rich heart, wealth

is

ugly beggar.
to

The king

of Schiraz could not afford

be so bountiful as the poor

Osman who

dwelt

at his gate.

Osman had

a humanity so broad and

deep that although his speech was so bold and free

with the Koran as to disgust
all

the dervishes, yet

was there never a poor

man, some
fool

outcast, eccentric, or insane

who had

cut off his beard, or

who

had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him that great
;

heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the centre of the country, that it

seemed as
to his

if

the instinct

of all sufferers

drew them
? this

side.

And
?

the
Is

madness which he harbored he did not share.

not this to be rich

only to be rightly rich

But

I shall hear without pain that I play the

ill,

courtier very

and talk of that which I do not

150
well understand.
called

MANNERS.
It is easy to

see that

what

is

by

distinction society

and fashion has good

that
is

laws as well as bad, has

much
it

necessary,

and much that

dition of the

is

absurd.
blessing,

Too good
in

for banning,
tra-

and too bad for

reminds us of a

pagan mythology,
'

any attempt to
he

settle its character.

I overheard Jove, one day,'

;

said Silenus,
said
it

'

talking of destroying the earth

;

had failed

they were

all

rogues and vixens,

who went from bad

succeeded each other.

to worse, as fast as the days

Minerva
little

said she

hoped not

they were only ridiculous

creatures, with this

blur, or indeter;

odd circumstance, that they had a

minate aspect, seen far or seen near

if

you called you called

them bad, they would appear them good, they would appear
not puzzle her owl,

so

if

so

and there was

Olympus, to

no one person or action among them which would

much more

all

know whether

it

was fundamentally bad or good.*

GIFTS.

Gifts of one

who

loved me,

'T was high time they came

When

he ceased to love me,

for shame;

Time they stopped

V.

GIFTS.

It

is

said that the world

is

in a state of bank-

ruptcy; that the world owes the world more than

the world can pay, and ought to go into chancery

and be

sold.

I do not think this general insolvency,

all

which involves in some sort

be the reason of the

the population, to

difficulty experienced at Christ-

mas and New Year and other

gifts
;

times, in bestowing

since

it is

always so pleasant to be generous,

though very vexatious to pay debts.

But the imany time

due from
it

pediment

lies in

the choosing.

If at
is

comes into
opportunity

my
is

head that a present

me

to somebody, I

am
;

puzzled what to give, until the

gone.

Flowers and

fruits are al-

ways

fit

presents

flowers, because they are a

proud
the

assertion that
utilities of the

a ray of beauty outvalues

world.

all

These gay natures contrast

with the somewhat stem countenance of ordinary

nature
house.
:

they are like music heard out of a work-

Nature does not cocker us

;

we

are chilis

dren, not pets

she

is

not fond

everything

154

GIFTS.

dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe uni-

versal laws.

Yet these
tell

delicate flowers look like

the frolic and interference of love and beauty.

Men
we we

use to

us that

we

love flattery even though

are not deceived

by

it,

because

it

shows that

are of importance enough to be courted.

:

Somewhat

thing like that pleasure, the flowers give us

am

I to

whom

these sweet hints are addressed ?

Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the

flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic val-

ues being attached to them.

to

If a

man

should send

me

to

come a hundred miles

to visit

him and

should set before

me

a basket of fine summer-fruit,

I should think there was some proportion between

the labor and the reward.

For common
perative leaves

gifts, necessity

makes pertinences
is

and beauty every day, and one

glad when an imif

him no option

since

the

man

at

the door have no shoes, you have not to consider

whether you could procure him a paint-box.

as
it is

And
it

always pleasing to see a

man

eat bread, or

drink water, in the house or out of doors, so

is

always a great satisfaction to supply these

Necessity does everything well.
it

first

wants.

In our con-

dition of universal dependence

let

seems heroic to

the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and

to give all that is asked,

ience.

though at great inconvenit

If

it

be a fantastic desire,

is

better to

GIFTS.
leave to others the office of punishing him.

155
I can

think of

many

parts I should prefer playing to that

of the Furies.

Next

to things of necessity, the

rule for a gift, which one of

is

my

friends prescribed,

that

we might convey
him

to

some person that which

properly belonged to his character, and was easily

associated with
of compliment
in thought.

But our tokens

but

and love are for the most part bargifts,

barous.

Eings and other jewels are not

apologies for gifts.

thyself.

The only

gift is a portion of

poet

Thou must brings his poem

;

bleed for me.

;

Therefore the
;

the shepherd, his lamb

the

farmer, corn

the miner, a

gem

the sailor, coral

;

and

shells

the painter, his picture

the girl, a
is

handkerchief of her own sewing.

pleasing, for
it

This

right

and

restores society in so far to the priis

mary

basis,

when a man's biography

is

convej^ed

in his gift,

and every man's wealth

an index of

his merit.

But

it is

a cold lifeless business

when

you go
smith's.

to the shops to

buy me something which

life

does not represent your

and

talent,

but a gold-

This

is fit

for kings,

and rich men who

a kind

represent kings, and a false state of property, to

make
mail.

presents of gold

and

silver stuffs, as

of symbolical sin-offering,

or

payment

of black-

The law

of benefits

is

a difficult channel, which

It is

requires careful sailing, or rude boats.

not

156
the office of a

GIFTS.

man

to receive gifts.

How dare

you
do

give

them

We wish

to

be self-sustained.

We

not quite forgive a giver.

is

The hand
is

that feeds us

in

some danger

of being bitten.

We can receive

anything from love, for that

it

a way of receiving

from ourselves

but not from any one who as=

sumes to bestow.
which we
eat,

We

sometimes hate the meat

because there seems something of

it
:

degrading dependence in living by

" Brother,
if

Jove to thee a present make,

that

Take heed

from

his

hands thou nothing take."

less will content us.
us,

We We
ence,

ask the whole.

arraign society
fire

Nothing
if
it

do not give

besides

earth and

and water, opportunity,

love, rever-

and objects of veneration.

is

He

a good

man who

can receive a gift well.

We
is

are either glad or sorry at a gift,

and both

emotions are unbecoming.

Some

violence I think

done, some degradation borne,

I

when

I rejoice or

grieve at a gift.
is

am

sorry
gift

when my independence
comes from such as do

invaded, or

when a

not

know my
if

spirit,

and

so the act is not supported

and

the gift pleases

me

overmuch, then I should

be ashamed that the donor should read

my

heart,

and

see that I love his

gift, to

commodity, and not him.

The

be true, must be the flowing of the

giver unto me, correspondent to

my

flowing unto

GIFTS.
him.
"Wlien
tlie

157
level,

waters are at

then

my goods
all

pass to him, and his to me.

All his are mine,

mine

his.
oil

I say to him.

How

can jou give

me
your

this
oil

pot of

or this flagon of wine

is

when

all

and wine

mine, which belief of mine this gift

?

seems to deny

Hence the

fitness of beautiful, not

is flat is

useful tilings, for gifts.

tion,

This giving

usurpa-

and therefore when the beneficiary

hate
all

ungrateall

ful, as all beneficiaries

Timons, not at

considering the value of the gift but looking back

to the greater store
it

was taken from,

I rather

sympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger

of
is

my

lord Timon.
is

For the expectation

of gratitude

mean, and

continually punished by the total inIt is a great hap-

sensibility of the obliged person.

piness to get off without injury

and heart-burning
be served by

from one who has had the

you.
served,

ill-luck to

It is a very onerous business, this of being

and the debtor naturally wishes

to give
is

you
that

slap.

golden text for these gentlemen

wliich

I so

admire in the Buddhist, who never

thanks, and
factors."

who

says, "

Do

not flatter your bene-

The reason
there
is

of these discords I conceive to be that

no commensurability between a

man and

any

gift.

You

cannot give anything to a magnani-

mous

person.

After you have served him he at

once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.

The

158
service a
isli

GIFTS.

man

renders his friend

service he

is trivial

and

self-

compared with the

knows
also.

his friend

stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he

begun
in

to serve his friend,

and now

had Compared
Besides,
evil, is so

with that good-Avill I bear

my friend, the benefit it is

small.

my

power

to render

him seems
that

our action on each other, good as well as

incidental

and

at

random
benefit,

the

acknowledgments of

we can seldom hear any person who would

thank us for a
humiliation.

without some shame and

We

can rarely strike a direct stroke,

;

but must be content with an oblique one

we

sel-

dom have
fit

the satisfaction of yielding a direct beneis

which

directly received.

But

rectitude scatit,

ters favors

on every side without knowing

and

receives with

wonder the thanks

of all people.

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty

of love,

which

is

the genius and god of gifts, and to

whom we must

not affect to prescribe.

Let him
There
This

give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. are persons from

whom we

always expect fairyis

tokens

let

us not cease to expect them.

prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal

rules.

For the

rest,

I like to see that

we cannot be
and
of

bought and
generosity
that I
is

sold.

The
to

best of hospitality

also not in the will, but in fate.

I find

am

not

you do not

feel

much me

you

you do not need me

I thrust out of doors,

then

am

GIFTS. though you proffer

vices are of

159

me

house and lands.

likeness.

No

ser-

any value, but only

When

have attempted to join myself to others by services,

it

proved an intellectual

trick,

no

more.

They
out.

eat your service like apples,

and leave you

But love them, and they

you
all

feel

you and delight in

the time.

NATURE.

The rounded world

Nine times folded

is

fair to see,

in

mystery

Though baffled seers cannot impai-t The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb
thine with Nature's throbbing breast,

And

all is clear

from east

to west.

Spirit that lurks each

form withui
;

Beckons

to spirit of its kin

Self-kindled every atom glows,

And

hints the future

which

it

owes.

VI.

NATURE.

There
reaches

are days which occur in this climate, at

almost any season of the year, wherein the world

its

perfection

bodies and the earth,

when the air, the heavenly make a harmony, as if nature

; ;

would indidge her offspring

when, in these bleak

is

upper sides of the planet, nothing

to desire that

we have heard

of the happiest latitudes,

and we

bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba

when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem
to have great

and tranquil thoughts.

little

These halcy-

ons

may

be looked for with a

more assurance

m that

pure October weather which we distinguish

of the Indian

by the name

summer.

The

day, imhills

measurably long, sleeps over the broad

and

warm wide

fields.

To have

lived through all its

tsunny hours, seems longevity enough.

The

soli-

tary places do not seem quite lonely.

of the forest, the surprised

At
of

the gates

man

of the world is

forced to leave

his

city estimates

great

and

164
small, wise
falls off his

NATURE.
and
foolish.

The knapsack
first
is

of

custom

back with the

step he takes into

these

precincts.

Here
find

sanctity which

shames

our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes.

Here we
god
all

Nature to be the circumstance

which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges

like a

men

that

come

to her.

We

have

crept out of our close and crowded houses into

the
tic

night and morning, and

beauties daily

we

see

what majes-

wrap us

in their bosom.

How
so-

willingly

we would escape the

barriers which ren-

der them comparatively impotent, escape the

phistication

and second thought, and

suffer nature

to intrance us.
is like

The tempered
anciently
-

light of the
is

woods

a perpetual morning, and

stimulating and

heroic.

The

reported spells of these

of pines, hemlocks,

places creep on us.

The stems
lilie

and oaks almost gleam

iron on the excited eye.

The incommunicable
live

trees begin to persuade us to

life

with them, and quit our

of solemn trifles.
is

Here no

history, or church, or state,

interpolated

on the divine sky and the immortal year.

easil}?^

How

we might walk onward

each

into the opening land-

scape, absorbed
fast succeeding

by new pictures and by thoughts

otherc, until

by degrees the

rec-

ollection of

home was crowded out

by
in

of the mind, all

memory

obliterated

the t}Tanny of the present,

and we were led

triumph by nature.

NATURE.

165

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober

and heal
native

us.
us.

These are plain pleasures, kindly and

to

We

come

to our

own, and make

friends with matter, which the

of the schools

ambitious chatter
despise.

would persuade us to
it
;

We
%

never can part with

the

mind

loves its old

home

as water to our thirst, so

is

the rock, the ground, to

It is firm

our eyes and hands and

is

feet.

water
!

it

cold flame

what health, what

affinity

Ever
in

an old friend, ever

like a dear friend

and brother
comes

when we chat

affectedly with strangers,

this honest face,

and takes a grave

senses

liberty with us, Cities give

and shames us out of our nonsense.

not the

human
so

room enough.
scope, just as
all

We

go out

daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon,

and require
for our bath.
fluence,

much

we need water

There are

degrees of natural in-

from these quarantine powers of nature, up

to her dearest

and gravest ministrations to the imsoul.

agination and the

There

is

the bucket of

cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to which

the chilled traveller rushes for safety,

is

and

there

the sublime moral of autumn and of noon.

nature,

We

Tiestle in

and draw our living as parasites

call us to solitude

from her roots and grains, and we receive glances

from the heavenly bodies, which

and
is

foretell the remotest future.

The blue

zenith
]

the point in which romance and reality meet.

166
think
if

NATURE.
we should be rapt away
into all that

we

dream
and

of heaven,

and should converse with Gabriel

would be
all

Uriel, the upper sky

that would

remain of our furniture.

It seems as if the

day was not wholly profane

in

which we have given heed to some natural

object.

The

fall of

snowflakes in a stiU
its

air,

preserving to

each crystal

perfect form

the blowing of sleet

;

over a wide sheet of water, and over plains

the

waving

ryefield

the mimic waving of acres of

houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and

ripple before the eye
;

the reflections of trees and

;

flowers in glassy lakes

the musical steaming odorall trees to

ous south wind, which converts

wind-

harps

the crackling and spurting of hemlock in

the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the

walls and faces in the sittingroom,

these

are the

music and pictures of the most ancient religion.

My house

stands in low land, with limited outlook,

village.

and on the skirt of the

But I go with
and
^\dth

my
one

friend to the shore of our

little river,

stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics

personalities, yes,

and
and

and the world of

and pass

villages

personalities, behind,

into a delicate realm

and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.
of sunset

We

penetrate bodily this incredible beauty

we

dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes

NATURE,
are bathed in these
lights

167

and forms.

holi-

day, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the

proudest,

most heart-rejoicing

festival that valor

and beauty,

power and
lishes itself

taste, ever

decked and enjoyed, estab=

on the instant.

These sunset clouds^

these delicately emerging stars, with their private

and

ineffable glances, signify

it

and

proffer

it,

am

taught the poorness of our

invention, the ugli'

ness of towns and palaces.

early learned that they must

Art and luxury have

work

as

enhancement
I

and sequel
structed

to this original

beauty.

am

overin-

for

my

return.

Henceforth I shall be
I

hard to please.

I cannot go back to toys.

am

grown expensive
shall

and

sophisticated.

can no

longer live without elegance, but a countryman

be
;

my

master of

revels.

He who knows

the

most

he who knows what sweets and virtues are

in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,

and how
rich

to

come

at these enchantments,

is

the

and royal man.

Only

as far as the masters of

the world have called in nature to their aid, can

they reach the height of magnificence.

This

is

the

meaning of

their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-

houses, islands, parks

and preserves,

to

back their
I

faulty personality with these strong accessories.

do not wonder that the landed interest should be

invincible in the State with these dangerous auxiliaries.

These bribe and invite

not kings, not pal

168
aces, not

NATURE.
men, not women, but these tender and

poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises.

We heard

what the rich man

grove, his wine
tion

said,

we knew

of his villa, his

and

his

company, but the provoca-

and point

of the invitation

came out

of these

beguiling stars.

In their

soft glances I see

what

men

strove to realize in

some
it is

Versailles, or Paplios,

or Ctesiphon.

Indeed,

the magical lights of

the horizon and the blue sky for the background

which save

all

our works of

art,

which were other-

wise bawbles.
vility

When

the rich tax the poor with ser-

and obsequiousness, they should consider the

effect of

men

reputed to be the possessors of nature,

on imaginative minds.
as the poor fancy riches

Ah
!

if

the rich were rich

boy hears a military

band play on the

him.

field at night,

and he has kings

hill

and queens and famous chivalry palpably before

He

hears the echoes of a horn in a

coun-

try, in the

Notch Mountains, for example, wliich

converts the mountains into an

^olian harp,
all

and

this supernatural th^alira restores to

him the
divine

Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and

hunters and huntresses.
lofty, so

haughtily

Can a musical note be so beautiful To the poor young

!

poet, thus fabulous

is

his picture of society

;

he

is

loyal

he respects the rich

;

they are rich for the

his fancy

sake of his imagination

be, if they

how poor
I

would
some

were not rich

That they

Jiave

NATURE.
liigli-fenced

169
call

grove whicli they

a park

that

they live

in larger
\asited,

and better-garnished saloons

in coaches, keeping only

than he has

and go

the society of the elegant, to watering-places

distant cities,

and

to

these

make

the groundwork from

which he has delineated

estates of romance,

comshan-=

pared with which their actual possessions are

ties

and paddocks.

The muse
gifts of

herself betrays her

son,

and enhances the

wealth and well-born

air,

beauty by a radiation out of the

and

clouds,

and

forests that skirt the road,

if

certain haughty
to patricians,

favor, as

from patrician genii

kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power

of the air.

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the
material landscape
is

never far

off.

We

can find

these enchantments without visiting the

Como Lake,

or the Madeira Islands.

of local scenery.

We exaggerate the praises

from the

In every landscape the point of

the meeting of the sky and the
is

astonishment
earth,

is

and that

seen

first

hillock

as well as

from the top of the Alleghanies.

The

stars at night stoop

liest

down over
all

the brownest, home-

common

with

the spiritual magnificence

which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt.

colors

The

uprolled clouds and the

will

of

morning and evening

transfigure

170

NATURE.
The
is

maples and alders.

scape and landscape

difference between land*

small, but there
is

great

difference in the beholders.

There

is

nothing so

wonderful in any particular landscape as the necessity of

lies.

being beautiful under which every landscape

Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauvery easy to outrun the sympathy of

ty breaks in everywhere.

But

it

is

readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura

naturata^ or nature passive.

directly of
it

One can hardly speak

It
is

without excess.
is

as easy to broach

in

mixed companies what

called " the subject of

religion."

susceptible person does not like to in-

dulge his tastes in this kind without the apology of

some

trivial necessity

he goes to see a wood-lot, or

to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral

from a remote
a good reason.

locality, or

he carries a fowling-piece

or a fishing-rod.

I suppose this

shame must have

is

dilettantism in nature
of fields
is

barren

and unworthy.
his brother of ers

The fop
Broadway.

no better than

Men

are naturally hunt-

and

inquisitive of wood-craft,

and I suppose and Indians

that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters

should furnish facts

for,

would take place in the

yet or-

most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the "Wreaths"

and " Flora's chaplets "

dinarily,
topic, or

of the bookshops

whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a

from whatever cause, as soon

as

men

begiu

NATURE.
to write

171
euphuism.
Fri-

on nature, they

fall Into

volity is a

most

unfit tribute to

Pan, who ought to

be represented in the mythology as the most continent of gods.

I

would not be frivolous before

the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I

cannot renounce the right of returning often to this

old topic.
its

The multitude
of

of false churches accred-

the true religion.

Literature, poetry, science are

to this

the

homage

man

unfathomed
affect

secret, con-

cerning which no sane

man can
Nature
no
is

an

indifferis

ence or incuriosity.
besfc in us.

loved by what

It is loved as the city of

is

God, although,

or rather because there

is

citizen.

The
it
:

sunset
w^ants

unlike anything that

is

underneath

it

men.

And

the beauty of nature must always seem

unreal and mocking, until the landscape has

figures that are as

human
were

good as

itself.

If there

good men, there would never be

ture.

this rapture in na-

If the

king

is

in the palace,
is

nobody looks

at
is

the

w^alls.

It is

when he

gone, and the house

filled

wdth grooms and gazers, that

we turn from

the people to find relief in the majestic

are suggested

men

that

by the

pictures

and the

architecture.

The

critics

who complain

of the sickly separation

to be done,

of the beauty of nature

from the thing

must consider that our hunting of the picturesque

is

inseparable from our protest against false society.

is

Man

fallen

nature

is

erect,

and serves as

172

NATURE.

differential thermometer, detecting the presence or

absence of the divine sentiment in man.

of our dulness

By

fault

and

selfishness

we

are looking

up

to

nature, but

when we

are convalescent, nature will

see the

look up to us.

We

foaming brook with

compunction
energy,

if our own life flowed with the right we should shame the brook. The stream of
:

zeal sparkles with real

fire,

and not with

reflex

rays of sun and moon.

studied as trade.
astrology
;

Nature

may

be as selfishly

Astronomy

to the selfish

becomes

psychology, mesmerism (with intent to

show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy

and j^hysiology become phrenology and palmistry.

But taking timely warning, and leaving many

things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit

our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause before which all forms flee as
the driven snows; itself secret,
its

works driven

before

it

in flocks

and multitudes, (as the ancients

It publishes itself in crea-

represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd,) and in

undescribable variety.
tures, reaching

from

particles

and

spiculae

through

transformation on transformation to the highest

symmetries, arriving at consummate results without

a shock or a leap.

A little heat,
of the earth

that

is

little

mo-

tion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling

white

and deadly cold poles

tropical climates.

from the

prolific
vio-

All changes pass without

NATURE.
lence,

173

by reason

of the

two cardinal conditions of

Geology has

boundless space and boundless time.

initiated us into the secularity of nature,

and taught

us to disuse

our dame-school measures, and exchange

laro^e

our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her

style.

We knew nothing
Now we
is

rightly, for

want of performed
then

spective.

learn what patient periods must

is
;

round themselves before the rock

before the rock

broken, and the

first

lichen race

has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into

soil,

and opened the door

for the remote Flora,

in.

Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come

off yet is the trilobite
!

How

far

how
is

far the
!

quadruped

how

inconceivably remote

man

All duly arrive,

It is a long

and then race

after race of
;

men.

way
and
Yet

from granite to the oyster

farther yet to Plato

the preaching of the immortality of the soul.

all

must come, as surely as the

first

atom has two

rest are the

sides.

Motion or change and identity or

first

and second

secrets of nature

Motion and
may
be written
ring.

Rest.

The whole code

of her laws

on the thumbnail, or the signet of a

The
Every
water

whirling bubble on the surface of a brook admits

us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky.
shell

on the beach
to rotate in a
;

is

a key to

it.

little

made

cup explains the formation of

the addition of matter from

the simpler shells

174

NATURE.

year to year arrives at last at the most complex

forms

and yet

so poor is nature with all her craft,

that from the beginning to the end of the universe

she has but one

ends, to serve

stuff, all

but one

stuff

with

its

two

up

her dream-like variety.

fire,

Com-

pound
man,
erties.

it

how

she will, star, sand,

water, tree,

it is still

one

stuff,

and betrays the same prop-

Nature
to

is

always consistent, though she feigns

contravene her

own

laws.

She keeps her laws, She arms and equips and equips another

and seems

to transcend them.
its

an animal to find

place and living in the earth,

arras

and

at the

same time she

it.

animal to destroy
tures
;

Space

exists to divide crea-

but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few

feathers she gives

direction
is

him a petty omnipresence.

still

The
goes
first

forever onward, but the artist

back for materials and begins again with the

elements on the most advanced stage
goes to ruin.
If
:

otherwise all

we look

at her work,

we seem

to

catch a glance of a system in transition.

the

Plants are

young

of the world, vessels of health

and \igov
to

but they grope ever upward towards consciousness

bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having
the trees are imperfect men, and

seem

tasted the first drop

from the cup

of thought, are

NATURE.
already dissipated
uncorriipt
;
:

175
still

the maples and ferns are

yet no doubt

when they come

and swear.

to con-

sciousness they too will curse

Flowers

so strictly belong to youth that

we

adult

men

soon

come

to feel that their beautiful generations con:

cern not us

children have theirs.

we have had our day now let the The flowers jilt us, and we
;

are old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness.

Things are so

strictly related, that

according to

the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts

and properties of any other may be predicted.

If

we had eyes
must

to see

it,

a bit of stone from the city

wall would certify us of the necessity that

exist, as
all

man

readDy as the

city.

That identity

makes us
tervals
tions

one,

and reduces
scale.

to nothing great in-

on our customary
life,

We talk of deviawere not

courtier in the

from natural

as

if artificial life

also natural.

The smoothest curled

boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude

and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent

to its
es-

own

ends,

and

is

directly related, there

to

amid

Himmaleh mountainIf we consider chains and the axis of the globe. how much we are nature's, we need not be superstisences

and

billetsdoux,

tious about towns, as

if

that terrific or benefic force

cities.

did not find us there also, and fashion

ture,

Na-

who made

the mason,

made

the house.

We
The

may

easily hear too

much

of rural influences.

176

NATURE.
makes them

cool disengaged air of natural objects

enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures with

red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as

they

if

we camp out and

us,

eat roots

but

let

us be

men
elm

instead of woodchucks and the oak and the

shall gladly serve

though we

sit

in chairs

of ivory on carpets of silk.

This guiding identity runs through

prises

all

the sur-

and contrasts of the

piece,

and characterizes

every law.

Man

carries the world in his head, the

whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a

thought.

Because the history of nature

is

is

charac-

tered in his brain, therefore

discoverer of her secrets.

he the prophet and

fact in

Every known
verified.

natural science was divined by the presentiment of

somebody, before
does not
tie his

it

was actually

A man

shoe without recognizing laws which

:

bind the farthest regions of nature

gas, crystal, are concrete

moon, plant,

geometry and numberSo

own, and recognizes the

Common

sense

knows

its

fact at first sight in chemical experiment.

The Davy and common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Black, is the same common sense which made the arrangements which now it discovers.
If the identity expresses organized rest, the coun-

ter action runs also into organization.

The

astron-

omers

said,

'

Give us matter and a

little

motion and

we

will construct the universe.

It is not

enough

NATURE.
tliat

177

we should have

matter,

we must

also

have

a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and

generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centrip-

Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all this mighty order grew.'
etal forces.
'

very unreasonable postulate,

'

said the meta-

physicians, 'and a plain begging of the questiouo

Could you not prevail

to

know

the genesis of pro*

'

jection, as well as the continuation of it ?

Nature,

meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but,

right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls
rolled.

It

was no great

affair,

a mere push, but the

astronomers were right in making

there
is

much

of
act.

it,

for

no end to the consequences of the

That

famous aboriginal push propagates

all

itself

through

the balls of the system, and tlii'ough every atom

;

of every ball

through

all

the races of creatures,

of every

and through the history and performances

individual.

Exaggeration

is

in the course of things.

Nature sends no creature, no

man

into the world

without adding a small excess of his proper quality.

Given the planet,

impulse
;

it

is

still

necessary to add the

so to every creature nature

its

added a

little

violence of direction in

proper path, a shove to

put

it

on

its

way

in every instance a slight gen-

erosit}^,

a drop too much.

rot,

Without

electricity the

air

would
Ill

and without

this violence of direc-

tion

which men and

12

women

have, without a spice of

VOL.

178
bigot

NATURE.
and fanatic, no excitement, no
tlie

efficiency.

We
act

aim above

mark

to hit the

mark.

Every
it.

hath some falsehood of exaggeration in

And

when now and then comes along some sad, sharpeyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play but blabs the secret how then? Is the bird flown? O no, the wary Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier
;

youths, with a

little

more excess
aim
;

of direction to hold

them

fast to their several

makes them a

little

wrong-headed in that direction in which they are

Tightest,

and on goes the game again with new

two more.

whirl,

for a generation or

The

child with his

sweet pranks, the fool of his senses,

commanded by

every sight and sound, without any power to com-

pare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle

or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing everything, generalizing
nothing, delighted with every
at night overpowered

new

thing, lies

down

by the

fatigue wliich this day

of continual pretty

madness has incurred.

But Na-

ture has answered her purpose with the curly, dim-

pled lunatic.

She has tasked every faculty, and has

and exertions,

secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame

by all these
first

attitudes

an end

of the

importance, which could not be trusted to any

care less perfect than her own.

This

glitter, this

opaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to

NATURE.
his eye to insure his fidelity,

179
is

and he

deceived to
alive

his good.

We

are

made

alive

and kept

by

the same arts.

Let the

stoics

say what they please,

we do not
the meat

eat for the

good

of li^^ng, but because

is

is

savory and the appetite

keen.

The
it fills

veo^etable life does not content itself with castino^

from the flower or the tree a single

thousands perish, thousands
;

seed, but

the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that,

if

may
may

plant them-

selves
live to

that hundreds

may come

up, that tens

may

maturity

that at least one

replace the

parent.
fusion.

All things betray the same calculated pro-

The
is

excess of fear with which the animal

cold, start-

frame

hedged round, shrinking from

ing at sight of a snake or at a sudden noise, protects us,

through a multitude of groundless alarms,

at last.

from some one real danger

in

The lover seeks

in his happi-

marriage his private

;

felicity

and perfection, with

no prospective end
ness her

and nature hides

own

end, namely progeny, or the perpe-

tuity of the race.

But the

craft with

which the world

of

is

made, runs

also into the

is

mind and character

;

men.

No man

quite sane

each has a vein of folly in his com-

position, a slight determination of blood to the head,

to

make

sure of holding

him hard to some one point

Great causes are
is
ro'

which nature had taken to heart.

never tried on their merits
;

but the cause

180

NATURE.
suit the size of tlie partisans,

duced to particulars to

and the contention

is

ever hottest on minor matters.

is

Not

less

remarkable

the overf aith of each

man

in

the importance of what he has to do or say.

poet, the prophet, has a higher value for

The

what he

utters than

any hearer, and therefore

it

gets spoken.

The

strong, self-complacent

Luther declares with

an emphasis not to be mistaken, that " God himJacob Behmen self cannot do without wise men."

and George Fox betray

their egotism in the perti-

nacity of their controversial tracts, and

James Nay-

lor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the

Christ.

Each prophet comes

presently to identify

himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and

shoes sacred.

sons with the judicious,

ple,

However this ma}^ discredit such perit helps them with the peo-

as

it

gives heat, pungency, and publicity to

their words.
in

A similar experience is not infrequent

life.

Each young and ardent person when the hours of prayer The and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. pages thus written are to him burning and fragrant he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the
private
writes a diary, in which,

morning

star; he wets

them with

his tears; they

are sacred ; too good for the world, and hardly yet
to

be shown to the dearest friend.

is

This

is

the man-

child that

born to the

soul,

and her

life still cir.

eulates in the babe.

The

umbilical cord has not yet

NATURE.
been cut.
to wish to

181

After some time has elapsed, he begins

admit his friend to

this

hallowed experi-

ence,

and with

hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes

the pages to his eye.

Will they not burn

his eyes ?

The

friend coldly turns

them

over,

and passes from

the writing to conversation, with easy transition,

which strikes the other party with astonishment and

vexation.

He

cannot suspect the writing

of fervid
life,

itself.

Days and nights

of

communion with

angels of darkness and of light have engraved their

shadowy characters on that tear-stained book.

Is there then

He

suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend.

no friend ?

He

cannot yet credit that

one
not

may have impressive experience and yet may know how to put his private fact into literature
we

and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other

tongues and ministers than we, that though
should hold our peace the truth would not the less

be spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our

zeal.

A man

can only speak so long as he does

not feel his speech to be partial and inadequate.

It is partial, but he does not see
it

to

be so whilst

he utters

it.

As

soon as he

is

released from the

its partiality,

mstinctive and particular and sees

shuts his

he

mouth

in disgust.

For no man can write

is

anything who does not think that what he writes

for the time the history of the world
;

or do anyto be of

thing well

who does not esteem

his

work

182
importance.

NATURE.

My work may be

of none, but I must

not think
punity.

it

of none, or I shall not

do

it

with im-

In

like

manner, there

is

throughout nature some-

thing mocking, something that leads us on and on,

but arrives nowhere

keeps no faith with us.

All

promise outruns the performance.

system of approximations.
tive of

We
is

live in

Every end
is

prospec-

some other end, which

final success

also

temporary

a round and

nowhere.

We

are en-

Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to drink but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us
camped
in nature, not domesticated.
;

hungry and

thirsty, after the

stomach

is full.

It is

the same with all our arts and performances.

Our

music, our poetry, our language

factions, but suggestions.

itself

are not satisfor wealth,

The hunger

which reduces the planet to a garden, fools the

eager pursuer.

What

is

the end sought?

Plainly

to secure the ends of

good sense and beauty from

the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind.

But what an operose method! What a train of This palace means to secure a little conversation
!

of brick

and

stone,

these servants, this kitchen,

these stables, horses

and equipage,
;

this bank-stock

and

file

of mortgages

trade to all the world,

coun-

try house
little

and cottage by the waterside,

all for
!

conversation, high, clear, and spiritual

Could

NATURE.
it

183

not be had as well by beggars on the high-

way?

No,

all

these

thmgs came from successive

oj)portunity.
;

efforts of these

beggars to remove friction from the

wheels of

life,

and give

Conversa-

tion, character,

were the avowed ends

wealth was

good as

it

appeased the animal cravings, cured the

silenced the creaking door, brought

smoky chimney,

friends together in a

warm and

quiet room,

and

kept the children and the dimier-table in a

ent apartment.

differ-

Thought, virtue, beauty, were the

ends

but

it

was known that men of thought and

virtue sometunes

had the headache, or wet

feet,

or

could lose good time whilst the room was getting

warm

in winter days.

Unluckily, in the exertions

necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main

attention

has been diverted

to

this object;

the

old aims have been

friction has

lost sight of,

and

to
is

remove
the ridi-

come
;

to be the end.

That

cule of rich

men and

Boston, London, Vienna, and

are

now
cities

the governments generally of the world

and governments of the rich

and the masses

are not men, but

poor men^ that

is,

men who would

be rich

this is the ridicule of the class, that they

arrive with pains

and sweat and fury nowhere

is

when

all is

done,

it

for nothing.

They

are like
of

one who has interrupted

the

conversation

company

to

make

his speech,

ten what he went to say.

and now The appearance

has forgotstrikes

184

NATURE.

the eye everywhere of an aimless society, o aimless

nations.

AYere the ends of nature so great

as to exact this immense sacrifice of and cooent o

men?
Quite analogous to the deceits in
as might be expected, a similar
life,

there

is,

effect

on the eye
is

from the face of external nature.

tery, together

There

in

woods and waters a certain enticement and

with a failure to yield a present
is

flatsat-=

isfaction.

This disappointment
I have seen the

felt

in every

landscaj)e.

softness

and beauty

of the simimer clouds floating feathery overhead,

enjoying, as

it

seemed, their height and privilege

of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so

much

the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking

to

some pavilions and gardens

of festivity beyond.

It is

an odd jealousy, but the poet finds himself

not near enough to his object.

river, the

bank

of flowers

The pine-tree, the before him does not seem

still

to be nature.

Nature

is

elsewhere.

This or

this is but outskirt

and

far-off reflection

and echo
is

of the triimiph that has passed

its

by and

now

at

glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the

fields,

neighboring

or, if

you stand in the

field,

then in the adjacent woods.

shall give

The present

object

you

this sense of stillness that follows a

pageant which has just gone by.

distance,

What

splendid

what recesses

of ineffable

pomp and

lovo

NATURE.
iiness in the sunset
!

185

But who can go where they

his

are, or

lay his
fall
is

hand or plant

foot

thereon?

Off they
ever.
It

from the round world forever and

the

same among the men and women

;

as

among
Is

the silent trees

always a referred

exist-

ence, an
tion.

absence, never a presence

it

and

satisfac-

that beauty can never be grasped ? in

is

persons and in landscape

equally inaccessible?

The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him.
She was heaven
as he.
w^hilst

he pursued her as a star

if

she cannot be heaven

she stoops to such a one

What

shall

we say

of this omnipresent appear-

ance of that

first projectile

impulse, of this flattery

and balking of so many well-meaning creatures?

Must we not suppose somewhere

slight

in the universe a

treachery and derision

Are we not
and

en-

gaged

to a serious resentment of this use that is

made

of us ?
?

Are we

tickled trout,

fools of

nature

One

look at the face of heaven and earth

lays all petulance at rest, convictions.

self into

and soothes us

to wiser
it-

To

the intelligent, nature converts

a vast promise, and will not be rashly ex-

plained.

Her

secret is untold.
;

Many and many

an CEdipus arrives he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain.

his skill;

Alas

the same sorcery has spoiled

lips.

no syllable can he shape on his

Hei

186

NATURE.
like the fresh

mighty orbit vaults

rainbow into the

deep, but no archangel's wing

to follow
it

was yet strong enough

and

and report

of the return of the curve.

But

it

also appears that our actions are seconded

disposed to greater conclusions than

we

designed.

We are escorted on every hand through life by spir=

itual agents,

and a beneficent purpose

lies in

wait

for us.

We

cannot bandy words with Nature, or

deal with her as

we

deal with persons.

If

we meas-

ure our individual forces against hers we

feel as if

may easily

we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over
them, of
form.
life,

preexisting within us in their highest

The uneasiness which

from looking too much
namely. Motion.
the wheel.

the thought of our help-

lessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results

at

one condition of nature,

But the drag is never taken from Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest
its

or Identity insinuates

compensation.

All over

the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or selfheal.

After every foolish day we sleep

its

off the

fumes and furies of

hours; and though we are

always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved

NATURE.
fco

187

them, we bring with us to every experiment the

These, while they exist in

innate universal laws.

the

mind

as ideas, stand around us in nature for-

ever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure

the insanity of men.
lars betrays us into a

Our

servitude to

particu-

hundred foolish expectations.

era from the invention of a

We
with

anticipate a

new

locomotive, or a balloon; the

it

the old checks.

magnetism your salad

whilst your fowl
is

new engine brings They say that by electroshall be grown from the seed
;

roasting for dinner

it is

a sym-

modern aims and endeavors, densation and acceleration of objects

bol of our
;

but noth;

of our con-

ing
is

is

gained

nature cannot be cheated

man's

life

but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow

they slow.
ever

In these checks and impossibilities how-

we

find our advantage, not less than in the im-

pulses.

Let the victory

side.

fall

where

it

will,

we

are

on that

And

the knowledge that

we

traverse

the whole scale of being, from the centre to the

poles of nature,
bility,

and have some stake in every

possi-

lends that sublime lustre to death, which

lit-

philosophy and religion have too outwardly and

erally striven to express in the popular doctrine of

the immortality of the soul.

excellent than the report.
continuity,

no spent

ball.

The reality is more Here is no ruin, no disThe divine circulations

is

never rest nor linger.

Nature

the incarnation of

188

NATURE.

a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice he-

comes water and gas.

tated,

The world

is

mind
Hence

precipi-

and the

volatile essence is forever escaping

again into the state of free thought.

tue and pungency of the

the vir-

influence on the

mind

of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized.

Alan imprisoned,
speaks to

man

crystallized,

man

vegetative,

man

impersonated.

That power which

does not respect quantity, which makes the whole

and the
to the

particle its equal channel, delegates its smile

morning, and
rain.

distils its

essence into every

drop of
object
-,

Every moment
is

instructs,

and every
It

for

wisdom

infused into every form.

;

has been poured into us as blood

as pain
;

it
;

con\Tilsed us

it slid

into us as pleasure

it

enveloped us

in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful la-

bor

we did not guess

its

essence until after a long

fcimeo

;;

POLITICS.

Gold and iron are good

To buy
For

iron

and gold

All earth's fleece and food

their like are sold.

Boded Merlin

wise,
great,

Proved Napoleon

Nor kind nor

Aught above

coinage buyg
its rate.

Fear, Craft, and Avarice

Cannot rear a

State.

Out

of dust to build
is

What

more than

dust,

Walls Amphion piled

Phoebus stabhsh must.

When
With
Find

the

Muses nine

the Virtues meet,

to their design

An
By

Atlantic seat,

green orchard boughs

heat,

Fended from the

Where

the statesman ploughs

for the

Furrow

wheat
is

When When

the

Church

social worth.
is

the state-house

the heartli,

Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home.

POLITICS.

In dealing with the State we ought to remember

that
its institutions

are not aboriginal, though they

;

existed before

we were born
;

that they are not su-

perior to the citizen

that every one of

them was

once the act of a single

man

every law and usage

was a man's expedient to meet a particular case

that they

aU are

imitable,

aU

alterable

we may
is

make

as good,

we may make
young
citizen.

better.

Society

an
in

illusion to the

It lies before

him

rigid repose, with certain names,

men and

institu-

tions rooted like oak-trees to the centre,

round

which

all

arrange themselves the best they can.

society is fluid
;

But the old statesman knows that

there are no such roots
cle

and

centres, but

any

parti-

may suddenly become the centre of the movement and compel the system to gyrate round it as
;

every

man

of strong will, like Pisistratus or

Cromon

well, does for

a time, and every

man

of truth, like

Plato or Paul, does forever.

But

politics rest

necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with

192
levity.

POLITICS.
Republics abound in young civilians

who
and
ed-

believe that the laws

make

the city, that grave

modifications of the policy and

modes

of living

employments of the population, that commerce,

ucation,

and

religion,

may be
it

voted in or out

and

that any measure, though

were absurd,

may be

imposed on a people
voices to

if

only you can get sufficient

make

it

a law.

But the wise know that

which perishes

foolish legislation is a rope of sand

in the twisting

that the State must follow and

;

not lead the character and progress of the citizen

the strongest usurper
is

quickly got rid of

and

they only

who

build on Ideas, build for eternity

of

and that the form

government which prevails

is

the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits

it.

The law

is

only a

mem-

orandum.
statute

We

are superstitious, and esteem the

so much life as men is its force.
it

somewhat:

has in the

character of living

The

statute

we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to-day ? Our statute is a currency which we stamp with our own porstands there to say. Yesterday
trait
:

it

soon becomes unrecognizable, and in pro-

cess of time will return to the mint.

Nature

is

not

democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but despotic,

and

will not

be fooled or abated of any

the pertest of her sons
is
;

jot of

her

authority by
the public

and as

fast as

mind

opened to more

intelligence, the

POLITICS.
code
is

193
It speaks

seen to be brute and stammering.

not articulately, and must be

the

education of the

made to. Meantime general mind never stops.

and simple are prophetic.

The

reveries of the true

What

the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays,

to-day, but shuns the ridicule of saying

and paints
bodies

aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public

;

then shall be carried as grievance and

bill

of rights through conflict

and war, and then

shall

be triumphant law and establishment for a hun-

dred years, until

ers

it

gives place in turn to

new

pray-

and

pictures.

The

history of the State sketches

in coarse outline the progress of thought,

and

fol-

lows at a distance the delicacy of culture and of aspiration.

The theory of politics which has possessed the mind of men, and which they have expressed the best they could in their laws and in their revolutions, considers

persons and property as the two obexists.

jects for

whose protection government

Of

persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being

identical in nature.
its

This interest of course with

whole power demands a democracy.

Whilst the

rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their

access to reason, their rights in property are very

unequal.

One man owns

skill

his clothes,

and another
which

owns a county.
ly

This accident, depending primari-

on the
VOL.
III.

and virtue of the

13

parties, of

194
there
is

POLITICS.
every degree, and secondarily on patrimo*

ny, falls unequally,

and

its

rights of course are

unequal.

Personal rights, universally the same,

the ratio of the

demand a government framed on

census
;

property demands a government framed

on the

ratio of

owners and of owning,

Laban, who

has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by

an

officer

on the
off
;

frontiers, lest the Midianites shall

drive

them

and pays a tax

to that end.

Jacob

has no flocks or herds and no fear of the Midianites,

and pays no tax

to the officer.

It

seemed

fit

that

Laban and Jacob should have equal Laban and not Jacob should
is

rights to

elect the officer w^ho is to

defend their persons, but

elect the officer

that

who

to

guard the sheep and

cattle.

And

if

ques-

tion arise whether additional officers or watch-tow-

ers should be provided,

must not Laban and

Isaac,

and those who must more

and a
right,

sell

part of their herds to

buy

protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with

than Jacob, who, because he

is

a youth
?

traveller, eats their

bread and not his own

In the

earliest society the proj^rietors

it

made

their

own

wealth, and so long as

comes

to the

owners

in the direct

way, no other opinion would arise in

any equitable community than that property should

make

the law for property, and ^^ersons the law foi

persons.

But property passes through donation or

inherit

POLITICS.
ance to those wlio do not create
case,
it.

195
Gift, in one

makes
it

it

as really
:

tlie

new

owner's, as labor

made

the

first o^vaier's

in the other case, of pat-

rimony, the law makes an o\^'nership which will be

valid in each man's view according to the estimate

which he
It

sets

on the public

tranquillity.

was not however found easy

admitted principle that
for property,

to

embody

the

readily

property

shoidd
;

make law
since

and persons
seemed

for persons

persons and property mixed themselves in

every transaction.
the
rightful

At

last it

settled that

distinction

was that the proprietors

should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors,

on the Spartan principle of " calling that

equal
;

which

is just,

not that which

is

equal, just."

That principle no longer looks

it

so self-evident as

appeared in former times, partly because doubts

have arisen whether too much weight had not been

allowed in the laws to property, and such a structure given to our usages as allowed the rich to en-

croach on the poor, and to keep them poor

but

mainly because there

is

an instinctive

sense,

how-

ever obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole

constitution of property, on
njurious,
its

present tenures,

is

and

its
;

influence on persons deteriorating

and degrading

that truly the only interest for the

is
;

consideration of the State

will always follow persons

persons

that property

that the highest end of

196

POLITICS.
is tlie

government
can

culture of

men

and

tliat if

men

be educated, the institutions will share their

will write

improvement and the moral sentiment

the law of the land.
If
it

be not easy to

settle the

equity of this ques-

tion, the peril is less

when we take

note of our nat-

ural defences.

We are kept by better

The

guards than

the vigilance of such magistrates as

elect.

we commonly
old,

Society always consists in greatest part of

foolish

young and
die

persons.

who have

seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen,

and leave no wisdom

lieve their

their age.

They beto their sons. own newspaper, as their fathers did at With such an ignorant and deceivable

majority. States would soon run to ruin, but that

there are limitations beyond which the folly and

ambition of governors cannot go.

laws, as well as

Things have their

to

men
is

and things refuse

be

trifled

with.

Property will be protected.

it

Corn
;

will not

grow unless

planted and manured

it

but the

farmer will not plant or hoe

unless the chances

are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest

it.

Under any
will

forms, persons and property must

and

have their just sway.

its

They

exert their

power, as steadily as matter

attraction.

Cover

up a pound
subdivide
will
it

of earth never so cunningly, divide

;

and
;

melt

it

to liquid, convert it to gas

;

it

always weigh a pound

it

will always attract

POLITICS.

197

and resist other matter by the full virtue of one and the attributes of a person, his pound weight wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any
:

law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper

force,

if

not overtly, then covertly

it
;

if

not for the law,

then against
ously
;

if

not wholesomely, then poison-

with right, or by might.

of personal influence
it is

The boundaries
natural force.

impos-

sible to fix, as persons are

organs of moral or super-

Under

the dominion of

an idea
civil

which possesses the minds of multitudes, as

persons are no longer subjects of calculation.
nation of

freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of

men unanimously bent on freedom

or con-

quest can easily confound the arithmetic of statists,

and achieve extravagant

tion to their

actions, out of all propor-

means

as the Greeks, the Saracens,

the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have

done.

In
longs

like
its

manner

to every particle of property be-

own

attraction.

A cent is the representacommodanimal

necessities of the

tive of a certain quantity of corn or other

ity.

Its value is in the

man.

It is so

much
it

water, so

much warmth, so much bread, so much land. The law may do what
owner of property
;

will with the

its

just

power
in a

will still attach to the cent.

The law may

mad

freak say that

all shall

have power except the

198

POLITICS.
;

owners of property
Nevertheless,

tliey

shall

have

no

vote.

by a higher

law, the property will,

year after year, write every statute that respects

property.

The

non-proprietor will be the scribe

of the proprietor.

What

the owners wish to do,

the whole power

of property will do, either through

it.

the law or else in defiance of

Of

course I speak

of all the property, not merely of the great estates.

When
it is

the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens,

the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds

their accumulations.
if it is

Every man owns something,

only a cow, or a wheel-barrow, or his arms,

and

so has that property to dispose of.

The same

necessity which secures the rights of

person and property against the malignity or folly

of the magistrate, determines the form

and meth-

ods of governing, which are proper to each nation

and

to its habit of thought,

and nowise transferable

In
this

to other states of society.

country we are

very vain of our political institutions, which are

singular in this, that they sprung, within the

memsuffi-

ory of living men, from the character and condition

of the peojjle,

which they

still

express with

cient fidelity,
to

and we
history.

ostentatiously prefer

them

any other in

They

are not better, but

only

fitter for us.

We

may be

wise in asserting
of the democratic

the advantage in

modern times

form, but to other states of society, in which relig

POLITICS.
ion consecrated
tlie

199

monarchical, that and not this

is

was

exj^edient.

Democracy

better

for us, be-

cause the religious sentiment of the present time

accords better with
it.

Born democrats, we are nowas

also rel-

wise qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our

fathers living in the monarchical idea,
atively right.

But

oiu" institutions,

though in coin-

cidence ^\^th the spirit of the age, have not any

exemption from the practical defects which have

discredited
corrupt.
well.

other forms.

Every actual State

is

Good men must

satire

not obey the laws too

What

on government can equal the

severity of censure conveyed in the

word

politic.,

which now for ages has

ing that the State
is

signified cunning., intimat-

a trick ?
necessity

The same benign

cal abuse

and the same

practi-

appear in the parties, into which each

itself,

State divides

of opponents

and defenders of
Parties are
to

the administration of the government.

also

founded on

instincts,

and have better guides

their

own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation.

We

might as wisely reprove the east wind or the

a political party, whose members, for the

frost, as

most part, could give no account of their position,

but stand for the defence of those interests in

which they find themselves.

Our

quarrel vAXh

200
tliem

POLITICS.
begins
at the

when

tliey

quit

tliis

deep natural

ground

bidding of some leader, and obeying

personal considerations, throw themselves into the

maintenance and defence of points nowise belonging to their system.

party

is

perpetually coras-

rupted by personality.
sociation

Whilst we absolve the

from dishonesty, we cannot extend the

to their leaders.
docility

same charity
wards of the
they direct.

They reap

the re-

and

zeal of the masses

which

Ordinarily our parties are parties of

;

circumstance, and not of principle

interest in conflict with the

as the planting
;

commercial
:

the party

of capitalists

and that of operatives

parties

which

are identical in their moral character, and which

can easily change ground with each other in the

support of

many

of

their measures.

Parties

of

principle, as, religious sects, or the party of free-

trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery,

of abolition of into

capital punishment,

degenerate
enthusiasm.
this

personalities,

or would

inspire
in

The

\4ce of our leading

parties

country

(which

may be

cited as a fair specimen of these sois

cieties of

opinion)

that they do not plant them-

selves

on the deep and necessary grounds to which

they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves

to fury in the carrying of

some

local

and momen-

tary measure, nowise useful to the conmionwealth.

Of

the two great parties which at this hour almost

POLITICS.

201

share the nation between them, I should say that

one has the best cause, and the other contains the
best men. ious

The

philosopher, the poet, or the relig-

man,

will of course

wish to cast his vote with

the democrat, for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for

the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code,

and for

facilitating in

every manner the access of

the young and the poor to the sources of wealth

and power.

But he can rarely accept the persons

him They have not at heart the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless it is not loving it has no ulterior and
the so-called popular party propose to
as representatives of these liberalities.
:

whom

divine ends, but

is

destructive only out of hatred

and

selfishness.

On

the other side, the conservaable,

tive party,

composed of the most moderate,

is

and cultivated part of the population,

merely defensive of property.
right,
it
it

timid,

and

It
it
it

vindicates no

aspires to no real good,

;

brands no crime,
does not build,

proposes no generous policy

nor write, nor cherish the

arts,

nor foster religion,

nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor

emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the

Indian, or the immigrant.

From

neither party,

when

in power, has the world

any benefit to expect

commensurate

in science, art, or humanity, at all

with the resources of the nation.

202

POLITICS.

I do not for these defects despair of our republic.

We

are not at the mercy of any waves of chance.

strife of ferocious parties,
itself

In the

human
to

nature

al-

ways finds
convicts at

cherished

as the children of the

Botany Bay are found

have as healthy
Citizens of

a moral sentiment as other children.

feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy,

and the older and more

cautious amono' ourselves are learnino^ from Euro-

peans to look with some terror at our turbulent

freedom.
It is said that in our license of constru-

ing the Constitution, and in the despotism of public

opinion,

we have no anchor

and one foreign

observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the

sanctity of Marriage

among

us

and another thinks

Fisher

he has found

it

in our Calvinism.

Ames

expressed the popular security more wisely, when

he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying

that a

monarchy

is

a merchantman, which

sails well,

but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the

bottom

whilst a republic

is

raft,

which would

never sink, but then your feet are alwaj^s in water.

No
we

forms can have any dangerous importance whilst

are befriended

by the laws

of things.

It

makes

no difference how many tons weight of atmosphere

presses on our heads, so long as the
resists it within the lungs.

same pressure
the mass a
us, as long

Augment

thousand fold,

it

cannot begin to crush

'

POLITICS.
as reaction
poles, of
is

203

equal to action.

The

fact of

two
is

two

forces, centripetal
its

and centrifugal,

universal,
023S

and each force by

own

activity devel-

the other.

Wild
of

liberty develojos iron con=

science.

Want

liberty,

and decorum,

stupefies conscience.
is

by strengthening law Lynch law

'

prevails only where there

greater hardihood and

seK-subsistency in the leaders.

A mob

cannot be

a permanency; everybody's interest requires that

it

should not exist, and only justice

satisfies all.

We
sity

must

trust infinitely to the beneficent necesall laws.

which shines through

Human nature

expresses itself in

them

as characteristically as in
;

statues, or songs, or railroads

and an abstract of
their ori-

the codes of nations would be a transcript of the

common
is

conscience.

Governments have

gin in the moral identity of men.

Reason for one

par-

seen to be reason for another, and for every other.

is

There
ties,

a middle measure which satisfies

all

be they never so

many

or so resolute for their

own.
claims

Every man
calls

finds a sanction for his simplest

and deeds,

in decisions of his

own mind,
and

which he

Truth and Holiness.

not in what

In these de-

cisions all the citizens find a perfect agreement,

only in these

is

good to

eat,

good to

wear, good use of time, or what amount of land or

of public aid each is entitled to claim.

This truth

and

justice

men

presently endeavor to

make

appli-

204
cation of to
tlie

POLITICS.
measuring of land, the apportion*
tlie

ment
Their

of service,
first

protection of life and property.

endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward.

is

Yet absolute right

government
is

the

first

governor

or,

every

The idea after which each community is aiming to make and mend its law, is the will of the wise man. The wise man it cannot find in nature, and it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his government by contrivance as by causing the entire people to
an impure theocracy.
;

give their voices on every measure

or

by a double
;

choice to get the representation of the w^hole

or

by a

selection of the best citizens

or to secure the

advantages of efficiency and internal peace by confiding the

government

to one,

who may himself

to all dy-

select his agents.

All forms of government sym-

bolize

an immortal government, conunon

nasties

and indej^endent
exist,

of numbers, perfect
is

where

two men

perfect where there

only one

man.

Every man's nature

to

is

a sufficient advertisement

him

of the character of his fellows.

is

My

right

and
what
end.
self

my wrong
is unfit,

their

right

and

their wrong.

Whilst I do what
in our means,

is fit

for me,

and abstain from

for a time to one

my neighbor and
I find

I shall often agree

and work together

But whenever

my

dominion over my.

not sufficient for me, and undertake the direo

POLITICS.
tion of

205

him

also, I

overstep the truth, and come

I

into false relations to him.

may have

so

much
a
lie,

more

skill or

strength than he that he cannot exit is

press adequately his sense of wrong, but

and hurts

like a lie

both him and me.

;

Love and
it

nature cannot maintain the assumption

must be
This

executed by a practical

lie,

namely by

force.

undertaking for another

is

the blunder which stands

in colossal ugliness in the

It is the

governments of the world.

can see well enough a
setting myself

same thing

in

numbers, as in a pair, only

I

not quite so intelligible.

great difference between

my

down

to

a self-control, and
act after

my
;

going to make somebody else

my

views

but when a quarter of the

I

human race assume to tell me what may be too much disturbed by the
Therefore
all

must

do, 1

circumstances

to see so clearly the absurdity of their

command.

public ends look vague and quixotic

beside private ones.

For any laws but those which

If I put

men make

for themselves, are laughable.

myself in the place of

my

child,

and we stand in

one thought and see that things are thus or thus,

that perception
is

law for him and me.

We

are

both there, both

act.

But

if,

without carrying him

into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guess-

ing

how

it

is

with him, ordain this or that, he will

never obey me.

This

is

the history of governments,

is

one man

does something which

to

bind

art

206
other,

POLITICS.

A man who cannot be acquainted with

me
;

me,

taxes

looking from afar at

me

ordains that a

part of
end,

not as
!

my

labor shall go to this or that whimsical

I,

but as he happens to fancy.

Be-

hold the consequence.

Of

all

debts

men

are least

willing to pay the taxes.

What

a satire

is this

on

government

Everywhere they think they get

their money's worth, except for these.

Hence

the less government

we have
less

the better,

the
The
is

fewer laws, and the

confided power.

antidote to this abuse of formal

Government

the influence of private character, the growth of

;

the Individual

the appearance of the principal to

;

supersede the proxy

the appearance of the wise

is, it

man

of

whom

the existing government

must
all

be owned, but a shabby imitation.

things tend to educe
;

That which

which

freedom, cultivation,

intercourse, revolutions, go to

form and

deliver, is

character

that

is

the end of Nature, to reach unto

this coronation of her king.

To

educate the wise

man

the State exists, and with the appearance of

the wise

man
is

the State expires.

of character makes the State unnecessary.

The appearance The

fort, or

wise

man

the State.
loves

navy,

he

He

needs no army,
;

men

too well

no bribe, or

feast,

or palace, to

draw

friends

to

him

no vantage

ground, no favorable circumstance.

library, for he has not

He
;

needs no

done thinking

no church,

POLITICS.
for he is a prophet
;

207

no statute book, for he has the

is

lawgiver

no money, for he
is
;

vahie

no road, for

he

is

at

home where he

no experience, for the

life

of the creator shoots through him,

his eyes.

and looks
of

from

He

has no personal friends, for he

who has
all

the spell to

draw the prayer and piety

men

unto him needs not husband and educate

life.

a few to share with him a select and poetic

His relation

to
;

men
his

is

angelic

his

memory

is

myrrh
flowers.

to

them

presence, frankincense

and
but

We think our
we
ing
star.

civilization near its meridian,

are yet only at the cock-crowing

and the morn-

In our barbarous society the influence of

is

character

in its infancy.

As

a political power, as
all rulers

the rightful lord

who

is

to

tumble

from

their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected.

Malthus and Eicardo quite omit

Register
it

it

the

Annual
Lexicon

is

silent

in the Conversations'
;

is

not set

down

the President's Message, the

it;

Queen's Speech, have not mentioned

it is

and yet

never nothing.

Every thought which genius

power
feel,

and piety throw

into the world, alters the world.

The

gladiators in the lists of

through

all their

frocks of force and simulation, the presI think the very strife of trade

ence of worth.

and
sucfig-

ambition

is

confession of this divinity;

and

cesses in those fields are the poor

amends, the

208
leaf with
its

POLITICS.
which the shamed soul attempts
I find the like unwilling
It is because to hide

nakedness.

all quarters.

homage we know how much

to

in
is

due from us that we are impatient

show some

petty talent as a substitute for worth.

We

are

haunted by a conscience of
of character,

this right to
it.

grandeur
of us

and are

false to

But each

has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful,

or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative.

do, as

That

we

an apology

to others

and

to ourselves for

not reaching the

mark

of a good
its^

and equal

life.

But

it

does not satisfy

whilst
It

we

thrust

it

on

the notice of our companions.

may throw

dust

in their eyes, but does not smooth our

or give us the tranquillity of the strong

walk abroad.
ent
is

We

do penance as

own brow, when we we go. Our tal-

a sort of expiation, and we are constrained

to reflect

on our splendid moment with a certain

humiliation, as
act of

somewhat too

fine,

and not

as one

many

acts,

a fair expression of our perma^

of ability

uent energy.

Most persons
all here.'

meet in

so-

ciety with a kind of tacit appeal.

say,
'

Each seems

to

am

not

Senators and presidents

have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but
as an apology for real worth,

and

to vindicate their
is

manhood

in our eyes.

This conspicuous chair

their compensation to

themselves for being of a

POLITICS.
poor, cold, hard nature.
ca?i.

209

They must do what they

have
tail

Like one
If a

class of forest animals, they

;

nothing but a prehensile

crawl.

climb they must, oi

so

man found himseK

and make
life

rich-natured

that he could enter into strict relations with the

best persons

serene around

him by
and

the dignity

and sweetness

of his behavior, could he

afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus

the press, and covet relations so hollow and pom-

pous as those of a politician ? Surely nobody would be a charlatan who could afford to be sincere.

The tendencies
to the rev/ards

of the times favor the idea of selfall code,

government, and leave the individual, for

and penalties

of his

own

constitu-

tion;

which work with more energy than we be-

lieve whilst

we depend on
tliis

artificial restraints.

movement in modern
affected

in

direction has been very

The marked

history.

Much

has been blind and dis-

creditable, but the nature of the revolution is not

by the

vices of the revolters; for this

It

is

a purely moral force.

was never adopted by

can be.
It separates

any party in

history, neither

the individual from all party, and unites

him

at the

same time

to the race.

It promises a recognition

of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or

the security of property.

man

has a right to be

employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered.

The power
VOL.
III.

of love, as the basis of a State, has never

14

210
been
tried.

POLITICS.

We

must not imagine that

if

all

things

are lapsing into confusion

every tender protest-

ant be not compelled to bear his part in certain

social conventions
;

nor doubt that roads can be

built, letters carried,

and the

fruit of labor secured,

is

when

the government of force

at
all

an end.

Are
is

our methods now so excellent that

hopeless
better
?

competition

coidd not a nation of friends even devise

ways ?

On

the other hand, let not the most

jDre-

conservative and timid fear anything from a

mature surrender of the bayonet and the system of

force.
is

For, according to the order of nature, which

it

quite superior to our will,

stands thus

there

will always be a

government of force where men

to ab-

are selfish

and when they are pure enough

jure the code of force they will be wise

see

enough

to

how

these public ends of the post-office, of the

highway, of commerce and the exchange of property, of

museums and

libraries, of institutions of

art

and science can be answered.

live in

We
force.

a very low state of the world, and

tribute to governments founded
is

pay unwilling
There
instructed

on

not,

among

the most religious and

men

of the most religious

and

civil nasuf-

tions, a reliance

on the moral sentiment and a

ficient belief in the

unity of things, to persuade

artifi-

them that

society can be maintained without

cial restraints, as well as the solar

system

or that

POLITICS.
the private citizen might be reasonable

211

and a good

neighbor, without the hint of a

jail

or a confiscation.

What

is

strange too, there never was in any

man

sufficient faith in the

power of rectitude

to inspire

him with the broad design

have pretended

of renovating the State

love.

on the principle of right and

this design

All those

who
re-

have been partial

formers, and have admitted in some

supremacy of the bad State.

a single

I do not call to

manner the mind

human being who has

nature.

steadily denied the

authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his

own moral
and

Such

designs, fidl of genius

full of faith as

they are, are not entertained

If the indi\ddual

except avowedly as air-pictures.

who

exhibits

them dare

to think

them

practicable,

he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and

talent

men

of

and women of superior sentiments cannot

hide their contempt.

tinue to
fill

Not the

less

does nature con-

the heart of youth with suggestions of

this enthusiasm,

and there are now men,

deed I can speak in the plural number,

actly, I will say, I

more

if in-

ex-

have just been conversing with

one man, to
will

whom
for a

no weight of adverse experience

make

it

thousands of

moment appear impossible that human beings might exercise towards

each other the grandest and simplest sentiments,

as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.

NOMINALIST AND REALIST

In countless upward-striving waves

The moon-drawn
The parent

tide-wave strives

In thousand far-transplanted grafts

fruit survives
;

So, in the new-born millions,

The
Not

perfect
less are

Adam Uves.
summer mornings dear
life his

To

every child they wake,

And

each with novel

sphere

Fills for his projier sake.

VIII.

NOMINALIST AND EEALIST.

CANNOT

often enough say that a

man

is is

only a

relative

and representative nature.

Each

a hint

of the truth, but far

enough from being that truth

which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests

to us. If I seek
it

in

him I shall not find

it.

Could

any man conduct into

me
!

the pure stream of that

which he pretends to be

Long
is

afterwards I find

that quality elsewhere which he promised me.

The

genius of the Platonists

dent, yet

intoxicating to the stuit

how few

particidars of

can I detach

from

all their

books.

for the thought, but will not bear examination

The man momentarily stands and

;

a society of

men will cursorily represent

;

well enough

a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry

or beauty of manners
is

but separate them and there

no gentleman and no lady in the group.

The least

hint sets us on the pursuit of a character which no

man

realizes.

We have
is

such exorbitant eyes that

on seeing the smallest arc we complete the curve,

and when the curtain

lifted

from the diagram

216
wliicli it

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

seemed
to veil,

we

are vexed to find that

no more was drawn than

arc which

just that

fragment of an

we

first

beheld.

We

are greatly too lib-

eral in our construction of each other's faculty

and

promise.

Exactly what the parties have already

;

done they shall do again

but that which we

in-

ferred from their nature and inception, they

wiU
That

not do.

That

is

in nature, but not in them.

happens in the world, which we often witness in

a public debate.

Each
;

of the speakers exjDresses

himself imperfectly

no one of them hears much

is

that another says, such

of each
;

the jDreoccupation of

mind

and the audience, who have only

to speak, judge very wisely

to hear

and not

and superiorly

how wrongheaded and baters to his own affair.

gifts

unskilful

is

each of the de-

Great men or men of great

you

shall

easily find, but symmetrical

men

never.

When

I meet a pure intellectual force or a

is

generosity of affection, I believe here then

man

and am presently mortified by the discovery that this individual is no more available to his own or to
the general ends than his companions
;

because the

power which drew

the total

my

respect

is

not supported by

symphony

of his talents.
trait of

All persons exist

to society

by some shining

beauty or

utility

which they have.

the

We
;

borrow the proportions of

which

man from

that one fine feature, and finish the

is

portrait symmetrically

false, for

the rest

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

of his body
is

217

small or deformed.

I observe a per-

son

who makes a good

this is
is

public appearance, and con-

clude thence the perfection of his private character,

on which
acter.

based

but he has no private char-

He

a graceful cloak or lay-figure for holi

saints, fail utterly

days.
in

All our poets, heroes, and

in

some one or

many

parts to satisfy our idea,

interest,

fail to

draw our spontaneous

and so leave

us

%\'ithout

any hope of realization but in our own

exaggeration of
fact that
all

future.
arises

Our

fine characters

from the

we

identify each in turn

as

with the soul.

fable
;

But there are no such men

we

no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor An-

gelo, nor

Washington, such as we have made.

it

We
was

consecrate a great deal of nonsense because

allowed by great men.

foible.

There
if

is

none without his

I believe that

an angel should come to

chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too

much
letters,

gingerbread, or take liberties with private

or do some

precious

atrocity.

It is

bad

enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful,

but

it

is

worse that no

man

is

fit

for society

who has
ple.

fine traits.

He

is

admired at a distance,

but he cannot come near without appearing a crip-

The men
by

of fine parts protect themselves

by

solitude, or

courtesy, or
;

by

satire, or

by an acid

worldly manner

each concealing as he best can

but they want

his incapacity for useful association,

either love or self-reliance.

218

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

native love of reality joins with
little
tliis

Our

experi-

ence to teach us a

reserve,

and to dissuade

a too sudden surrender to the

persons.

brilliant qualities of

Young
;

people admire talents or particuas

lar excellences

we grow

older

we value

total

powers and

effects, as

the impression, the quality,

things.
:

the spirit of

The man,
you
from

men and
it is

his system

tary word or act, but his

The genius is all. we do not try a solihabit. The acts which The

praise, I praise not, since they are departures

his

faith,

and are mere compliances.

tribes
;

magnetism which arranges

polarity
filings.
'

and races
the

in one

is

alone to be respected

men

are steel-

Yet we unjustly

select a particle,
!

and

say,

steel-filing
!

number one

what heart-drawings
and incommuniis

I feel to thee
thine
!

what prodigious virtues are these of

with'

how
'

constitutional to thee,

cable

Whilst we speak the loadstone

down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the wretched
drawn
;

shaving.

Let us go for universals

for the
life

magits

netism, not for the needles.

Human

and

persons are poor empirical pretensions.

influence
it is

A personal
it is

is
;

an ignis fatuus.
if

If they say
small,
it
;

great,
;

great

they say
see
it

it is

is
it

small

you
all

see

it,

and you

not,

by turns
vanishes

borrows

its size

from the momentary estimation of the speakWill-of-the-wisp

if

ers: the

you go too

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

near, vanishes
if

219
at

you go too

far,

and only blazes

one angle.

man
of

or no

Who can tell if Who can tell

Washington be a great
if

Franklin be ?

Yes,

or any but the twelve, or six, or three great gods

fame

And

they too loom and fade before the

eternal.

We
lar

are amphibious creatures,

weaponed

for

two

elements, having two sets of faculties, the particu-

and the

catholic.

We

adjust our instrument

for general observation,

easily as

and sweep the heavens as

we pick out a

single figure in the terres-

trial landscape.

We

are practically skilful in de-

tecting elements for which theory,

of of

we have no

place in our
sensible

and no name.

Thus we are very

an atmospheric influence in

men and

in bodies

men, not accounted for in an

a genius of a nation, which

aritlunetical ad-

dition of all their measurable properties.

is
is

There

not to be found

in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes

the society.

England, strong, punctual, practical,

if

well-spoken England I should not find

I should

go to the island to seek

it.

In the parliament,

in the play-house, at dinner-tables, I

might see a

great
tional,

number

of rich, ignorant, book-read, conven-

proud men,

many old women, and not

It is

anywhere the Englishman who made the good

speeches,

combined the accurate engines, and did

the bold

and nervous deeds

even worse in

220

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

more

America, where, from the intellectual quickness of

the race, the genius of the country
is

splen-

did in
ance.

We

promise and more Webster cannot do the work of Webster. conceive distinctly enough the French, the
its

slight in its perform-

German genius, and it is not the less real that perhaps we should not meet in either of those nations a single individual who corresponded
Spanish, the

with the

tyj)e.

We infer the
to

spirit

of the nation
is

in great measure
sort of

from the language, which

monument
And,

which each forcible individual

years has contributed

in a course of

many hundred
universally, a

a stone.

good example of

this

social force is the veracity of language,

which can-

not be debauched.
morals, an appeal

In any controversy concerning

may

be made with safety to the

sentiments which the language of the people expresses.

Proverbs, w^ords, and grammar-inflections

convey the public sense with more purity and precision

than the wisest individual.

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the

Realists

had a good deal

of reason.
:

General ideas
they round and

are essences.

They

are our gods

ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.

Our
life

proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our

and divest

it

of poetry.

The day-laborer
laws
of

is

reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale^

yet he
is

saturated with the

the

world

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

His measures are the hours
solstice
;

221

morning and night,

all

and equinox, geometry, astronomy and

of

the

lovely accidents

nature play through his

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors mthout an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful
mind.
as roses.

Property keeps the accounts of the world,

and

is

always moral.

The property

will

be found

where the labor, the wisdom, and the virtue have

been in nations, in
classes,

and (the whole

life-time

considered, with the compensations) in the individ-

ual also.

How

wise the world appears,

when
is

the

laws and usages of nations are largely detailed, and

the completeness of the municipal system
consid-

ered!

Nothing

is

left

out.

If

you go into the

markets and the custom-houses, the insurers' and

notaries' offices, the offices of sealers of weights

measures, of inspection of provisions,

and

it

will ap-

pear as

if

one

man had made

its

it

all.

Wherever

you

go, a wit like

your own has been before you,

thought.

and has
teries,

realized

The Eleusinian mysal-

the Egyptian architecture, the Indian as-

tronomy, the Greek sculpture, show that there

ways were seeing and knowing men in the planet. The world is full of masonic ties, of guilds, of secret

and public legions of honor

example
;

that of scholars,

for

and that

of gentlemen, fraternizing

with the upper class of every country and every

culture.

222
I

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

am

very

much

struck in literature by the apall

pearance that one person wrote

the books

as

if

the editor of a journal planted his body of report*

ers in different parts of the field of action,

and

re

lieved
is

some by others from time

to time

but there

such equality and identity both of judgment and

it

point of view in the narrative that

is

plainly

the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman.

I looked into Pope's Odyssey yesterday
correct
it
:

it

is

as
if

and elegant

after our

canon of to-day as
all

were newly written. The modernness of

good

books seems to give

me an
of.

existence as wide as
if

man.
is ill

What

is

well done I feel as

I did

w^hat

done I reck not

Shakspeare's passages of

passion (for example, in Lear and Hamlet) are in

the very dialect of the present year.

again to the whole over the

books.
in a

am faithful members in my use of

I

I find the most pleasure in reading a

least flattering to the author.

book

manner

I read

Proclus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read a

dictionary, for a mechanical help to the fancy

and
one

the imagination.

I read for the lustres, as

if

should use a fine picture in a chromatic experiment,

for its rich colors.

'T

is

not Proclus, but a piece of

It is a greater joy

nature and fate that I explore.

to see the author's author,

than himself.

A higher
As

pleasure of the same kind I found lately at a concert,

where I went to hear Handel's Messiah.

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

the master overpowered the littleness

223

and incapa^
to observe so

bleness of the performers

tors of his
electricity,

and made them conducit

so

was easy

what

efforts nature

was making, through

to

many

hoarse, wooden,

and imperfect persons,

fluid

produce

beautiful

voices,

and soul-guided men and

women.

The genius

of nature

was paramount

at

the oratorio.

This preference of the genius to the parts

secret of that deification of art,
all

is

the

which

is

found in
propor-

superior minds.

Art, in the

artist, is

tion, or a habitual respect to the

whole by an eye
the wonder
it

loving

beauty in
of
it

details.

And

and
de-

charm
notes.

is

the sanity in insanity which

is

Proportion

almost impossible to

human

beings.

There

is

no one who does not exaggerate.

are encumbered with person-

In conversation,
ality,

men

and talk too much.

In modern sculpture,
is

picture,

and poetry, the beauty

miscellaneous

the artist works here and there and at all points,

adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of

his thought.
artist
;

Beautiful details

we must

have, or no

but they must be means and never other.

lose sight for a

The eye must not

purpose.

moment

of the

Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and

it.

the cool reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in

When

they grow older, they respect the argument.

We obey the

same

intellectual integrity

when we

224

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

tlie

study in exceptions the law of

world.

Anomof

alous facts, as the never quite obsolete rumors of

magic and demonology, and the new allegations

phrenologists

and neurologists, are of ideal

use.
insig-

They

are good indications.

Homoeopathy

is

nificant as

an art of healing, but of great value as

criticism

on the hygeia or medical practice of the

So with Mesmerism, Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the Millennial Church they are poor
time.
;

pretensions enough, but good criticism on the

ence, philosophy,

sci-

and preaching

of the day.

For

these abnormal insights of the adepts ought to be

normal, and things of course.

All things show us that on every side we are very

near to the best.
cute with too
It

seems not worth while to exe-

much

pains some one intellectual, or

aesthetical, or civil feat,

when

presently the

dream

will scatter,

and we

shall burst into universal power.

The reason

of idleness

and

of crime

is

the deferring

of our hopes.

Whilst we are waiting we beguile

the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and

with crimes.

Thus we

settle it in

our cool libraries, that

all

the

agents with which v/e deal are subalterns, which

we

can well afford to

let pass,

and

life will

be simpler

when we

live at the centre

and

flout the surfaces.

I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but som

: ;

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

serve the clue decorum.

225

times I must pinch myself to keep awake and pre-

They melt

so fast into each

it

other that they are like grass and trees, and

needs

an

effort to treat

them

as individuals.

Though the

uninspired

man
;

certainly finds persons a conven-

iency in household matters, the divine

respect

man

does not

them

he sees them as a rack of clouds, or

fleet of ripples

which the wind drives over the sur=

face of the water.

But

this is flat rebellion.

:

Na-

ture will not be Buddhist

she resents generalizing,

and
as

insults the philosopher in every

moment with a
he also a part

million of fresh particulars.

It is all idle talking

is

much
it

as a

man

is

a whole, so
it.

and

were partial not to see

What

you say in

your pompous distribution only distributes you into

your
parts

class

and

section.

You have
is

not got rid of

partial.

by denying them, but are the more

are one thing, but Nature

You

one thing and the

other thing ^ in the same moment.

She

will not re-

main orbed
ality,

in a thought, but rushes into persons

to a fury of person-

and when each person, inflamed

would conquer
all

things to his poor crotchet,

person,

she raises up against

him another

and by
all

many
She

persons incarnates

again a sort of whole.

will

have

all.
it

Nick Bottom cannot play

;

the parts,

work
its

how he may

there will be some-

body else, and the world will be round.

\nust

Everything

have
III.

flower
15

or effort at

the beautiful,

VOL.

226

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

its

coarser or finer according to

lieve

stuff.

They

re

and recommend each

is

other,

and the sanity of

society

a balance of a thousand insanities.

She

punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an induction which

is

rare and casual.

We like to
But

come

to a height of land

and

see the landscape, just as

it

we
is

value a general remark in conversation.

not the intention of Nature that we should live by

general views.
all

We fetch fire

and water, rim about

day among the shops and markets, and get our

clothes

and shoes made and mended, and are the

victims of these details ; and once in a fortnight

arrive perhaps at a rational

we

moment.
to write

If

we were
to read,

not thus infatuated,

to hour,

if

we saw

the real from hour

we should not be here

and

but should have been burned or frozen long ago.

She would never get anything done,

loves better a wheelwright

if

she suffered

admirable Crichtons and universal geniuses.

She

who dreams

all

night of
;

wheels, and a

she

is

full of

groom who is part of his horse work, and these are her hands.

for

As

the frugal farmer takes care that his cattle shall eat

down

the rowen, and swine shall eat the waste

of his house, and poultry shall pick the crumbs,

so our economical

mother dispatches a new genius

into every district

and habit

of

mind

and condition

of existence, plants an eye wherever a

light can fall,

and gathering up into

new ray of some man

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

among her
of

227

every property in the universe, establishes thousandfold occult mutual attractions

spring, that all this
off-

wash and waste

power may
this in=

be imparted and exchanged.

Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from

carnation and
distribution
of

the

godhead, and
if

hence Nature has her maligners, as

she were

Circe; and Alphonso of Castile fancied he

could

have given useful advice.

provided
cup.
pots.
;

But she does not go un-

she has hellebore at the bottom of the

Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of des-

The

recluse thinks of

men
less.

as having
;

his

manner, or as not having his manner

ing degrees of
it,

and

as hav-

more and

But when he

comes into a public assembly he sees that men have

very different manners from his own, and in their

way
estly

admirable.

In his childhood and youth he has

had many checks and censures, and thinks modenough of

his

own endowment.
it

When
is

after-

wards he comes to unfold

stance,
it

in propitious circum;

seems the only talent

he

delighted

with his success, and accounts himself already the

fellow of the great.

But he goes

into a

mob, into

a banking house, into a mechanic's shop, into a

mill, into

a laboratory, into a ship, into a camp, and

in each

new

place he

is

no better than an

idiot

other talents take place,

rotation

and rule the hour.

leaf

The
to the

which whirls every

and pebble

228

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

we
set
all

meridian, reaches to every gift of man, and

take turns at the top.

For Nature, who abhors mannerism, has

heart on breaking up
is so

her
it

all styles

and

tricks,

and

much

easier to

do what one has done before

is

than to do a new thing, that there

tendency to a
set

a perpetual

mode.
is

In every conversation,
a certain trick, which

even the highest, there

may

be soon learned by an acute person and then

that particular style continued indefinitely.

Each

man

too

is

a tyrant in tendency, because he would

;

impose his idea on others

natural defence.

and

their trick is their

Jesus would absorb the race

but

Tom

Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps

resisting this exuberance of power.

humanity by

Hence the immense

it

benefit of party in politics, as

reveals faults of character in a chief, which the

intellectual force of the persons, with ordinary op-

portunity and not hurled into aphelion by hatred,

could not have seen.

Since we are

all so stupid,

what benefit that there should be two

It is like that brute

stupidities

advantage so essential to

as-

tronomy, of having the diameter of the earth's or

bit for a base of its triangles.
rose,

Democracy

is

moin

and runs

to anarchy, but in the State

and

the schools

it is

indispensable to resist the consolinto a

idation of all
perfect,

men

few men.
?

If

John was

why

are you and I alive

As

long as any

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

229
;

let him new poet has appeared a new character approached us why should we refuse to eat bread until we have found his regiment

man

exists,

there

is

some need of him

fight for his ow^ii.

and

section in our old army-files ?

Why not
why

new

man ?
to

Here

is

new

enterprise of
:

Brook Farm,
so impatient

of Skeneateles, of

Northampton
Essenes,
or

baptize

them

Port-Royalists,
effete

or

Shakers, or by any
it

known and

name ?
?

Let

be a new

way
of

of living.
life,

Why
is

have only two or

three ways

and not thousands

Every

man
came
more

is

wanted, and no

man

wanted much.

this

time for condiments, not for corn.

;

We We
in our

want the great genius only for joy

grove.

for one star

in our constellation, for one tree

more

But he

tliinks

we wish

to belong to him, as

he wishes to occupy

us.

He
if
;

greatly mistakes us.

I think I have done well

I have acquired a

new
molt

word from a good author

liim
is

and
it

my

business with
to

to find

my

own, though

were only

him down
use:

into an epithet or

an image for daily

" Into paint will I grind thee,

my

bride

"

To embroil

the confusion, and

make

it

impossi-

ble to arrive at

any general statement, when we

have insisted on the imperfection of individuals,

our affections and our experience urge that every

230
individual

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

is
is

entitled to honor,

and a very generous

treatment

sure to be repaid.
persons,

A recluse

sees only
all tlieir

two or
;

tliree

and allows them

room they spread themselves at large. The statesman looks at many, and compares the few habitually with others, and these look less. Yet are they
not entitled to this generosity of reception
?

and

is

not munificence the means of insight ?

For though
the players,

gamesters say that the cards beat

all

though they were never so skiKul, yet in the contest

we

are

now

considering, the players are also

of the cards. If

the game,

and share the power

you

criticise

a fine genius, the odds are that you

are out of your reckoning, and instead of the poet,

are censuring your

there
is

own

caricature of

him.

For

somewhat spheral and

infinite
if

in every

man, especially in every genius, which,

you can

come very near him,

tions.

sports wdth all your limitais

For rightly every man

a channel through

which heaven floweth, and whilst I fancied I was

criticising him, I

was censuring or rather terminatAfter taxing Goethe as a cour-

ing
tier,

my own

soul.

artificial,

unbelieving, worldlj^,

took up

this

book of Helena, and found him an Indian of

the wilderness, a piece of pure nature like an apple

or an oak, large as morning or night, and virtuous
as a brier-rose.

But care

is

taken that the whole tune shall be

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

played.
If

231
surfaces,
;

we were not kept among

everything would be large and universal

now
"

the

excluded attributes burst in on us with the more

brightness that they have been excluded.

Your

turn now,

my

turn next,"

is

the rule of the game.

its

The

universality

being hindered in

primary

form, comes in the secondary form of all sides

the points

come

in succession to the meridian,

is

and

by the speed of rotation a new whole

formed.

Nature keeps herself whole and her representation

complete in the experience of each mind.
suffers no seat to be vacant in her college.

She
It is

the secret of the world that all things subsist and

do not die but only

retire a little

from sight and

soon as a person
is

afterwards return again.

cern us
is is

Whatever does not con-

concealed from us.

As

no longer related to our present well-being, he

concealed, or dies, as

we

say.

Really, all

things

and persons are related

cession,

to us, but according to

our nature they act on us not at once but in suc-

and we are made aware of

All persons,
all

their presence

one at a time.

things which

have kno^Ti, are here present, and

we many more than

we

see

the world

is full.

As
;

the ancient said, the

world

is

^9Ze?iz^7?z

or solid

things that really surround us

and if we saw all we should be imprisis

oned and unable to move.

For though nothing

impassable to the soul, but aU things are pervious

232
to
it

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

and
like highways, yet this is only whilst the

soul does not see them.

As

soon as the soul sees

any

object, it stops before that object.

Therefore

the divine Providence which keeps the universe

open in every direction to the

furniture and
all

soul, conceals all the

the persons that do not concern a

individual.
finds his

particular soul,

from the senses of that

Tlirough solidest eternal things the

man

road as

if

they did not subsist, and does not once

suspect their being.

As
it,

soon as he needs a
it,

new
at-

object, suddenly he beholds

and no longer

tempts to pass through

but takes another way.

When
ment

he has exhausted for the time the nourish-

to

be

dra^\^l
is

from any one person or

thing,

that object

\vithdrawn from his observation, and

though

still

in his
its

immediate neighborhood, he does

not suspect

presence.

Nothing

is

dead

men

feign themselves dead, and endure

mock

funerals

and mournful

obituaries,

and there they stand look-

ing out of the window, sound and well, in some

new
is

and strange disguise. very well alive

:

Jesus

is

not dead;

he

nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet,

at tunes

nor Aristotle

we

believe

we have seen
names under

them
If

all,

and could
go.

easily tell the

which they

we cannot make voluntary and conscious

and
infer the genius of nature

steps in the admirable science of universals, let us

see the parts wisely,

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

233

from the best particulars with a becoming charity.

What
me

is

best in each kind

is

an index of what

should be the average of that thing.

Love shows

the opulence of nature, by disclosing to

me

in

my

friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal

It is

depth of good in every other direction.

compoor

monly said by farmers that a good pear or apple

costs

no more time or pains

to rear than a
art,

one; so I woidd have no work of

no speech, or

action, or thought, or friend, but the best.

The end and

game,

the means, the gamester and the

life is

made up

of the intermixture

and

reaction of these two amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies

and tends

to abolish the other.

We

must reconcile

the contradictions as

we

can, but their discord

and

their concord introduce wild absurdities into our

thinking and speech.

No

sentence will hold the

whole truth, and the only way in which we can be

just, is

by giving ourselves the

;

lie

Speech

is

bet;

ter than silence

silence
;

is

better than speech

All things are in contact

of repulsion
;

every atom has a sphere

same time
there
is

and the
may be

Things

are,

and are

not,

at the

like.

All the universe over,

but one thing, this old Two-Face, creatorof

creature, mind-matter, right-wrong,

which any

proposition

affirmed or denied.

Very

fitly

therefore I assert that every

man

is

a partialistj

234

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

him
as

that nature secures

an instrument by

self-

conceit, preventing tlie tendencies to religion

and

science

and now further

assert, that,

each man's

genius being nearly and affectionately explored, he

is

justified in his

individuality, as his nature is

;

found to be immense

and now I add that every

and, as our earth, whilst

man
it

is

a universalist
its

also,

spins on

owti axis, spins all the time around

the sun through the celestial spaces, so the least of

its

rational children, the most dedicated to his priaffair, w^orks

vate

out,

though as

it

were under
fancy

a disguise, the universal problem.

We

men

are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every

pumpis

kin in the

field

goes through every point of pumpas soon as he

kin history.

The rabid democrat,

senator and rich man, has ripened beyond

ity of sincere radicalism,

possibilresist

and unless he can

the sun, he
his days.

must be conservative the remainder

of

Lord Eldon said

life

in his old age that " if

he were to begin

again, he

would be damned

but he would begin as agitator."

We hide
pears at
dren.

this universality if

we

can, but

it

ap-

all points.
is

We

are as ungrateful as chil-

There

nothing we cherish and strive to

draw
V\^e

to us but in

some hour we turn and rend

fire
;

it.

keep a running
life of

of sarcasm at ignorance

and the
a
fair

the senses

then goes by, perchance,

girl,

a piece of

life,

gay and happy, and

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

making the commonest offices beautiful by tlie ergy and heart with which she does them and
;

235
ensee-

ing this
'

we admire and

love her

and them, and

say,

Lo

a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dis-

sipated or too early ripened

by books, philosophy,
so long loved

reKgion, society, or care

! '

insinuating a treachery

and contempt for

all

we had
others.

and

wrought in ourselves and

If

we could have any

security against

moods

If the profoundest prophet coidd be holden to his

words, and the hearer

join the crusade could

who

is

ready to

sell all

and

have any

certificate that to-

morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and
never interposes an adamantine syllable; and the

most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as

the ark of

if

God

w^ere carried

forward some furlongs,

shall

and planted there for the succor of the world,

in a few

w^eks be coldly
;

set

aside

by the same

speaker, as morbid

" I thought I was right, but I

was not,"

and
for
I

the same immeasurable credulity

new audacities. If we were not of all opinions if we did not in any moment shift the platform on which we stand, and look and speak
demanded
from another
'
I

if

there could be

any regulation,

any one-hour-rule,' that a

his point of

man

should never leave

I

view without sound of trumpet.

am

always insincere, as always knowing there are

other moods.

236

NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

sincere

How
that

and
the

all that lies in

all is

we can be, saying mind, and yet go away feeling

confidential

yet unsaid,

from the incapacity

of the

parties to

know each
!

other, although they use the

same words

My

companion assumes

mood and

habit of thought, and

to know my, we go on from

is

exj^lanation to explanation until all

said

which
were
Is it

words can, and we leave matters

at
first,

just as they

because of that vicious assumption.

that every

man

believes every other to be an in?

curable partialist, and himself a universalist

talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers

I en-

deavored to show

my

good men that

;

1 liked every-

thing by turns and nothing long

centre, but doated

that I loved the

;

on the superficies
to

that I loved
rats
;

man,

if

men seemed
its

me mice and

that I

revered saints, but woke w^ glad that the old pagan

world stood
glad of

ground and died hard

that I was

men

of every gift

and

nobility, but

would

not live in their arms.

Could they but once under-

that they existed, and them God-speed, yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and

stand that I loved to

know

heartily wished

could well consent to their living in Oregon for

any claim I
satisfaction.

felt

on them,

it

would be a great

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS

In the suburb,
in the town,

On

the railway, in the square. a

Came

beam

of goodness

down

Doubling daylight everywhere

Peace now each for malice takes

Beauty for
his sinful weeds,

For the angel Hope aye makes

Him

an angel

whom

she leads.

NEW ENGLAND

EEFORMEES.

A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY IN AMORY HALL, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 1844.

Whoever
ty-five years,

has had opportunity of acquaintance

with society in

New England
may

during the

last

twen-

with those middle and with those leadconstitute

ing sections that

any

just represen-

tation of the character

will

and aim

of the community,

have been struck with the great activity of

thought and experimenting.

His attention must be

commanded by
ious party,
is

the signs that the Church, or relig-

falling

from the Church nominal, and

is appearing in temperance

and non-resistance and

socie-

ties; in
ists
;

movements

of abolitionists

of social-

and in very

significant assemblies called Sab;

bath and Bible Conventions

composed of

idtraists,

of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent,

and meeting
these

to call in question the authority of the

Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the Church.

In

movements nothing was more remarkable

than the discontent they begot in the movers.

spirit of protest

The

and of detachment drove the mem-

bers of these Conventions to bear testimony against

240

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS,

the Cliurcli, and immediately afterwards to declare

their discontent with these Conventions, their inde-

pendence of their colleagues, and their impatience

of the

methods whereby they were working.

a realm to rule, and a
concert unprofitable.

They

defied each other, like a congress of kings, each of

whom had
that

way

of his

own

made

What

a fertility
!

of projects for the salvation of the world apostle thought all

One
and

another that no
of

men should go man should buy or

;

to farming,
sell,

that the use

money

w^as the cardinal evil

another that the

eat

mischief was in our diet, that

we

and drink

damnation.

These made unleavened bread, and

to fermentation.

were foes to the death

It

was

in

vain urged by the housewife that

as well as dough,

God made

yeast,

and loves fermentation

;

just as

dearly as he loves vegetation

that fermentation

develops the saccharine element in the grain, and

makes

it

more palatable and more

digestible.
it

No
shall

they wish the pure wheat, and will die but

not ferment.
Stop, dear nature, these
;

incessant

advances of thine
wheels
!

let

us scotch these ever-rolling

Others attacked the system of agriculanimal manures in farming, and

over brute nature
;

ture, the use of

the tyranny of

man

these abuses

polluted his food.

The ox must be taken from the

cart, the

plough and the horse from the

acres of the

hundred

farm must be spaded, and the

man must

NEW ENGLAND
him.

REFORMERS.

241

walk, wherever boats and locomotives will not carry

Even

the insect world was to be defended,

that had

been too long neglected,

and a

society for

the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitos

was to be incorporated without delay.

With

these appeared the adepts of homoeopathy, of hy-

dropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their

wonderful theories of the Christian miracles

Oth-

ers assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of

the clergyman, of the scholar.

Others attacked the

institution of marriage as the fountain of social

evils.

Others devoted themselves to the worrying

;

of churches and meetings for public worship

and

the fertile forms of antinomianism

among

the elder

puritans seemed to have their match in the plenty

of the

new harvest of reform. With this din of opinion and debate

there was a
life

keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic

than any we had known

ing against existing
of

there was sincere protest-

evils,

and there were changes

employment dictated by conscience.

No doubt
movements
suffi-

there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of backslid-

ing might occur.

But
result,

in each of these

emerged a good

a tendency to the adoption

of simj)ler methods, and an assertion of the

ciency of the private man.

the spirit
VOL.
III.

Thus
age,

it

was directly in

and genius of the

16

what happened in

242

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS.

one instance when a cliurch censured and threatened

to

excommunicate one of

its

members on account
church which

of the

somewhat

hostile part to the

his conscience led

him to take

in the anti-slavery busi-

ness

the threatened

individual immediately ex=

in a public

communicated the church,

process.

and formal
it

This has been several times repeated:

it

was excellent when

was done the

first

time, but

of course loses all value

when

it

is

copied.

Every

project in the history of reform, no matter

lent

how

vio-

and

surprising,

is

good when

it

is

the dictate

of a man's genius

and
in

constitution, but very dull

It is

and suspicious when adopted from another.

right

and beautiful

any

man

to say,

'

I will take

this coat, or this book, or this

measure of corn of

yours,'

in

whom we

see the act to be original,

spirit

and

to flow

from the whole

and

faith of liim

for then that taking will have a giving as free

and

di^dne

but we are very easily disposed to resist

the same generosity of speech

nality

when we miss
it.

origi-

and truth

to character in
all

There was in

the practical activities of

Xew

England

for the last quarter of a century, a grad-

ual withdrawal of tender consciences from the social organizations.

There

is

observable throughout,

the contest between mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steady tendency of the thoughtful

and virtuous
itual facts.

to a deeper belief

and reliance on

spir

NEW ENGLAND
In
politics for

REFORMERS.
is

248

example

it

easy to see the pro;

gress of dissent.

the country

is full

The country is full of rebellion of kings. Hands off! let there

of
tliis

be no control and no interference in the administration

of

the

affairs

kingdom
and

of

me.

Hence the growth

of the doctrine

of the party

of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that ex-

periment, in the face of what appear incontestable

facts.

I confess, the motto of the Globe news^

is

paper

so attractive to

me

that I can seldom find

is

much umns

appetite to read
:

what

below

it

in its col-

"

The world
is

is

governed too much."

So

the country

frequently affording solitary exam-

ples of resistance to the government, solitary nullifiers,

rights

who throw themselves on their reserved nay, who have reserved all their rights
;

who

reply to the assessor and to the clerk of court

that they do not courts of law

know

the State,

and embarrass the

by non-juring and the commanderby

non-resistance.

in-chief of the militia

The same
peared in
society.

disposition to scrutiny

and dissent ap

civil,

festive, neighborly,

and domestic

A restless,

prying, conscientious criticism

broke out in unexpected quarters.

the

Who
my
coat

gave
?

me

money with which

I bought

Why

should professional labor and that of the counting-

house be paid so disproportionately to the labor of

the porter and woodsawyer
'

This whole business

24-1

NEW ENGLAND
me
to pause

REFORMERS.
and think, as
;

of

Trade gives

it

consti-

tutes false relations

between men

inasmuch as 1

am

prone to count myself relieved of any respon-

sibility to

behave well and nobly to that person

if

whom

pay with money; whereas

had not that

commodity, I should be put on

in all companies,

my

good behavior
to

and man would be a benefactor

certificate

man, as being himself his only

that he

had a right
son
of

to those aids

and

services

which each

asked of the other.

? is

Am I not too
my

protected a per-

there not a wide disparity between the lot

me and
sister ?

the lot of thee,

poor brother,

my

poor

Am

I not defrauded of

my

best cul-

ture in the loss of those gj^mnastics which

manual
?

labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute

I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth

conventions of society
of saloons.

I do not like the close air

I begin to suspect

myself to be a

prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy

and

luxury.

I pay a destructive tax in

insatiable criticism

my

conformity.
traced in

The same

may be

the efforts for the reform of Education.

The pop-

ular education has been taxed with a want of truth

and nature.
to

It

was complained that an education

things
:

was not given.

We

are

students of

words

we

are shut up in schools, and colleges, and

recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years,

and come
of words,

out at last with a bag of wind, a

memory

NEW ENGLAND
and do not know a
hands,
"VYe

REFORMERS.

245

tiling.

"We cannot use our

or

our legs,

or

our eyes, or our arms.

do not know an edible root in the woods, we

tell

cannot

our course by the

stars,

nor the hour of

the day by the sun.

skate.

It is well if

we can swim and,

rule

AYe are afraid

of a horse, of a cow, of a

dog, of a snake, of a spider.

to teach a

The Roman
'

was

boy nothing that he could not learn

standing.

The
if

old English rule was,

all

All summer

in the field,

and

winter in the study.'

And

it

seems as

man

should learn to plant, or to

fish,

or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at

all events,

and not be painful

to his friends

and

fellow-men.

The
also.

lessons of science should be ex-

perimental
telescope
is

The
all

sight of a planet through a

;

worth

the course on astronomy

the

shock of the
all

electric
;

spark in the elbow,

oufrv^alues

the theories

the taste of the nitrous oxide, the

better than vol-

firing of

an

artificial volcano, are

umes

of chemistry.
of the traits of the
it

One

new

spirit

is

the in-

quisition

fixed on our scholastic devotion to the

dead languages.

The ancient languages, with

great

beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of

genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain

likeminded men,

Greek men, and Roman men,

;

in all countries, to their study

but by a wonderf id

drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of

246

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS.

all men. Once (say two centuries ago), Latin and Greek had a strict relation to all the science and culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics had a momentary importance at some era of activ-

ity in physical science.

These things became

ste-

manner of men is. But the Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in
reotyjied as education^ as the

Latin, Greek, and Mathematics,

these shells high

it

had quite

left

and dry on the beach, and was

now
and
still

creating and feeding other matters at other

ends of the world.

But

in a

hundred high schools

colleges this warfare

against

common

sense

goes on.

Four, or

six,

or ten years, the pupil

is

parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he

it is

leaves the University, as

ludicrously styled, he

shuts those books for the last time.

Some

thou-

sands of young
this

men

are graduated at our colleges in

country every year, and the persons who, at

still

forty years,

read Greek, can

all

be counted on

your hand.

I never

met with

ten.

Four or

five

persons I have seen

who read

Plato.

But

is

not this absurd, that the whole liberal

talent of this country should be directed in its best

years on studies which lead to nothing?

What
persons

was the consequence?

Some

intelligent

said or thought, 'Is that

spell to conjure with,

Greek and Latin some

of reason
?

and not words

If

NEW ENGLAND
to

REFORMERS.

247
it

the pliysician, the lawyer, the divine, never use

come

at their ends, I

need never learn

it

to

come
af-

at mine.
will

Conjuring

is

gone out of fashion, and I

omit this conjugating, and go straight to

fairs.'

So they jumped the Greek and Latin, and

it.

read law, medicine, or sermons, without

the

To
took

astonishment of

all,

the self-made

men

even ground at once with the oldest of the regular

graduates, and in a few months the most conservative circles of

Boston and
of their

forgotten

who

New York had quite gownsmen was college-bred,

and who was

not.

One tendency

appears alike in the philosophical

speculation and in the rudest democratical move-

ments, through all the petulance and

ility,

all

the puer-

the wish, namely, to cast aside the superfluous

at short

and arrive

methods

urged, as I suppose,
spirit is

by an intuition that the human

all

equal to

emergencies, alone, and that

man

is

more often
material

injured than helped by the means he uses.

I conceive this gradual casting off of
aids,

and the indication of growing trust in the

the individual, to

private seK-supplied powers of

be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy, and that

it is

feeling its

own profound

truth

and

is

reaching forward at this very hour to the

I readily concede that in

happiest conclusions.
this,

as

in

every period of intellectual activity.

248

NEW ENGLAND
to be resisted,

REFORMERS.
and protest
to
;

there lias been a noise of denial

mucti

was

much was

be got rid of by

those

who were reared

in the old, before they coidd

begin to affirm and to construct.

perishes in his removal of rubbish

Many
;

a reformer

and that makes

are partial;

the offensiveness of the class.

They

they are not equal to the work they pretend.

lose their

way

in the assault on the

all

They kingdom of
on some

darkness they expend

accidental evil,
benefit.

their energy

and

lose their sanity

and power of

It is of little

moment

that one or two or

twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but

much that the man be in his senses. The criticism and attack on institutions, which we have witnessed, has made one thing plain, that
of
society gains

nothing whilst a man, not himself

renovated, attempts to renovate things around

him

he has become tediously good in some particular

but negligent or narrow in the rest
;

and

hjrpocrisy

and vanity are often the disgusting

It is

result.

handsomer

to

remain in the establishment

better

than the establishment, and conduct that

in the best manner, than to

evil

make

a sally against

by some
it

single

improvement, without sup-

porting

by a

total regeneration.

vain of your one objection.

is

Do not be so Do jou think there

is

only one

Alas

my

good friend, there

better

no

part of society or of

life

than any other

NEW ENGLAND
part.

REFORMERS.

249

All our things are right and wrong together.

of evil washes all our institutions alikeo
?

The wave

Do you
is

complain of our Marriage

Our marriage
diet,

no worse than our education, our

our trade,

our social customs.

of Property ?

Do you

complain of the laws

It is a

pedantry to give such impor=

the

tance to them.

Can we not play

game
?
it ?

of life
in the

with these counters, as well as with those

institution of property, as well as out of

Let

into

it

the

new and renewing

principle of love,

and

property will be universality.

No
it.

one gives the

impression of superiority to the institution, which

he must give who will reform

difference

It

makes no
feel

what you

say,

you must make me

it
;

that you are aloof from

by your natural and

supernatural advantages do easily see to the end

of
all
it,

do

see

how man can do without

it.

Now
Idea,

men

are on one side.

No man
it.

deserves to be

heard against property.

is

Only Love, only an

against property as

we hold

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor

to waste all

my

time in attacks.

If I should

go

out of church

whenever

I hear a false sentiment

five

I could never stay there

minutes.

ome out

the street
to

is

as false as the church,

to

But why and

lie.

when
to

I get

my

house, or

my

manners, or

my speech, When we see

I have not got

away from the

an eager assailant of one of these

250

NEW ENGLAND
What
a
right have you,

REFORMERS.
we
is

wrongs, a special reformer,

him,

feel

like asking

sir,

to your one \drtue ?

Is virtue piecemeal ?
rao's of
beo^o^ar.

This

a jewel amidst the

In another way the right

will

be vindicated.
cities, in

In
the

the midst of abuses, in the heart of

aisles of false churches, alike in

one place and in

another,

wherever, namely, a
it

just
is

and heroic

soul

finds itself, there

will

do what

next at hand,
it

and by the new quality

forth
it

of character

shall put

shall abrogate

that old condition, law or

its

school

in

which

it

stands, before the law of

own mind.
If
partiality

was one was

fault

of

the

movement
on Asso-

party, the other defect

ciation.

their reliance

Doubts such as those I have intimated

persons to agitate the questions

drove

many good

of social reform. of

But the
spirit

revolt against the spirit

commerce, the

of

aristocracy,

and the

inveterate abuses of cities, did not appear possible

to individuals
;

and

to

do battle against numbers

they armed themselves with numbers, and against

concert they relied on

new

concert.

Following or advancing beyond the ideas of St.

Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three communities

have already been formed in Massachusetts on
kindred plans, and
large.

many more

in the country at

They aim

to give every

member a

share in

NEW ENGLAND
the

REFORMERS.

251
to labor

manual

labor, to give

an equal reward

and

to talent,

and

to unite a liberal culture with

an education to labor.

The scheme

offers,

by the

economies of associated labor and expense, to make

every

member
in

rich,

on the same amount of proper=

families,

ty that,

separate

would leave every

member
posed of

poor.

These new associations are com=

sentiments
er such a

men and women of superior talents and yet it may easily be questioned wheth;

community

will draw, except in its begin;

nings, the able

and the good

whether those who

have energy will not prefer their chance of superiority

and power

in the world, to the

;

humble

cer-

tainties of the association

whether such a retreat

does not promise to become an asylum to those

who

have tried and

strong
rily
;

failed,

rather than a field to the

will not necessa-

and whether the members

be fractions of men, because each finds that he

it

cannot enter
ship

without some compromise.

Friend-

and association are very

fine things,

and a
but

grand phalanx of the best of the human

ed for some catholic object
;

race, band;

yes, excellent

re-

member
man.
mentary

that no society can ever be so large as one

his friendship, in his natural

He, in

and mo-

associations, doubles or multiplies himself

but in the hour in which he morto^aoes himself to

tv/0 or ten or twenty,

he dwarfs himseK below the

stature of one.

252

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS.

But the men

and
strength.

of less faitli could not thus believe,

to such, concert appears the sole specific of

I have failed,

and you have

fail.

failed,

but

perhaps together we shall not

Our

house-

keeping

is

not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a

phalanx, a community, might be.

differed in opinion,

and we could

Many of us have find no man who

I have not been

could

make

the truth plain, but possibly a college,

or an ecclesiastical council, might.

able either to persuade

my

brother or to prevail
or the potation of

on myself to disuse the

traffic

brandy, but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence

might

effectually restrain us.

is

The candidate

my

party votes for

not to be trusted with a dollar,

but he will be honest in the Senate, for we can

bring public opinion to bear on him.

Thus concert
is

was the

specific in all cases.

But concert

neither

better nor worse, neither

more

nor less potent, than

in the world cannot

individual force.

All the

men

make

a statue walk and speak, cannot

make a drop
let there

of blood, or a blade of grass,

any more than one

be
concert for

man

can.

But

let there

be one man,
is

truth in two men, in ten men, then

the first time possible
;

because the force which

moves the world

ent kind.
false

is

a new quality, and can never be

furnished by adding whatever quantities of a differ-

What

is

the use of the concert of the

?

and the disunited

There can be no concert

NEW ENGLAND
in two,

REFORMERS.
in one.
is

253

where there
is

is

no concert

When
;

the individual

not individual, but

dual

when
;

his thoughts look one

way and
b;y

his actions another his habits

;

when
will,

his faith is traversed

when

his
i

enlightened by reason,

is

warped by

his sense

when with one hand he rows and with

backs water, what concert can be
?

the other

I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire.

The world
and
will

is

awaking

to the idea of union,

it is

and these experiments show what

It is

thinking

of.

be magic.

Men

will live

and com-

municate, and plough, and reap, and govern, as by

added ethereal power, when once they are united

as in a celebrated experiment,
respiration
exactl}^

by expiration and
lift

together,

four persons

heavy
only,

man from

the ground

by the

little

finger

and without sense

of weight.

But

this

union
is

must be inward, and not one of covenants, and

to
use.

be reached by a reverse of the methods they

The union

is

only perfect

when

all

the uniters

are isolated.

It is

the union of friends

who

live in

different streets or towns.

Each man,
on
all
;

if

he attempts

to join himself to others, is

sides

cramped
stricter
is.

and diminished of

his proportion

and the

the union the smaller and the more pitifid he

But leave him

alone, to recognize in every

;

hour and

place the secret soul

the works of a true

he will go up and down doing

to the astonish-

member, and,

254

NEW ENGLAND
of
all,

REFORMERS.
be clone with concert,
vv^ill

ment

the

work
spoke.

will

though no

man

Government

be

ada/"

mantine without any governor. The union must be

ideal in actual individualism.

I pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in man, which the heart
is

preaching to

us in these days, and which engages the more regard, from the consideration that the specidations
of one generation are the history of the next fol-

lowing.

In alluding just now to our system of education,

I spoke of the deadness of
its

details.

But
its

it

is

open to graver criticism than the palsy of

bers
:

memfaith.

it is

a system of despair.

The
is

disease with

which the human mind now labors

want of

Men

do not believe in a power of education.

We
high

do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in

man, and we do not

aims.

try.

We

renounce

all

We

believe that the defects of so

perverse and so

many

frivolous people

many who make

up

society, are organic,

and

society

is

a hospital of

incurables.

A man of good sense but of little faith,

to lead

whose compassion seemed

have concerts, and
too honest,

him

to church as

often as he went there, said to

to
fairs,

me

that " he liked

and churches, and other

I

public amusements go on."

am

afraid the reori.

mark

is

and comes from the same

gin as the

maxim

of the tyrant, " If you would rule

NEW ENGLAND
the world quietly, you
notice too that the

REFORMERS.
it

255
I

must keep

amused."

ground on which eminent public

is

servants urge the claims of popular education

fear
;
'

This country

is

filling

up with thousands

and millions of voters, and you must educate them "We do not beto keep them from our throats.' lieve that any education, any system of philosophy,
any influence of genius,
will ever give

depth of
settled

in-

sight to a superficial mind.

Having
is

our-

selves into this infidelity, our skill

expended to

procure alleviations, diversion, opiates.

the victim with

We

adorn

manual

skill, liis

tongue with lan-

guages, his body with inoftensive and comely manners.

So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of

and inner death we cannot
avert.

limitation

Is

it

strange that societ}^ should be devoured by a secret

melancholy which breaks through

all its

all its smiles

and

gayety and games

But even one

It appears that

step farther our infidelity has gone.

some doubt

is felt

by good and wise

men whether really the happiness and probity of men is increased by the culture of the mind in those
disciplines to

which we give the name of education.

scholars,

Unhappily too the doubt comes from

persons

from

who have

tried these methods.

In their

experience the scholar was not raised by the sa-

cred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used

them

to

selfish

ends.

He was

a profane person,

256

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS.
his gifts to a mar-

and became a sliowman, turning

ketable use, and not to his

own
is,

sustenance and

growth.

It

was found that the

intellect could

be

independently developed, that

in separation

from

the man, as any single organ can be in\agorated5

and the
for

result

was monstrous.

canine appetite
still

knowledge was generated, which must

be

fed but was never satisfied, and this knowledge, not

being directed on action, never took the character

of substantial,
it

humane
power

truth, blessing those

whom

entered.

It

gave the scholar certain powers of

of speech, the

expression, the

power of po-

etry, of literary art,

but

it

did not bring

him

to

peace or to beneficence.

When

the literary class betray a destitution of

faith, it is

not strange that society should be dis-

heartened and sensualized by unbelief.

What

rem-

edy ?

Life must be lived on a higher plane.

to a higher platform, to w^hich
;

We

must go up

we are

always invited to ascend

of things changes.

there, the

whole aspect

I resist the skepticism of our

I

education and of our educated men.

lieve that the differences of opinion

do not be-

and character
class

in

men

are organic.

I do not recognize, beside the

class of the

good and the wdse, a permanent

I do not believe in

of skeptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malig-

nants, or of materialists.
classes.

two

You remember

the story of the poor wo-

NEW ENGLAND
man who importuned King
:

REFORMERS.
Philip of
:

257
to

Macedon
the

grant her justice, which Philip refused

woman
From

exclaimed, " I appeal " the king, astonished, asked

to

whom

she appealed

the

woman

replied, "

Philip drmik to Philip sober."

The

text will suit

me

very well.

I believe not in
in

two classes of men,

but in
Philip

man
sober.

two moods, in Philip drunk and

I

think,

according to the goodis

hearted word of Plato, " Unwilling!}^ the soul

deprived of truth."
thief,

Iron conservative, miser, or

no

man
no

is

but by a supposed necessity which

sight.

he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of

sovd lets

The

man

go without some visitations and

It

holydays of a diviner presence.

to show,

would be easy

by a narrow scanning of any man's biography, that we are not so wedded to our paltry per-

formances of every kind but that every

man

has at

intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in

comparing them with

do
;

his belief of

what he should

that he puts himself on

is it

the side of his ene-

mies, listening gladly to what they say of him, and

accusing himself of the same things.

What

men

love in Genius, but

all
it

its ?

infinite

hope, which degrades

counts all
its

has done

Genius
Its

miracles poor and short.

own

idea

it

never executed.

The

Iliad, the

Hamlet, the

Doric column, the

the
VOL. lU.
17

Roman arch, the Gothic minster, German anthem, when they are ended, the

258

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS.

master casts behind him.

How

sinks the song in

the waves of melody which the universe pours over

his soul
!

Before that gracious Infinite out of which

strokes,

he drew these few

how mean they

look,

though the praises of the world attend them. From

the triumphs of his art he turns with desire to this
greater defeat.
silent joy

Let those admire who

will.

With
;

he sees himseK to be capable of a beauty

all

that eclipses all which his hands have done

which human hands have ever done.

Well, we are
dren of virtue,
happier hours.
ical in politics ?
all

the children of genius, the chilfeel their inspirations in

and

our

Is not every

man sometimes

a rad-

Men

are conservatives

when they

are least vigorous, or

when they

are most luxurious.

They

are conservatives after dinner, or before tak;

ing their rest

when they

are sick, or aged

in the

morning, or when their intellect or their conscience

has been aroused
;

when they hear

music, or

when
circle

they read poetry, they are radicals.

In the

of the rankest tories that could be collected in

Engon

land,

Old or New,
a

let

a powerful and stimulating

intellect,

man

of great heart

and mind

act

them, and very quickly these frozen conservators

will yield to the friendly influence, these hopeless

will begin to hope, these haters will begin to love,

these
volve.

immovable

statues wdll begin to spin

and

re-

I cannot help recalling the fine anecdote


NEW ENGLAND
whicli

REFORMERS.

259

Warton

relates of
to leave

Bishop Berkeley, when he

his plan of

was preparmg

England with
the
that the
at his

planting the gospel

among

American savages.

" Lord Bathurst told

Scriblerus club being

me

members

of the

met

house at dinner,
also his

they agreed to rally Berkeley,

guest,

who was

on his scheme at Bermudas.

Berkeley, hav-

ing listened to the

say,

many

lively things they

had to

begged to be heard in his turn, and displaj^ed

an astonishing and animating

his plan with such

force of eloquence

and enthusiasm that they were

all to-

struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose up

gether with earnestness, exclaiming,

'

Let us

set out

with him immediately.' "

ter than they seem.

Men

in all

ways are

bet-

They

like flattery for the

moIt is

ment, but they

know

the truth for their o\vn.

a foolish cowardice which keeps us from trusting

them and speaking

you for
always.
Is
it

to

them rude

truth.

They

re-

sent your honesty for an

it

instant, they will

is it

thank
No,

What

we

heartily wish of
flattered ?

each other ?

to be pleased

and

but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out

of our nonsense of all kinds,

and made men

of, in-

stead of ghosts and phantoms.

We

are weary of
is

gliding ghostlike through the world, which

so slight

itseK

and unreal.

We

crave a sense of reality,

I explain so,

though

it

come

in strokes of pain.

by

this

manlike love of truth,

those excesses and

260

NEW ENGLAND
They

REFORMERS.

errors into whicli souls of great vigor, but not equal

insight, often fall.
feel the poverty at the

bottom of

all

the seeming affluence of the world.

They know

the speed with wliich they

come

straight
dis-

through the thin masquerade, and conceive a

gust at the indigence of nature
:

Rousseau, Mira-

beau, Charles Fox, Napoleon, Byron,

easily

and I could
who
the worst,
of ancient

add names nearer home,

of raging riders,

drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of living

to forget its illusion
:

they would

and tread the

floors of hell.

know The heroes

life

and modern

fame, Cimon, Themistocles, Alcibiades,

Alexander, Caesar, have treated

and fortune as
could

a game to be well and skilfully played, but the

stake not to be so valued but that any time
it

be held as a
Caesar,
just

trifle

light as air,

and thrown up.

dis-

before

the

battle of Pharsalia,

courses with the

Egyptian priest concerning the

he will show him

fountains of the Nile, and offers to quit the army,

the

empire, and Cleopatra,

if

those mysterious sources.

The same magnanimity shows

relations,

itself in

our social

in the preference,

namely, which each

man

gives to the society of superiors over that of

his equals.

All that a

man

has will he give for

right relations with his mates.

will

All that he has

he give for an erect demeanor in every comoccasion.

pany and on each

He

aims at such

NEW ENGLAND
and nights,
his talents

REFORMERS.

261

things as his neighbors prize, and gives his days

and

his heart, to strike a

all

good

stroke, to acquit

himseK in

men's sight as

a man.

The

consideration of an eminent citizen,

of a noted merchant, of a
fession
;

man

of

mark

in his pro-

a naval and military honor, a general's

commission, a marshal's baton, a ducal coronet, the

laurel of poets, and,

anyhow procured,
merit,

the acknowl-

edgment of eminent
and unashamed
fore

have

this lustre for

each candidate that they enable him to walk erect

in the presence of

some persons be-

whom

he

felt

himself inferior.

Having raised

himself to this rank, having established his equality

with class after class of those with

live well,

whom

he

would
fore

he

still

finds certain others be-

whom

he cannot possess himself, because they

fairer,

have somewhat

somewhat grander, somewhat

of him.

purer, which extorts

homage

Is his ambihis possessions

tion pure ? then will his laurels

and

seem worthless

instead of avoiding these

men who
this

make
his

his fine gold dim, he will cast all

behind him

and seek

their society only,

woo and embrace

and

humiliation and

mortification, until he shall

his

know why
is

his eye sinks, his voice is husky,

brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence.

He

sure that the

tell

soul which

gives

the

lie

to all

thinos will

none.
it

His constitution

will not

mislead him.

If

cannot carry

itself as it

ought,

262

NEW ENGLAND

REFORMERS.

high and unmatchable in the presence of any

if

man
sweet*

the secret oracles whose whisper

life

makes the

ness and dignity of his

do here withdraw and

it

accompany him no

longer,

is

time to under-

value what he has valued, to dispossess himself of

what he has acquired, and with Caesar

his
say, " All these will I relinquish, if

to take in

hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and you will show
the fountains of the Nile."

me

those

who

love us

the swift

Dear to us are moments we spend

with them are a compensation for a great deal of

misery
those
;

they enlarge our

life

but

dearer are

who
life
:

reject us as unworthy, for they

add an-

other

they build a heaven before us whereof

to us

we had not dreamed, and thereby supply

powers out of the recesses of the
to
spirit,

new

and urge us

new and unattempted performances. As every man at heart wishes the best and not
to

inferior society, wishes to be convicted of his error

and

come

to himself,

so he wishes that the

same

healing should not stop in his thought, but should

penetrate his will or active power.

The

selfish

man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit. Whet he most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform, that he may see beyond his
present fear the transalpine good, so that his fear,
his coldness, his

custom

may

be broken up like

NEW ENGLAND
fragments of
ice,

REFORMERS.

268

melted and carried away in the

great stream of good will.

Do you

ask

my

aid

I also wish to be a benefactor.

I wish

more

to

be

a benefactor and servant than you wish to be

me and surely the greatest good fortune ihat could befall me is precisely to be so moved by you that I should say, Take me and all mine, and use me and mine freely to your ends for I could
served by
; '
! '

not say

it

otherwise than because a great enlarge^

to

ment had come

me

superior to
;

my heart and mind, which made my fortunes. Here we are parawe hold on
office

lyzed with fear

to our little properties,

house and land,

and money, for the bread

us, al-

which they have in our experience yielded

through them.

though we confess that our being does not flow

We

desire to be

made

great

we

desire to be touched with that fire w^hich shall com-

mand

this ice to stream,

and make our existence a

start objections to

benefit.

If therefore

we

your

project,

friend of the slave, or friend of the poor

it

or of the race, understand well that

w^e

is

because

wish to drive you to drive us into your meas-

ures.

We
it

wish to hear ourselves confuted.

We

are haunted with a belief that you have a secret

which

would
force

higiiliest

advantage us to learn, and

impart
it

we woidd
Nothing

you

to

to us,

though

it

should bring us to prison or to worse extremity.

shall

warp me from the

belief that every

264

NEW ENGLAND
is

REFORMERS.
is

man

a lover of truth.

There

no pure

lie,

no
of

pure malignity in nature.

The entertainment
is

the proposition of depravity

the last profligacy

and profanation.
ism but
that.
belief, suicide

There
it

is

no skepticism, no athe-

Could

be received into

common
It has

woidd unpeople the planet.

had a name

to live in

some dogmatic theology, but

a dead
I

each man's innocence and his real liking of his

neighbor have kept

it

letter.

remember

standing at the poUs one day when the anger of

the political contest gave a certain grimness to the
faces of the independent electors,
at

and a good man

my

side,

looking on the people, remarked, " I

am
ei-

satisfied that the largest part of these

men, on

ther side,

mean

to vote right."

I suppose consider-

ate observers, looking at the masses of

men

in their

blameless and in their equivocal actions, will assent,

that in spite of selfishness
eral purpose in the great
ity.

and frivolity, the gennumber of persons is fidelrefuses his assent to

The reason why any one

to

your opinion, or his aid

is

your benevolent design,

in

you

he refuses to accept you as a bringer of

truth, because
feels that

though you think you have

it

it,

he

you have

not.

You have not given him

run into details
adduce
this

the authentic sign.

If
it

were worth

w^hile to

general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting

Spirit, it

would be easy

to

illustration in

NEW EXGLAXD
his equality to the

REFORMERS.

265

particulars of a man's equality to the Church, of

State,

and of

his equality to

every other man.

that,

It is yet in all

men's memory

a few years ago, the liberal churches com-

plained that the Calvinistic church denied to them

the

name

of Christian.
:

I think the complaint

was

confession

a religious church woidd not complain,

religious
is

man,

like

Behmen, Fox, or Swedenfeels the accusation of his

borg

not irritated by wanting the sanction of the

Church, but the Church

presence and belief.

It only needs that a just

streets to
ficial

make
is

it

man should walk appear how pitiful and

is

in our
inarti-

a contrivance

our legislation.

The man

whose part

taken and who does not wait for

society in anything, has a

power which society can-

not choose but

feel.

The

familiar experiment called

the hydrostatic paradox, in which a capillary col-

umn

of water balances the ocean,

is

a symbol of the

relation of one

man

to the

whole family of men.

the lives of Socread,

The wise Dandamis, on hearing

rates,

Pythagoras
to be great

and Diogenes

" judged

them

they were too

men every way, excepting that much subjected to the reverence of

much
of
its

the laws, which to second and authorize, true virtue must abate very
original vigor."

And

as a

man

is

equal to the Church and equal

to the State, so he is equal to every other man,

266

NEW ENGLAND
disparities of
all

REFORMERS.
in

The
and
a

power

men

are superficial;

frank and searching conversation, in which

lays himself open to his brother, apprises

man

each of their radical unity.

When

two persons

sit

and converse
the remark
is

in a thoroughly

good understanding,

sure to be made, See

how we have
apprehensive
his friends,

disputed about words!

Let a

clear,

mind, such as every

man knows among

converse with the most commanding poetic genius,

I think
ity
it

would appear that there was no inequal-

such as

men

fancy, between

them

that a per-

fect understanding, a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished differences

;

and the poet would congave him no deep

fess that his creative imagination

advantage, but only the superficial one that he

could express himself and the other could not
his
;

that

advantage was a knack, which might impose on

indolent

men

but could not impose on lovers of

truth; for they

know
it is

the tax of talent, or what a

price of greatness the

power of expression too often

the conviction of the purest

pays.

I believe

men that the net amount of man and man does much vary. Each is incomparably superior to
companion
work.
in

not
his

some

faculty.

His want of

skill in

other directions has added to his fitness for his

own

yielded to

Each seems to have some compensation him by his infirmity, and every hinder*

ance opei'ates as a concentration of his force.

NEW ENGLAND
These and the
like

REFORMERS.

267
that;

experiences intimate

man

stands in strict connection with a higher fact

never yet manifested.

There

is

power over and

of its
so,

behind

us,

and we are the channels

commu-

nications.

We
We

seek to say thus and

spirit sits

and over

our head some

which contradicts what

to this

we

say.
;

woidd persuade our fellow

or that

another seK within our eyes dissuades

him.
vain

That which we keep back, this reveals. In we compose our faces and our words it holds
;

uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and

he answers

civilly to us,
'

but believes the

spirit.
'
!

We

exclaim,
it

There

's

a traitor in the house

is

but

at last

appears that he

the true man, and I

am
life

the traitor.
is

This open channel to the highest

the

first

and

last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet

so tenacious, that although I have never expressed

the truth, and

although I have never heard the

expression of

it

from any other, I know that the

whole truth

is

here for me.

?

What

if

I cannot

answer your questions

am
?

not pained that I

cannot frame a reply to the question.

operation

What
lies

is

the

we

call

Providence

There

the un-

spoken thing, present, omnipresent.

Every time

we converse we seek to translate it into speech, but whether we hit or whether we miss, we have the fact. Every discourse is an approximate answer but it is of small consequence that we do
:

268
Dot get
it

NEW ENGLAND
into verbs

REFORMERS.
it

and nouns, whilst

abides

for contemplation forever.

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall

make themselves good

be born, whose advent

in time, the

man who

shall

men and

events prepare and

foreshow,

is

one who shall enjoy his connection

life,

with a higher

with the

man

within

man

shall

destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his nativ^e

but forgotten methods, shall not take counsel of

flesh

and blood, but

shall rely

on the

Law

aliv3

and beautiful which works over our heads and

under our
cess
feet.

Pitiless, it avails itself of

it,

our suc-

when we obey
it.

and of our ruin when we

it,

contravene
else the

Men
justice

are all secret believers in

word

would have no meaning

;

they

believe that the best is the true

at last
;

that right
It

is

done

or chaos would come.

rewards actions

after their nature,

and not

after the design of the

agent.

'

Work,'

it

saith to

man,

in every hour,

paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou

canst not escape the reward
:

whether thy work be

or writing epics, so

fine or coarse, planting corn

only

it

be honest work, done to thine own approit

bation,

shall earn

a reward to the senses as

weU

as to the

thought

no matter how often defeated,

you are born

to victory.

The reward
it.'

of a thing

well done, is to have done

As

soon as a

man

is

wonted

to

look beyond

NEW ENGLAND
surfaces,

REFORMERS.
high
will

269
prevails

and

to see liow this

without an exception or an interval, he settles himself into serenity.

He

can already rely on the laws

of gravity, that every stone will fall

where

it

is

due

the

good globe

is

faithful,

and

carries us

securely through the celestial

resigned,

spaces, anxious or
it

we need not

interfere to help

on

and

he will learn one day the mild lesson they teach,

that our

own

orbit

is all

our task, and we need not

assist the

administration of the universe.

set

Do

not

be so impatient to
the

the town right concerning

false reputation

unfounded pretensions and the

of certain

men

of standing.

They

are laboring

harder to set the town right concerning themselves,

and

will

certainly succeed.
tlie

Suppress for a few

days your criticism on

insufficiency of this or

that teacher or experimenter, and

he will have

demonstrated his insufficiency to

all

men's eyes.

In

like

manner,
is

let

man

fall into the divine cir-

cuits,
is

and he

enlarged.

Obedience

to his genius

the only liberating influence.

We wish to escape
and we
water,
jail
;

from subjection and a sense

of inferiority,

make self-denying ordinances, we drink eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to

all in

we

it is

vain

only by obedience to his genius, only

by the freest activity in the way constitutional to

him, does an angel seem to arise before a
lead

man and

him by

the

hand out

of all the

wards of the

prison.

270

NEW ENGLAND
befits us,

REFORMERS.
in beauty and

That which

embosomed

wonder as we

are, is cheerfulness

and courage, and

the endeavor to realize our aspirations.

of

The
it is

life

man

is

the true romance, which

when

val-

iantly conducted will yield the imagination a higher

joy than any fiction. are wrapped

All around us what powers

of cus-

up under the coarse mattings

wonder prevented.

tom, and

all

It is so wonderful

to our neurologists that a

man

can see without his

it is
;

eyes, that

it

does not occur to them that

that he should
see with

just

as wonderful

them

and

that

is

ever the difference between the wise and the

:

unwise
wise

the latter wonders at what

at the usual.

is

unusual, the

man wonders
it

Shall not the

heart which has received so much, trust the

Power

by which
and

lives ?

May

it

not quit other leadings,

it

listen to the
it

Soul that has gTiided

so gently
will

and taught

so

much, secure that the future

be worthy of the past ?

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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