10231 lines
554 KiB
Plaintext
10231 lines
554 KiB
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
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re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
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Title: Essays
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Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Editor: Edna H. L. Turpin
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Release Date: September 4, 2005 [EBook #16643]
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[Last updated: March 15, 2012]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ***
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Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, Sankar Viswanathan and the
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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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ESSAYS
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BY
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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
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Merrill's English Texts
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SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION
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AND NOTES, BY EDNA H.L. TURPIN, AUTHOR
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OF "STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY,"
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"CLASSIC FABLES," "FAMOUS PAINTERS," ETC.
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NEW YORK
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CHARLES E. MERRILL CO.
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1907
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CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION
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LIFE OF EMERSON
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CRITICAL OPINIONS
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS
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THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
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COMPENSATION
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SELF RELIANCE
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FRIENDSHIP
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HEROISM
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MANNERS
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GIFTS
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NATURE
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SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET
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PRUDENCE
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CIRCLES
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NOTES
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PUBLISHERS' NOTE
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Merrill's English Texts
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This series of books will include in complete editions those
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masterpieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use
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of schools and colleges. The editors of the several volumes will be
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chosen for their special qualifications in connection with the texts
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to be issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity with
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the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship,
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will characterize the editing of every book in the series.
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In connection with each text, a critical and historical introduction,
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including a sketch of the life of the author and his relation to the
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thought of his time, critical opinions of the work in question chosen
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from the great body of English criticism, and, where possible, a
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portrait of the author, will be given. Ample explanatory notes of such
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passages in the text as call for special attention will be supplied,
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but irrelevant annotation and explanations of the obvious will be
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rigidly excluded.
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CHARLES E. MERRILL CO.
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LIFE OF EMERSON
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Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. He was descended
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from a long line of New England ministers, men of refinement and
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education. As a school-boy he was quiet and retiring, reading a great
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deal, but not paying much attention to his lessons. He entered Harvard
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at the early age of fourteen, but never attained a high rank there,
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although he took a prize for an essay on Socrates, and was made class
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poet after several others had declined. Next to his reserve and the
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faultless propriety of his conduct, his contemporaries at college
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seemed most impressed by the great maturity of his mind. Emerson
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appears never to have been really a boy. He was always serene and
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thoughtful, impressing all who knew him with that spirituality which
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was his most distinguishing characteristic.
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After graduating from college he taught school for a time, and then
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entered the Harvard Divinity School under Dr. Channing, the great
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Unitarian preacher. Although he was not strong enough to attend all
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the lectures of the divinity course, the college authorities deemed
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the name Emerson sufficient passport to the ministry. He was
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accordingly "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association of
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Ministers on October 10, 1826. As a preacher, Emerson was interesting,
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though not particularly original. His talent seems to have been in
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giving new meaning to the old truths of religion. One of his hearers
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has said: "In looking back on his preaching I find he has impressed
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truths to which I always assented in such a manner as to make them
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appear new, like a clearer revelation." Although his sermons were
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always couched in scriptural language, they were touched with the
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light of that genius which avoids the conventional and commonplace. In
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his other pastoral duties Emerson was not quite so successful. It is
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characteristic of his deep humanity and his dislike for all fuss and
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commonplace that he appeared to least advantage at a funeral. A
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connoisseur in such matters, an old sexton, once remarked that on such
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occasions "he did not appear at ease at all. To tell the truth, in my
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opinion, that young man was not born to be a minister."
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Emerson did not long remain a minister. In 1832 he preached a sermon
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in which he announced certain views in regard to the communion service
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which were disapproved by a large part of his congregation. He found
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it impossible to continue preaching, and, with the most friendly
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feelings on both sides, he parted from his congregation.
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A few months later (1833) he went to Europe for a short year of
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travel. While abroad, he visited Walter Savage Landor, Coleridge and
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Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. This visit to Carlyle was to both men
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a most interesting experience. They parted feeling that they had much
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intellectually in common. This belief fostered a sympathy which, by
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the time they had discovered how different they really were, had grown
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so strong a habit that they always kept up their intimacy. This year
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of travel opened Emerson's eyes to many things of which he had
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previously been ignorant; he had profited by detachment from the
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concerns of a limited community and an isolated church.
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After his return he began to find his true field of activity in the
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lecture-hall, and delivered a number of addresses in Boston and its
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vicinity. While thus coming before the open public on the lecture
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platform, he was all the time preparing the treatise which was to
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embody all the quintessential elements of his philosophical doctrine.
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This was the essay _Nature_, which was published in 1836. By its
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conception of external Nature as an incarnation of the Divine Mind it
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struck the fundamental principle of Emerson's religious belief. The
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essay had a very small circulation at first, though later it became
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widely known.
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In the winter of 1836 Emerson followed up his discourse on Nature by a
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course of twelve lectures on the "Philosophy of History," a
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considerable portion of which eventually became embodied in his
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essays. The next year (1837) was the year of the delivery of the _Man
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Thinking, or the American Scholar_ address before the Phi Beta Kappa
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Society at Cambridge.
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This society, composed of the first twenty-five men in each class
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graduating from college, has annual meetings which have called forth
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the best efforts of many distinguished scholars and thinkers.
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Emerson's address was listened to with the most profound interest. It
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declared a sort of intellectual independence for America. Henceforth
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we were to be emancipated from clogging foreign influences, and a
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national literature was to expand under the fostering care of the
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Republic.
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These two discourses, _Nature_ and _The American Scholar_, strike the
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keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In
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fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of
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principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be
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enumerated in twenty words--self-reliance, culture, intellectual and
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moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity of
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labor, and high ideals.
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Emerson spent the latter part of his life in lecturing and in literary
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work. His son, Dr. Edward Emerson, gave an interesting account of how
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these lectures were constructed. "All through his life he kept a
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journal. This book, he said, was his 'Savings Bank.' The thoughts thus
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received and garnered in his journals were indexed, and a great many
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of them appeared in his published works. They were religiously set
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down just as they came, in no order except chronological, but later
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they were grouped, enlarged or pruned, illustrated, worked into a
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lecture or discourse, and, after having in this capacity undergone
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repeated testing and rearranging, were finally carefully sifted and
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more rigidly pruned, and were printed as essays."
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Besides his essays and lectures Emerson left some poetry in which is
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embodied those thoughts which were to him too deep for prose
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expression. Oliver Wendell Holmes in speaking of this says: "Emerson
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wrote occasionally in verse from his school-days until he had reached
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the age which used to be known as the grand climacteric,
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sixty-three.... His poems are not and hardly can become popular; they
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are not meant to be liked by the many, but to be dearly loved and
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cherished by the few.... His occasional lawlessness in technical
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construction, his somewhat fantastic expressions, his enigmatic
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obscurities hardly detract from the pleasant surprise his verses so
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often bring with them.... The poetic license which we allow in the
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verse of Emerson is more than excused by the noble spirit which makes
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us forget its occasional blemishes, sometimes to be pleased with them
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as characteristic of the writer."
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Emerson was always a striking figure in the intellectual life of
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America. His discourses were above all things inspiring. Through them
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many were induced to strive for a higher self-culture. His influence
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can be discerned in all the literary movements of the time. He was the
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central figure of the so-called transcendental school which was so
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prominent fifty years ago, although he always rather held aloof from
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any enthusiastic participation in the movement.
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Emerson lived a quiet life in Concord, Massachusetts. "He was a
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first-rate neighbor and one who always kept his fences up." He
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traveled extensively on his lecturing tours, even going as far as
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England. In _English Traits_ he has recorded his impressions of what
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he saw of English life and manners.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes has described him in this wise: "His personal
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appearance was that of the typical New Englander of college-bred
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ancestry. Tall, spare, slender, with sloping shoulders, slightly
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stooping in his later years, with light hair and eyes, the scholar's
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complexion, the prominent, somewhat arched nose which belongs to many
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of the New England sub-species, thin lips, suggestive of delicacy, but
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having nothing like primness, still less of the rigidity which is
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often noticeable in the generation succeeding next to that of the men
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in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one
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evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study,
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which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and
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penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation
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was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the
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right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was
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pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than
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Hawthorne did. None who met him can fail to recall that serene and
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kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual
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remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were
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privileged to enjoy his companionship."
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Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days' illness from pneumonia.
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Dr. Garnett in his excellent biography says: "Seldom had 'the reaper
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whose name is Death' gathered such illustrious harvest as between
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December 1880 and April 1882. In the first month of this period George
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Eliot passed away, in the ensuing February Carlyle followed; in April
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Lord Beaconsfield died, deplored by his party, nor unregretted by his
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country; in February of the following year Longfellow was carried to
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the tomb; in April Rossetti was laid to rest by the sea, and the
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pavement of Westminster Abbey was disturbed to receive the dust of
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Darwin. And now Emerson lay down in death beside the painter of man
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and the searcher of nature, the English-Oriental statesman, the poet
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of the plain man and the poet of the artist, and the prophet whose
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name is indissolubly linked with his own. All these men passed into
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eternity laden with the spoils of Time, but of none of them could it
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be said, as of Emerson, that the most shining intellectual glory and
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the most potent intellectual force of a continent had departed along
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with him."
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CRITICAL OPINIONS OF EMERSON AND HIS WRITINGS.
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Matthew Arnold, in an address on Emerson delivered in Boston, gave
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an excellent estimate of the rank we should accord to him in the great
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hierarchy of letters. Some, perhaps, will think that Arnold was
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unappreciative and cold, but dispassionate readers will be inclined to
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agree with his judgment of our great American.
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After a review of the poetical works of Emerson the English critic
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draws his conclusions as follows:
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"I do not then place Emerson among the great poets. But I go farther,
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and say that I do not place him among the great writers, the great men
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of letters. Who are the great men of letters? They are men like
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Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire--writers with, in the
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first place, a genius and instinct for style.... Brilliant and
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powerful passages in a man's writings do not prove his possession of
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it. Emerson has passages of noble and pathetic eloquence; he has
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passages of shrewd and felicitous wit; he has crisp epigram; he has
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passages of exquisitely touched observation of nature. Yet he is not a
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great writer.... Carlyle formulates perfectly the defects of his
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friend's poetic and literary productions when he says: 'For me it is
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too ethereal, speculative, theoretic; I will have all things condense
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themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have my sympathy.' ...
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".... Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and Spinozas,
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not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with the Montaignes and
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Addisons, can we rank Emerson. No man could see this clearer than
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Emerson himself. 'Alas, my friend,' he writes in reply to Carlyle, who
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had exhorted him to creative work,--'Alas, my friend, I can do no such
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gay thing as you say. I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low
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department of literature,--the reporters; suburban men.' He deprecated
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his friend's praise; praise 'generous to a fault' he calls it; praise
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'generous to the shaming of me,--cold, fastidious, ebbing person that
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I am.'"
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After all this unfavorable criticism Arnold begins to praise. Quoting
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passages from the Essays, he adds:
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"This is tonic indeed! And let no one object that it is too general;
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that more practical, positive direction is what we want.... Yes,
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truly, his insight is admirable; his truth is precious. Yet the secret
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of his effect is not even in these; it is in his temper. It is in the
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hopeful, serene, beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are
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indissolubly united; in which they work and have their being.... One
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can scarcely overrate the importance of holding fast to happiness and
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hope. It gives to Emerson's work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth's
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poetry is, in my judgment, the most important done in verse, in our
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language, during the present century, so Emerson's Essays are, I
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think, the most important work done in prose.... But by his conviction
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that in the life of the spirit is happiness, and by his hope that this
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life of the spirit will come more and more to be sanely understood,
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and to prevail, and to work for happiness,--by this conviction and
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hope Emerson was great, and he will surely prove in the end to have
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been right in them.... You cannot prize him too much, nor heed him too
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diligently."
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Herman Grimm, a German critic of great influence in his own country,
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did much to obtain a hearing for Emerson's works in Germany. At first
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the Germans could not understand the unusual English, the unaccustomed
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turns of phrase which are so characteristic of Emerson's style.
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"Macaulay gives them no difficulty; even Carlyle is comprehended. But
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in Emerson's writings the broad turnpike is suddenly changed into a
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hazardous sandy foot-path. His thoughts and his style are American. He
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is not writing for Berlin, but for the people of Massachusetts.... It
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is an art to rise above what we have been taught.... All great men are
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seen to possess this freedom. They derive their standard from their
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own natures, and their observations on life are so natural and
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spontaneous that it would seem as if the most illiterate person with a
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scrap of common-sense would have made the same.... We become wiser
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with them, and know not how the difficult appears easy and the
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involved plain.
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"Emerson possesses this noble manner of communicating himself. He
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inspires me with courage and confidence. He has read and seen but
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conceals the labor. I meet in his works plenty of familiar facts, but
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he does not employ them to figure up anew the old worn-out problems:
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each stands on a new spot and serves for new combinations. From
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everything he sees the direct line issuing which connects it with the
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focus of life....
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".... Emerson's theory is that of the 'sovereignty of the individual.'
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To discover what a young man is good for, and to equip him for the
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path he is to strike out in life, regardless of any other
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consideration, is the great duty to which he calls attention. He makes
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men self-reliant. He reveals to the eyes of the idealist the
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magnificent results of practical activity, and unfolds before the
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realist the grandeur of the ideal world of thought. No man is to allow
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himself, through prejudice, to make a mistake in choosing the task to
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which he will devote his life. Emerson's essays are, as it were,
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printed sermons--all having this same text.... The wealth and harmony
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of his language overpowered and entranced me anew. But even now I
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cannot say wherein the secret of his influence lies. What he has
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written is like life itself--the unbroken thread ever lengthened
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through the addition of the small events which make up each day's
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experience."
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Froude in his famous "Life of Carlyle" gives an interesting description
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of Emerson's visit to the Carlyles in Scotland:
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"The Carlyles were sitting alone at dinner on a Sunday afternoon at
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the end of August when a Dumfries carriage drove to the door, and
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there stepped out of it a young American then unknown to fame, but
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||
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whose influence in his own country equals that of Carlyle in ours, and
|
||
|
whose name stands connected with his wherever the English language is
|
||
|
spoken. Emerson, the younger of the two, had just broken his Unitarian
|
||
|
fetters, and was looking out around him like a young eagle longing for
|
||
|
light. He had read Carlyle's articles and had discerned with the
|
||
|
instinct of genius that here was a voice speaking real and fiery
|
||
|
convictions, and no longer echoes and conventionalisms. He had come to
|
||
|
Europe to study its social and spiritual phenomena; and to the young
|
||
|
Emerson as to the old Goethe, the most important of them appeared to
|
||
|
be Carlyle.... The acquaintance then begun to their mutual pleasure
|
||
|
ripened into a deep friendship, which has remained unclouded in spite
|
||
|
of wide divergences of opinion throughout their working lives."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Carlyle wrote to his mother after Emerson had left:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Our third happiness was the arrival of a certain young unknown friend
|
||
|
named Emerson, from Boston, in the United States, who turned aside so
|
||
|
far from his British, French, and Italian travels to see me here! He
|
||
|
had an introduction from Mill and a Frenchman (Baron d'Eichthal's
|
||
|
nephew) whom John knew at Rome. Of course, we could do no other than
|
||
|
welcome him; the rather as he seemed to be one of the most lovable
|
||
|
creatures in himself we had ever looked on. He stayed till next day
|
||
|
with us, and talked and heard to his heart's content, and left us all
|
||
|
really sad to part with him."
|
||
|
|
||
|
In 1841 Carlyle wrote to John Sterling a few words apropos of the
|
||
|
recent publication of Emerson's essays in England:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"I love Emerson's book, not for its detached opinions, not even for
|
||
|
the scheme of the general world he has framed for himself, or any
|
||
|
eminence of talent he has expressed that with, but simply because it
|
||
|
is his own book; because there is a tone of veracity, an unmistakable
|
||
|
air of its being _his_, and a real utterance of a human soul, not a
|
||
|
mere echo of such. I consider it, in that sense, highly remarkable,
|
||
|
rare, very rare, in these days of ours. Ach Gott! It is frightful to
|
||
|
live among echoes. The few that read the book, I imagine, will get
|
||
|
benefit of it. To America, I sometimes say that Emerson, such as he
|
||
|
is, seems to me like a kind of New Era."
|
||
|
|
||
|
John Morley, the acute English critic, has made an analytic study of
|
||
|
Emerson's style, which may reconcile the reader to some of its
|
||
|
exasperating peculiarities.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"One of the traits that every critic notes in Emerson's writing is
|
||
|
that it is so abrupt, so sudden in its transitions, so discontinuous,
|
||
|
so inconsecutive. Dislike of a sentence that drags made him
|
||
|
unconscious of the quality that French critics name _coulant_.
|
||
|
Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell
|
||
|
is enough to persuade us that Pope did not exaggerate when he said
|
||
|
that no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer as the
|
||
|
power of rejecting his own thoughts.... Apart from his difficult
|
||
|
staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary faults. He uses words
|
||
|
that are not only odd, but vicious in construction; he is sometimes
|
||
|
oblique and he is often clumsy; and there is a visible feeling after
|
||
|
epigrams that do not always come. When people say that Emerson's style
|
||
|
must be good and admirable because it fits his thought, they forget
|
||
|
that though it is well that a robe should fit, there is still
|
||
|
something to be said about its cut and fashion.... Yet, as happens to
|
||
|
all fine minds, there came to Emerson ways of expression deeply marked
|
||
|
with character. On every page there is set the strong stamp of
|
||
|
sincerity, and the attraction of a certain artlessness; the most
|
||
|
awkward sentence rings true; and there is often a pure and simple note
|
||
|
that touches us more than if it were the perfection of elaborated
|
||
|
melody. The uncouth procession of the periods discloses the travail of
|
||
|
the thought, and that, too, is a kind of eloquence. An honest reader
|
||
|
easily forgives the rude jolt or unexpected start when it shows a
|
||
|
thinker faithfully working his way along arduous and unworn tracks.
|
||
|
Even at the roughest, Emerson often interjects a delightful cadence.
|
||
|
As he says of Landor, his sentences are cubes which will stand firm,
|
||
|
place them how or where you will. He criticised Swedenborg for being
|
||
|
superfluously explanatory, and having an exaggerated feeling of the
|
||
|
ignorance of men. 'Men take truths of this nature,' said Emerson,
|
||
|
'very fast;' and his own style does no doubt very boldly take this
|
||
|
capacity for granted in us. In 'choice and pith of diction,' again, of
|
||
|
which Mr. Lowell speaks, he hits the mark with a felicity that is
|
||
|
almost his own in this generation. He is terse, concentrated, and free
|
||
|
from the important blunder of mistaking intellectual dawdling for
|
||
|
meditation. Nor in fine does his abruptness ever impede a true
|
||
|
urbanity. The accent is homely and the apparel plain, but his bearing
|
||
|
has a friendliness, a courtesy, a hospitable humanity, which goes
|
||
|
nearer to our hearts than either literary decoration or rhetorical
|
||
|
unction. That modest and lenient fellow-feeling which gave such charm
|
||
|
to his companionship breathes in his gravest writing, and prevents us
|
||
|
from finding any page of it cold or hard or dry."
|
||
|
|
||
|
E.P. Whipple, the well-known American critic, wrote soon after Emerson's
|
||
|
death:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"But 'sweetness and light' are precious and inspiring only so far as
|
||
|
they express the essential sweetness of the disposition of the
|
||
|
thinker, and the essential illuminating power of his intelligence.
|
||
|
Emerson's greatness came from his character. Sweetness and light
|
||
|
streamed from him because they were _in_ him. In everything he
|
||
|
thought, wrote, and did, we feel the presence of a personality as
|
||
|
vigorous and brave as it was sweet, and the particular radical thought
|
||
|
he at any time expressed derived its power to animate and illuminate
|
||
|
other minds from the might of the manhood, which was felt to be within
|
||
|
and behind it. To 'sweetness and light' he therefore added the prime
|
||
|
quality of fearless manliness.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"If the force of Emerson's character was thus inextricably blended
|
||
|
with the force of all his faculties of intellect and imagination, and
|
||
|
the refinement of all his sentiments, we have still to account for the
|
||
|
peculiarities of his genius, and to answer the question, why do we
|
||
|
instinctively apply the epithet 'Emersonian' to every characteristic
|
||
|
passage in his writings? We are told that he was the last in a long
|
||
|
line of clergymen, his ancestors, and that the modern doctrine of
|
||
|
heredity accounts for the impressive emphasis he laid on the moral
|
||
|
sentiment; but that does not solve the puzzle why he unmistakably
|
||
|
differed in his nature and genius from all other Emersons. An
|
||
|
imaginary genealogical chart of descent connecting him with Confucius
|
||
|
or Gautama would be more satisfactory.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"What distinguishes _the_ Emerson was his exceptional genius and
|
||
|
character, that something in him which separated him from all other
|
||
|
Emersons, as it separated him from all other eminent men of letters,
|
||
|
and impressed every intelligent reader with the feeling that he was
|
||
|
not only 'original but aboriginal.' Some traits of his mind and
|
||
|
character may be traced back to his ancestors, but what doctrine of
|
||
|
heredity can give us the genesis of his genius? Indeed, the safest
|
||
|
course to pursue is to quote his own words, and despairingly confess
|
||
|
that it is the nature of genius 'to spring, like the rainbow daughter
|
||
|
of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all
|
||
|
history.'"
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF EMERSON'S PRINCIPAL WORKS.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Nature 1836
|
||
|
Essays (First Series) 1841
|
||
|
Essays (Second Series) 1844
|
||
|
Poems 1847
|
||
|
Miscellanies 1849
|
||
|
Representative Men 1850
|
||
|
English Traits 1856
|
||
|
Conduct of Life 1860
|
||
|
Society and Solitude 1870
|
||
|
Correspondence of Thomas
|
||
|
Carlyle and R.W. Emerson 1883
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This address was delivered at Cambridge in 1837, before the
|
||
|
Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a college
|
||
|
fraternity composed of the first twenty-five men in each
|
||
|
graduating class. The society has annual meetings, which
|
||
|
have been the occasion for addresses from the most
|
||
|
distinguished scholars and thinkers of the day.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,
|
||
|
|
||
|
I greet you on the recommencement of our literary year. Our
|
||
|
anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do
|
||
|
not meet for games of strength[1] or skill, for the recitation of
|
||
|
histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for
|
||
|
parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours;[2] nor for the
|
||
|
advancement of science, like our co-temporaries in the British and
|
||
|
European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly
|
||
|
sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy
|
||
|
to give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an
|
||
|
indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it
|
||
|
ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect
|
||
|
of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the
|
||
|
postponed expectation of the world with something better than the
|
||
|
exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long
|
||
|
apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The
|
||
|
millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on
|
||
|
the sere remains of foreign harvests.[3] Events, actions arise that
|
||
|
must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt that poetry
|
||
|
will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation
|
||
|
Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one
|
||
|
day be the pole-star[4] for a thousand years?
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the light of this hope I accept the topic which not only usage but
|
||
|
the nature of our association seem to prescribe to this day,--the
|
||
|
AMERICAN SCHOLAR. Year by year we come up hither to read one
|
||
|
more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what new lights, new
|
||
|
events, and more days have thrown on his character, his duties, and
|
||
|
his hopes.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is one of those fables which out of an unknown antiquity convey an
|
||
|
unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into
|
||
|
men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was
|
||
|
divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.[5]
|
||
|
|
||
|
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is
|
||
|
One Man,--present to all particular men only partially, or through one
|
||
|
faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole
|
||
|
man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is
|
||
|
all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and
|
||
|
soldier. In the _divided_ or social state these functions are parceled
|
||
|
out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint[6] of the joint
|
||
|
work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies that the
|
||
|
individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own
|
||
|
labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this
|
||
|
original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to
|
||
|
multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it
|
||
|
is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is
|
||
|
one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and
|
||
|
strut about so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a
|
||
|
stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter,
|
||
|
who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered
|
||
|
by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel
|
||
|
and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead
|
||
|
of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth
|
||
|
to his work, but is ridden[7] by the routine of his craft, and the
|
||
|
soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney a
|
||
|
statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In this distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated
|
||
|
intellect. In the right state he is _Man Thinking_. In the degenerate
|
||
|
state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker,
|
||
|
or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the whole theory of his office
|
||
|
is contained. Him Nature solicits with all her placid, all her
|
||
|
monitory pictures.[8] Him the past instructs. Him the future invites.
|
||
|
Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the
|
||
|
student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar the only true
|
||
|
master? But as the old oracle said, "All things have two handles:
|
||
|
Beware of the wrong one."[9] In life, too often, the scholar errs with
|
||
|
mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and
|
||
|
consider him in reference to the main influences he receives.
|
||
|
|
||
|
* * * * *
|
||
|
|
||
|
I. The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon
|
||
|
the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun;[10] and, after sunset,
|
||
|
Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every
|
||
|
day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden.[11] The scholar
|
||
|
must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle. He
|
||
|
must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never
|
||
|
a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of
|
||
|
this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.[12]
|
||
|
Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he
|
||
|
never can find,--so entire, so boundless. Far too as her splendors
|
||
|
shine, system on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without
|
||
|
center, without circumference,--in the mass and in the particle, Nature
|
||
|
hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Classification begins.
|
||
|
To the young mind everything is individual, stands by itself. By and by
|
||
|
it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three,
|
||
|
then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying
|
||
|
instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies,
|
||
|
discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote
|
||
|
things cohere and flower out from one stem. It presently learns that
|
||
|
since the dawn of history there has been a constant accumulation and
|
||
|
classifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that
|
||
|
these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which
|
||
|
is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry,
|
||
|
a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary
|
||
|
motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout
|
||
|
matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in
|
||
|
the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each
|
||
|
refractory fact; one after another reduces all strange constitutions,
|
||
|
all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on forever to
|
||
|
animate the last fiber of organization, the outskirts of nature, by
|
||
|
insight.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is
|
||
|
suggested that he and it proceed from one Root; one is leaf and one is
|
||
|
flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that
|
||
|
root? Is not that the soul of his soul?--A thought too bold?--A dream
|
||
|
too wild? Yet when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of
|
||
|
more earthly natures,--when he has learned to worship the soul, and to
|
||
|
see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first
|
||
|
gropings of its gigantic hand,--he shall look forward to an
|
||
|
ever-expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator.[13] He shall see
|
||
|
that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for
|
||
|
part. One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his
|
||
|
own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes
|
||
|
to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is
|
||
|
ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in
|
||
|
fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself,"[14] and the modern precept,
|
||
|
"Study nature," become at last one maxim.
|
||
|
|
||
|
* * * * *
|
||
|
|
||
|
II. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar is the
|
||
|
mind of the Past,--in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of
|
||
|
institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the
|
||
|
influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,--learn
|
||
|
the amount of this influence more conveniently,--by considering their
|
||
|
value alone.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received
|
||
|
into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new
|
||
|
arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him
|
||
|
life; it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived actions;
|
||
|
it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it
|
||
|
went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It
|
||
|
can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now
|
||
|
inspires.[15] Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which
|
||
|
it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of
|
||
|
transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the completeness of the
|
||
|
distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product
|
||
|
be. But none is quite perfect. As no air-pump can by any means make a
|
||
|
perfect vacuum,[16] so neither can any artist entirely exclude the
|
||
|
conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book
|
||
|
of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a
|
||
|
remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age.
|
||
|
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each
|
||
|
generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will
|
||
|
not fit this.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to
|
||
|
the act of creation, the act of thought, is instantly transferred to
|
||
|
the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man. Henceforth
|
||
|
the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit.
|
||
|
Henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as love of the hero
|
||
|
corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes
|
||
|
noxious.[17] The guide is a tyrant. We sought a brother, and lo, a
|
||
|
governor. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, always
|
||
|
slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened,
|
||
|
having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if
|
||
|
it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by
|
||
|
thinkers, not by Man Thinking, by men of talent, that is, who start
|
||
|
wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of
|
||
|
principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their
|
||
|
duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke,[18] which
|
||
|
Bacon,[19] have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were
|
||
|
only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the
|
||
|
book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature
|
||
|
and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate[20]
|
||
|
with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings,[21] the
|
||
|
emendators,[22] the bibliomaniacs[23] of all degrees. This is bad;
|
||
|
this is worse than it seems.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What
|
||
|
is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect?
|
||
|
They are for nothing but to inspire.[24] I had better never see a book
|
||
|
than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and
|
||
|
made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world of
|
||
|
value is the active soul,--the soul, free, sovereign, active. This
|
||
|
every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although
|
||
|
in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees
|
||
|
absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is
|
||
|
genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound
|
||
|
estate of every man.[25] In its essence it is progressive. The book,
|
||
|
the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with
|
||
|
some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,--let us hold by
|
||
|
this. They pin me down.[26] They look backward and not forward. But
|
||
|
genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead,
|
||
|
not in his hindhead. Man hopes. Genius creates. To create,--to
|
||
|
create,--is the proof of a divine presence. Whatever talents may be,
|
||
|
if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not
|
||
|
his;[27]--cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are
|
||
|
creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words;
|
||
|
manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or
|
||
|
authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good
|
||
|
and fair.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive
|
||
|
always from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of
|
||
|
light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery; and a
|
||
|
fatal disservice[28] is done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy
|
||
|
of genius by over-influence.[29] The literature of every nation bear
|
||
|
me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two
|
||
|
hundred years.[30]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly
|
||
|
subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
|
||
|
Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly,
|
||
|
the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of
|
||
|
their readings.[31] But when the intervals of darkness come, as come
|
||
|
they must,--when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars
|
||
|
withdraw their shining,--we repair to the lamps which were kindled by
|
||
|
their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn
|
||
|
is.[32] We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, "A
|
||
|
fig-tree, looking on a fig-tree, becometh fruitful."
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the
|
||
|
best books. They impress us ever with the conviction that one nature
|
||
|
wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great
|
||
|
English poets, of Chaucer,[33] of Marvell,[34] of Dryden,[35] with the
|
||
|
most modern joy,--with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part
|
||
|
caused by the abstraction of all _time_ from their verses. There is
|
||
|
some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived
|
||
|
in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which
|
||
|
lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and
|
||
|
said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical
|
||
|
doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some
|
||
|
pre-established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and
|
||
|
some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact
|
||
|
observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub
|
||
|
they shall never see.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of
|
||
|
instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body
|
||
|
can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the
|
||
|
broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And
|
||
|
great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information
|
||
|
than by the printed page. I only would say that it needs a strong head
|
||
|
to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the
|
||
|
proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must
|
||
|
carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as
|
||
|
well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and
|
||
|
invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with
|
||
|
manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense
|
||
|
of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always
|
||
|
true, that as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy
|
||
|
days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his
|
||
|
volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato[36] or Shakespeare,
|
||
|
only that least part,--only the authentic utterances of the
|
||
|
oracle;--all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's
|
||
|
and Shakespeare's.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Of course there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise
|
||
|
man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading.
|
||
|
Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach
|
||
|
elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to
|
||
|
drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various
|
||
|
genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires set
|
||
|
the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures
|
||
|
in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns[37] and
|
||
|
pecuniary foundations,[38] though of towns of gold, can never
|
||
|
countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.[39] Forget this,
|
||
|
and our American colleges will recede in their public importance,
|
||
|
whilst they grow richer every year.
|
||
|
|
||
|
* * * * *
|
||
|
|
||
|
III. There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a
|
||
|
recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]--as unfit for any handiwork or public
|
||
|
labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at
|
||
|
speculative men, as if, because they speculate or _see_, they could do
|
||
|
nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy--who are always, more
|
||
|
universally than any other class, the scholars of their day--are
|
||
|
addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men
|
||
|
they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are
|
||
|
often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for
|
||
|
their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is
|
||
|
not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is
|
||
|
essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never
|
||
|
ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of
|
||
|
beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but
|
||
|
there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble[42] of
|
||
|
thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious
|
||
|
to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived.
|
||
|
Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The world--this shadow of the soul, or _other me_, lies wide around.
|
||
|
Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me
|
||
|
acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult.
|
||
|
I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to
|
||
|
suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb
|
||
|
abyss[43] be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its
|
||
|
fear;[44] I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So
|
||
|
much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness
|
||
|
have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my
|
||
|
dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his
|
||
|
nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is
|
||
|
pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation,
|
||
|
want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar
|
||
|
grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid
|
||
|
products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted
|
||
|
into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin.[45] The
|
||
|
manufacture goes forward at all hours.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The actions and events of our childhood and youth are now matters of
|
||
|
calmest observation. They lie like fair pictures in the air. Not so
|
||
|
with our recent actions,--with the business which we now have in hand.
|
||
|
On this we are quite unable to speculate. Our affections as yet
|
||
|
circulate through it. We no more feel or know it than we feel the
|
||
|
feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is yet a
|
||
|
part of life,--remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. In
|
||
|
some contemplative hour it detaches itself from the life like a ripe
|
||
|
fruit,[46] to become a thought of the mind. Instantly it is raised,
|
||
|
transfigured; the corruptible has put on incorruption.[47] Henceforth
|
||
|
it is an object of beauty, however base its origin and neighborhood.
|
||
|
Observe, too, the impossibility of antedating this act. In its grub
|
||
|
state it cannot fly, it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly,
|
||
|
without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and
|
||
|
is an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our private
|
||
|
history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert
|
||
|
form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean.[48]
|
||
|
Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs,
|
||
|
and ferules,[49] the love of little maids and berries, and many
|
||
|
another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend
|
||
|
and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and
|
||
|
world, must also soar and sing.[50]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has
|
||
|
the richest return of wisdom. I will not shut myself out of this globe
|
||
|
of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot, there to hunger
|
||
|
and pine; nor trust the revenue of some single faculty, and exhaust
|
||
|
one vein of thought, much like those Savoyards,[51] who, getting their
|
||
|
livelihood by carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking Dutchmen,
|
||
|
for all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to find stock, and
|
||
|
discovered that they had whittled up the last of their pine-trees.
|
||
|
Authors we have, in numbers, who have written out their vein, and who,
|
||
|
moved by a commendable prudence, sail for Greece or Palestine, follow
|
||
|
the trapper into the prairie, or ramble round Algiers, to replenish
|
||
|
their merchantable stock.
|
||
|
|
||
|
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of
|
||
|
action. Life is our dictionary.[52] Years are well spent in country
|
||
|
labors; in town; in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank
|
||
|
intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one
|
||
|
end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate
|
||
|
and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how
|
||
|
much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his
|
||
|
speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and
|
||
|
copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn
|
||
|
grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and
|
||
|
the work-yard made.
|
||
|
|
||
|
But the final value of action, like that of books, and better than
|
||
|
books, is that it is a resource. That great principle of Undulation in
|
||
|
nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the breath;
|
||
|
in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night;
|
||
|
in heat and cold; and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and
|
||
|
every fluid, is known to us under the name of Polarity,--these "fits of
|
||
|
easy transmission and reflection," as Newton[53] called them, are the
|
||
|
law of nature because they are the law of spirit.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The mind now thinks, now acts, and each fit reproduces the other. When
|
||
|
the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer
|
||
|
paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended and books are a
|
||
|
weariness,--he has always the resource _to live_. Character is higher
|
||
|
than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.
|
||
|
The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to
|
||
|
live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to
|
||
|
impart his truth? He can still fall back on this elemental force of
|
||
|
living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the
|
||
|
grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. Let the beauty of affection
|
||
|
cheer his lowly roof. Those "far from fame," who dwell and act with
|
||
|
him, will feel the force of his constitution in the doings and
|
||
|
passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and
|
||
|
designed display. Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour
|
||
|
which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his
|
||
|
instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in seemliness is
|
||
|
gained in strength. Not out of those on whom systems of education have
|
||
|
exhausted their culture comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or
|
||
|
to build the new, but out of unhandselled[54] savage nature; out of
|
||
|
terrible Druids[55] and Berserkers[56] come at last Alfred[57] and
|
||
|
Shakespeare. I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be
|
||
|
said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is
|
||
|
virtue yet in the hoe and the spade,[58] for learned as well as for
|
||
|
unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are
|
||
|
invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall
|
||
|
not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the
|
||
|
popular judgments and modes of action.
|
||
|
|
||
|
* * * * *
|
||
|
|
||
|
I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books,
|
||
|
and by action. It remains to say somewhat of his duties.
|
||
|
|
||
|
They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be comprised in
|
||
|
self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to
|
||
|
guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow,
|
||
|
unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. Flamsteed[59] and
|
||
|
Herschel,[60] in their glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars
|
||
|
with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and
|
||
|
useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing
|
||
|
obscure and nebulous[61] stars of the human mind, which as yet no man
|
||
|
has thought of as such,--watching days and months sometimes for a few
|
||
|
facts; correcting still his old records,--must relinquish display and
|
||
|
immediate fame. In the long period of his preparation he must betray
|
||
|
often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the
|
||
|
disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in
|
||
|
his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must
|
||
|
accept--how often!--poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of
|
||
|
treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the
|
||
|
religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of
|
||
|
course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty
|
||
|
and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way
|
||
|
of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual
|
||
|
hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to
|
||
|
educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to
|
||
|
find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.
|
||
|
He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes
|
||
|
and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye.
|
||
|
He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that
|
||
|
retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic
|
||
|
sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of
|
||
|
history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in
|
||
|
all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of
|
||
|
actions,--these he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new
|
||
|
verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men
|
||
|
and events of to-day,--this he shall hear and promulgate.
|
||
|
|
||
|
These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in
|
||
|
himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows
|
||
|
the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some
|
||
|
great decorum, some fetich[62] of a government, some ephemeral trade,
|
||
|
or war, or man, is cried up[63] by half mankind and cried down by the
|
||
|
other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds
|
||
|
are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the
|
||
|
scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his
|
||
|
belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable[64]
|
||
|
of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in
|
||
|
steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add
|
||
|
observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach,
|
||
|
and bide his own time,--happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone
|
||
|
that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads on every
|
||
|
right step. For the instinct is sure that prompts him to tell his
|
||
|
brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the
|
||
|
secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all
|
||
|
minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private
|
||
|
thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks,
|
||
|
and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in
|
||
|
utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording
|
||
|
them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find
|
||
|
true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his
|
||
|
frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses,
|
||
|
until he finds that he is the complement[65] of his hearers;--that
|
||
|
they drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature;
|
||
|
the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his
|
||
|
wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and
|
||
|
universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every
|
||
|
man feels--This is my music; this is myself.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the
|
||
|
scholar be,--free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom,
|
||
|
"without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own
|
||
|
constitution." Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very
|
||
|
function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a
|
||
|
shame to him if his tranquility, amid dangerous times, arise from the
|
||
|
presumption that like children and women his is a protected class; or
|
||
|
if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from
|
||
|
politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the
|
||
|
flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a
|
||
|
boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still;
|
||
|
so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look
|
||
|
into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin,--see the
|
||
|
whelping of this lion,--which lies no great way back; he will then
|
||
|
find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he
|
||
|
will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth
|
||
|
defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its
|
||
|
pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown
|
||
|
error you behold is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See
|
||
|
it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Yes, we are the cowed,--we the trustless. It is a mischievous notion
|
||
|
that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long
|
||
|
time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so
|
||
|
it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To
|
||
|
ignorance and sin it is flint. They adapt themselves to it as they
|
||
|
may; but in proportion as a man has any thing in him divine, the
|
||
|
firmament flows before him and takes his signet[66] and form. Not he
|
||
|
is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
|
||
|
They are the kings of the world who give the color of their present
|
||
|
thought to all nature and all art, and persuade men, by the cheerful
|
||
|
serenity of their carrying the matter, that this thing which they do
|
||
|
is the apple which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe,
|
||
|
and inviting nations to the harvest. The great man makes the great
|
||
|
thing. Wherever Macdonald[67] sits, there is the head of the table.
|
||
|
Linnæus[68] makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins it
|
||
|
from the farmer and the herb-woman: Davy,[69] chemistry; and
|
||
|
Cuvier,[70] fossils. The day is always his who works in it with
|
||
|
serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him
|
||
|
whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic
|
||
|
follow the moon.[71]
|
||
|
|
||
|
For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed,--darker
|
||
|
than can be enlightened. I might not carry with me the feeling of my
|
||
|
audience in stating my own belief. But I have already shown the ground
|
||
|
of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine that man is one. I believe man
|
||
|
has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light
|
||
|
that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are become of no
|
||
|
account. Men in history, men in the world of to-day, are bugs, are
|
||
|
spawn, and are called "the mass" and "the herd." In a century, in a
|
||
|
millennium, one or two men;[72] that is to say, one or two
|
||
|
approximations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in
|
||
|
the hero or the poet their own green and crude being,--ripened; yes, and
|
||
|
are content to be less, so _that_ may attain to its full stature. What a
|
||
|
testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of
|
||
|
his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in
|
||
|
the glory of his chief! The poor and the low find some amends to their
|
||
|
immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social
|
||
|
inferiority.[73] They are content to be brushed like flies from the path
|
||
|
of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common
|
||
|
nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and
|
||
|
glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to
|
||
|
be their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their downtrod
|
||
|
selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of
|
||
|
blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and
|
||
|
conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Men such as they[74] are very naturally seek money or power; and power
|
||
|
because it is as good as money,--the "spoils," so called, "of office."
|
||
|
And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their
|
||
|
sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit
|
||
|
the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks
|
||
|
and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual
|
||
|
domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world
|
||
|
for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the
|
||
|
materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall
|
||
|
be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more
|
||
|
sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in
|
||
|
history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth[75] the particular
|
||
|
natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only
|
||
|
done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The
|
||
|
books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have
|
||
|
quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the
|
||
|
point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one
|
||
|
scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. First, one, then
|
||
|
another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these
|
||
|
supplies, we crave a better and a more abundant food. The man has
|
||
|
never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined
|
||
|
in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded,
|
||
|
unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of
|
||
|
the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the
|
||
|
throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It
|
||
|
is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which
|
||
|
animates all men.
|
||
|
|
||
|
* * * * *
|
||
|
|
||
|
But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of the
|
||
|
Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I have to say of
|
||
|
nearer reference to the time and to this country.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas which
|
||
|
predominate over successive epochs, and there are data for marking the
|
||
|
genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Reflective or
|
||
|
Philosophical age.[76] With the views I have intimated of the oneness
|
||
|
or the identity of the mind through all individuals, I do not much
|
||
|
dwell on these differences. In fact, I believe each individual passes
|
||
|
through all three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the
|
||
|
adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a revolution in the
|
||
|
leading idea may be distinctly enough traced.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.[77] Must that needs be
|
||
|
evil? We, it seems, are critical. We are embarrassed with second
|
||
|
thoughts.[78] We cannot enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof
|
||
|
the pleasure consists. We are lined with eyes. We see with our feet.
|
||
|
The time is infected with Hamlet's unhappiness,--
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."[79]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. Would we be
|
||
|
blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink
|
||
|
truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary class as a mere
|
||
|
announcement of the fact that they find themselves not in the state of
|
||
|
mind of their fathers, and regret the coming state as untried; as a
|
||
|
boy dreads the water before he has learned that he can swim. If there
|
||
|
is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of
|
||
|
Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of
|
||
|
being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and
|
||
|
by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by
|
||
|
the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a
|
||
|
very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as
|
||
|
they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and
|
||
|
science, through church and state.
|
||
|
|
||
|
One of these signs is the fact that the same movement[80] which
|
||
|
effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the
|
||
|
state assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect.
|
||
|
Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the low, the common,
|
||
|
was explored and poetized. That which had been negligently trodden
|
||
|
under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves
|
||
|
for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer
|
||
|
than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of
|
||
|
the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household
|
||
|
life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a
|
||
|
sign--is it not?--of new vigor when the extremities are made active,
|
||
|
when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not
|
||
|
for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or
|
||
|
Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the
|
||
|
common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give
|
||
|
me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future
|
||
|
worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the
|
||
|
firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the
|
||
|
boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body;--show
|
||
|
me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence
|
||
|
of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in
|
||
|
these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle
|
||
|
bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal
|
||
|
law;[81] and the shop, the plow, and the ledger referred to the like
|
||
|
cause by which light undulates and poets sing;--and the world lies no
|
||
|
longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order:
|
||
|
there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and
|
||
|
animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith,[82] Burns,[83]
|
||
|
Cowper,[84] and, in a newer time, of Goethe,[85] Wordsworth,[86] and
|
||
|
Carlyle.[87] This idea they have differently followed and with various
|
||
|
success. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope,[88] of
|
||
|
Johnson,[89] of Gibbon,[90] looks cold and pedantic. This writing is
|
||
|
blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not less
|
||
|
beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far.
|
||
|
The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This
|
||
|
perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.
|
||
|
Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown
|
||
|
us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There is one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of
|
||
|
life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated:--I
|
||
|
mean Emanuel Swedenborg.[91] The most imaginative of men, yet writing
|
||
|
with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a
|
||
|
purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time.
|
||
|
Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could
|
||
|
surmount. But he saw and showed the connexion between nature and the
|
||
|
affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual
|
||
|
character of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his
|
||
|
shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature;
|
||
|
he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul
|
||
|
material forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity,
|
||
|
of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political
|
||
|
movement, is the new importance given to the single person. Everything
|
||
|
that tends to insulate the individual--to surround him with barriers
|
||
|
of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and
|
||
|
man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign
|
||
|
state--tends to true union as well as greatness. "I learned," said the
|
||
|
melancholy Pestalozzi,[92] "that no man in God's wide earth is either
|
||
|
willing or able to help any other man." Help must come from the bosom
|
||
|
alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the
|
||
|
ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes
|
||
|
of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one
|
||
|
lesson more than another that should pierce his ear, it is--The world
|
||
|
is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and
|
||
|
you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers
|
||
|
the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare
|
||
|
all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched
|
||
|
might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all
|
||
|
preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the
|
||
|
courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already
|
||
|
suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice
|
||
|
make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent,
|
||
|
indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of
|
||
|
this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is
|
||
|
no work for any one but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of
|
||
|
the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the
|
||
|
mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth
|
||
|
below not in unison with these, but are hindered from action by the
|
||
|
disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and
|
||
|
turn drudges, or die of disgust, some of them suicides. What is the
|
||
|
remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful
|
||
|
now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if
|
||
|
the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there
|
||
|
abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience,--patience;
|
||
|
with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace
|
||
|
the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work the study and
|
||
|
the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent,
|
||
|
the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the
|
||
|
world, not to be an unit; not to be reckoned one character; not to
|
||
|
yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to
|
||
|
be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the
|
||
|
party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted
|
||
|
geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and
|
||
|
friends,--please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own
|
||
|
feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.
|
||
|
Then shall man be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for
|
||
|
sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a
|
||
|
wall of defense and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will
|
||
|
for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by
|
||
|
the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
COMPENSATION.[93]
|
||
|
|
||
|
The wings of Time are black and white,
|
||
|
Pied with morning and with night.
|
||
|
Mountain tall and ocean deep
|
||
|
Trembling balance duly keep.
|
||
|
In changing moon, in tidal wave,
|
||
|
Glows the feud of Want and Have.
|
||
|
Gauge of more and less through space
|
||
|
Electric star and pencil plays.
|
||
|
The lonely Earth amid the balls
|
||
|
That hurry through the eternal halls,
|
||
|
A makeweight flying to the void,
|
||
|
Supplemental asteroid,
|
||
|
Or compensatory spark,
|
||
|
Shoots across the neutral Dark.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine,
|
||
|
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine;
|
||
|
Through the frail ringlets thee deceive,
|
||
|
None from its stock that vine can reave.
|
||
|
Fear not, then, thou child infirm,
|
||
|
There's no god dare wrong a worm.
|
||
|
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts,
|
||
|
And power to him who power exerts;
|
||
|
Hast not thy share? On winged feet,
|
||
|
Lo! it rushes thee to meet;
|
||
|
And all that Nature made thy own,
|
||
|
Floating in air or pent in stone,
|
||
|
Will rive the hills and swim the sea,
|
||
|
And, like thy shadow, follow thee.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on
|
||
|
Compensation: for it seemed to me when very young, that on this
|
||
|
subject life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the
|
||
|
preachers taught. The documents,[94] too, from which the doctrine is
|
||
|
to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always
|
||
|
before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the
|
||
|
bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the
|
||
|
dwelling-house, greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence
|
||
|
of character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me,
|
||
|
also, that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present
|
||
|
action of the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition,
|
||
|
and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal
|
||
|
love, conversing with that which he knows was always and always must
|
||
|
be, because it really is now. It appeared, moreover, that if this
|
||
|
doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those bright
|
||
|
intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would
|
||
|
be a star in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey that
|
||
|
would not suffer us to lose our way.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church.
|
||
|
The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the
|
||
|
ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that
|
||
|
judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are
|
||
|
successful; that the good are miserable;[95] and then urged from
|
||
|
reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in
|
||
|
the next life. No offense appeared to be taken by the congregation at
|
||
|
this doctrine. As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up,
|
||
|
they separated without remark on the sermon.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean
|
||
|
by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that
|
||
|
houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by
|
||
|
unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a
|
||
|
compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the
|
||
|
like gratifications another day,--bank stock and doubloons,[96]
|
||
|
venison and champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for
|
||
|
what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to
|
||
|
love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate
|
||
|
inference the disciple would draw was: "We are to have _such_ a good
|
||
|
time as the sinners have now"; or, to push it to its extreme import:
|
||
|
"You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, if we could;
|
||
|
not being successful, we expect our revenue to-morrow."
|
||
|
|
||
|
The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful;
|
||
|
that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted
|
||
|
in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a
|
||
|
manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from
|
||
|
the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the
|
||
|
will: and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and
|
||
|
falsehood.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day,
|
||
|
and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally
|
||
|
they treat the related topics. I think that our popular theology has
|
||
|
gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has
|
||
|
displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life
|
||
|
gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the
|
||
|
doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes
|
||
|
the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. Few men are wiser than
|
||
|
they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without
|
||
|
afterthought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in
|
||
|
silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the
|
||
|
divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to
|
||
|
an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to
|
||
|
make his own statement.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts
|
||
|
that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my
|
||
|
expectation, if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle.
|
||
|
|
||
|
POLARITY,[97] or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature;
|
||
|
in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters;
|
||
|
in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and
|
||
|
animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the
|
||
|
animal body; in the systole and diastole[98] of the heart; in the
|
||
|
undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal
|
||
|
gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce
|
||
|
magnetism at one end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes place at
|
||
|
the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here,
|
||
|
you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that
|
||
|
each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as,
|
||
|
spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out;
|
||
|
upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The
|
||
|
entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There is
|
||
|
somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night,
|
||
|
man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in
|
||
|
each individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the
|
||
|
elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For example, in
|
||
|
the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no creatures
|
||
|
are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every gift and
|
||
|
every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a
|
||
|
reduction from another part of the same creature. If the head and neck
|
||
|
are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What we gain in
|
||
|
power is lost in time; and the converse. The periodic or compensating
|
||
|
errors of the planets is another instance. The influences of climate
|
||
|
and soil in political history is another. The cold climate
|
||
|
invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles,
|
||
|
tigers, or scorpions.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every
|
||
|
excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its
|
||
|
sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of
|
||
|
pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for
|
||
|
its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain
|
||
|
of folly. For everything you have missed, you have gained something
|
||
|
else; and for everything you gain, you lose something. If riches
|
||
|
increase, they are increased[99] that use them. If the gatherer
|
||
|
gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his
|
||
|
chest, swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies
|
||
|
and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level
|
||
|
from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to
|
||
|
equalize themselves. There is always some leveling circumstance that
|
||
|
puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate,
|
||
|
substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong
|
||
|
and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,--a
|
||
|
morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him;--nature sends him a
|
||
|
troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the
|
||
|
dame's classes at the village school, and love and fear for them
|
||
|
smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to
|
||
|
intenerate[100] the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts
|
||
|
the lamb in, and keeps her balance true.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President
|
||
|
has paid dear for his White House.[101] It has commonly cost him all
|
||
|
his peace, and the best of his many attributes. To preserve for a
|
||
|
short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is
|
||
|
content to eat dust[102] before the real masters who stand erect
|
||
|
behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and
|
||
|
permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by
|
||
|
force of will or of thought, is great, and overlooks[103] thousands,
|
||
|
has the charges of that eminence. With every influx of light comes new
|
||
|
danger. Has he light? he must bear witness to the light, and always
|
||
|
outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his
|
||
|
fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father
|
||
|
and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and
|
||
|
admires and covets?--he must cast behind him their admiration, and
|
||
|
afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a by-word and a
|
||
|
hissing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build
|
||
|
or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long.
|
||
|
_Res nolunt diu male administrari._[104] Though no checks to a new
|
||
|
evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is
|
||
|
cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the
|
||
|
revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary,
|
||
|
juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance
|
||
|
comes in. If the government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is
|
||
|
resisted by an overcharge of energy in the citizen, and life glows
|
||
|
with a fiercer flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to
|
||
|
elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to establish
|
||
|
themselves with great indifferency under all varieties of
|
||
|
circumstances. Under all governments the influence of character
|
||
|
remains the same,--in Turkey and in New England about alike. Under the
|
||
|
primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man must
|
||
|
have been as free as culture could make him.
|
||
|
|
||
|
These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented
|
||
|
in every one of its particles. Everything in nature contains all the
|
||
|
powers of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff; as the
|
||
|
naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a
|
||
|
horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying
|
||
|
man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main
|
||
|
character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the
|
||
|
aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every
|
||
|
other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the
|
||
|
world and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem
|
||
|
of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its
|
||
|
course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole
|
||
|
man, and recite all his destiny.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The world globes itself in a drop of dew.[105] The microscope cannot
|
||
|
find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little.[106] Eyes,
|
||
|
ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of
|
||
|
reproduction that take hold on eternity,--all find room to consist in
|
||
|
the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true
|
||
|
doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in
|
||
|
every moss and cobweb.[107] The value of the universe contrives to
|
||
|
throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil;
|
||
|
if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul, which
|
||
|
within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its
|
||
|
inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. "It
|
||
|
is in the world, and the world was made by it." Justice is not
|
||
|
postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life.
|
||
|
[Greek: Hoi kyboi Dios aei eupiptousi],[108]--the dice of God are
|
||
|
always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication table, or a
|
||
|
mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.
|
||
|
Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still
|
||
|
returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every
|
||
|
virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What
|
||
|
we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole
|
||
|
appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire.
|
||
|
If you see a hand or limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs
|
||
|
is there behind.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates itself, in a
|
||
|
twofold manner; first, in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly,
|
||
|
in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance
|
||
|
the retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen
|
||
|
by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the
|
||
|
understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread
|
||
|
over a long time, and so does not become distinct until after many
|
||
|
years. The specific stripes may follow late after the offense, but
|
||
|
they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out
|
||
|
of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the
|
||
|
flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and
|
||
|
ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms
|
||
|
in the cause, the end preëxists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be disparted, we
|
||
|
seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,--to
|
||
|
gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs
|
||
|
of the character. The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to
|
||
|
the solution of one problem,--how to detach the sensual sweet, the
|
||
|
sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the
|
||
|
moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean
|
||
|
off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a
|
||
|
_one end_, without an _other end_. The soul says, Eat; the body would
|
||
|
feast. The soul says, The man and woman shall be one flesh and one
|
||
|
soul; the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have dominion
|
||
|
over all things to the ends of virtue; the body would have the power
|
||
|
over things to its own ends.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The soul strives amain[109] to live and work through all things. It
|
||
|
would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it,--power,
|
||
|
pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody;
|
||
|
to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in
|
||
|
particulars, to ride, that he may ride; to dress, that he may be
|
||
|
dressed; to eat, that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen.
|
||
|
Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and
|
||
|
fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of
|
||
|
nature,--the sweet, without the other side,--the bitter.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day,
|
||
|
it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest success. The
|
||
|
parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of
|
||
|
pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong
|
||
|
things, as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no
|
||
|
more have things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get
|
||
|
an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow.
|
||
|
"Drive out nature with a fork, she comes running back."[110]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek
|
||
|
to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know; that they
|
||
|
do not touch him;--but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in
|
||
|
his soul. If he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another
|
||
|
more vital part. If he has escaped them in form, and in the
|
||
|
appearance, it is because he has resisted his life, and fled from
|
||
|
himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is the
|
||
|
failure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the
|
||
|
tax, that the experiment would not be tried,--since to try it is to be
|
||
|
mad,--but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the
|
||
|
will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected,
|
||
|
so that the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to
|
||
|
see the sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt;
|
||
|
he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; and thinks he
|
||
|
can cut off that which he would have, from that which he would not
|
||
|
have. "How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in
|
||
|
silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied
|
||
|
Providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled
|
||
|
desires!"[111]
|
||
|
|
||
|
The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, of
|
||
|
history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue in
|
||
|
literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter,[112] Supreme
|
||
|
Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they
|
||
|
involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying up the hands[113] of so
|
||
|
bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England.[114]
|
||
|
Prometheus[115] knows one secret which Jove must bargain for;
|
||
|
Minerva,[116] another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps
|
||
|
the key of them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Of all the gods, I only know the keys
|
||
|
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults
|
||
|
His thunders sleep."
|
||
|
|
||
|
A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its moral aim.
|
||
|
The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem
|
||
|
impossible for any fable to be invented to get any currency which was
|
||
|
not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though
|
||
|
Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite
|
||
|
invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis
|
||
|
held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal,
|
||
|
for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's
|
||
|
blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it must be.
|
||
|
There is a crack in everything God has made. It would seem, there is
|
||
|
always this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares, even into
|
||
|
the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to make bold
|
||
|
holiday, and to shake itself free of the old laws,--this back-stroke,
|
||
|
this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal; that in nature
|
||
|
nothing can be given, all things are sold.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis,[120] who keeps watch in the
|
||
|
universe, and lets no offense go unchastised. The Furies,[121] they
|
||
|
said, are attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should
|
||
|
transgress his path, they would punish him. The poets related that
|
||
|
stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had an occult
|
||
|
sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax
|
||
|
gave Hector[122] dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels
|
||
|
of the car of Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that
|
||
|
on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded, that when the Thasians[123]
|
||
|
erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one of his
|
||
|
rivals went to it by night, and endeavored to throw it down by
|
||
|
repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal, and was
|
||
|
crushed to death beneath its fall.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from thought
|
||
|
above the will of the writer. That is the best part of each writer,
|
||
|
which has nothing private in it;[124] that which he does not know,
|
||
|
that which flowed out of his constitution, and not from his too
|
||
|
active invention; that which in the study of a single artist you might
|
||
|
not easily find, but in the study of many, you would abstract as the
|
||
|
spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that
|
||
|
early Hellenic[125] world, that I would know. The name and
|
||
|
circumstance of Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass
|
||
|
when we come to the highest criticism. We are to see that which man
|
||
|
was tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you
|
||
|
will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of
|
||
|
Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs of
|
||
|
all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the
|
||
|
statements of an absolute truth, without qualification. Proverbs, like
|
||
|
the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
|
||
|
That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow
|
||
|
the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in
|
||
|
proverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws which the pulpit,
|
||
|
the senate, and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets
|
||
|
and workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as
|
||
|
omnipresent as that of birds and flies.
|
||
|
|
||
|
All things are double, one against another.--Tit for tat;[126] an eye
|
||
|
for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure;
|
||
|
love for love.--Give and it shall be given you.--- He that watereth
|
||
|
shall be watered himself.--What will you have? quoth God; pay for it
|
||
|
and take it.--Nothing venture, nothing have.--Thou shalt be paid
|
||
|
exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less.--Who doth not work
|
||
|
shall not eat.--Harm watch, harm catch.--Curses always recoil on the
|
||
|
head of him who imprecates them.--If you put a chain around the neck
|
||
|
of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.--Bad counsel
|
||
|
confounds the adviser.--The Devil is an ass.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is
|
||
|
overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of nature. We
|
||
|
aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act
|
||
|
arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of
|
||
|
the world.
|
||
|
|
||
|
A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will, or against
|
||
|
his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every
|
||
|
word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball
|
||
|
thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or,
|
||
|
rather, it is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a
|
||
|
coil of cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well
|
||
|
thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the
|
||
|
boat.
|
||
|
|
||
|
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had ever a point
|
||
|
of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke.[127] The
|
||
|
exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself
|
||
|
from enjoyment in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in
|
||
|
religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in
|
||
|
striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns[128] and ninepins, and
|
||
|
you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you
|
||
|
shall lose your own. The senses would make things of all persons; of
|
||
|
women, of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, "I will get it
|
||
|
from his purse or get it from his skin," is sound philosophy.
|
||
|
|
||
|
All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are
|
||
|
speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple
|
||
|
relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We
|
||
|
meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect
|
||
|
diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any
|
||
|
departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me
|
||
|
that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from
|
||
|
me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine;
|
||
|
there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me.
|
||
|
|
||
|
All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all unjust
|
||
|
accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner.
|
||
|
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all
|
||
|
revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he
|
||
|
appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he
|
||
|
hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws
|
||
|
are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded
|
||
|
and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene[129]
|
||
|
bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be
|
||
|
revised.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly
|
||
|
follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The terror of
|
||
|
cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates,[130] the awe of prosperity,
|
||
|
the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks
|
||
|
of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the
|
||
|
balance of justice through the heart and mind of man.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best to pay
|
||
|
scot and lot[131] as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for
|
||
|
a small frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained
|
||
|
anything who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he
|
||
|
gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's
|
||
|
wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the instant
|
||
|
acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on the other;
|
||
|
that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction remains in
|
||
|
the memory of himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction
|
||
|
alters, according to its nature, their relation to each other. He may
|
||
|
soon come to see that he had better have broken his own bones than to
|
||
|
have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that "the highest price he
|
||
|
can pay for a thing is to ask for it."
|
||
|
|
||
|
A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that
|
||
|
it is the part of prudence to face every claimant, and pay every just
|
||
|
demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for,
|
||
|
first or last, you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may
|
||
|
stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a
|
||
|
postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise, you
|
||
|
will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. Benefit is the
|
||
|
end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is
|
||
|
levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base--and
|
||
|
that is the one base thing in the universe--to receive favors and
|
||
|
render none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those
|
||
|
from whom we receive them, or only seldom.[132] But the benefit we
|
||
|
receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for
|
||
|
cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It
|
||
|
will fast corrupt and worm worms.[133] Pay it away quickly in some
|
||
|
sort.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the
|
||
|
prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon,
|
||
|
a knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. It is
|
||
|
best to pay in your land a skillful gardener, or to buy good sense
|
||
|
applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to
|
||
|
navigation; in the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing,
|
||
|
serving; in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs.
|
||
|
So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your
|
||
|
estate. But because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in
|
||
|
life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The
|
||
|
swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge
|
||
|
and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like
|
||
|
paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they
|
||
|
represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or
|
||
|
stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions
|
||
|
of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the
|
||
|
defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and
|
||
|
moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative.
|
||
|
The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but
|
||
|
they who do not the thing have not the power.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to
|
||
|
the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of
|
||
|
the perfect compensation of the universe. The absolute balance of Give
|
||
|
and Take, the doctrine that everything has its price,--and if that
|
||
|
price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and
|
||
|
that it is impossible to get anything without its price,--is not less
|
||
|
sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in
|
||
|
the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of
|
||
|
nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees
|
||
|
implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern
|
||
|
ethics which sparkle on his chisel edge, which are measured out by his
|
||
|
plumb and foot rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the
|
||
|
shop bill as in the history of a state,--do recommend to him his
|
||
|
trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a
|
||
|
hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world
|
||
|
persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for
|
||
|
truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a
|
||
|
rogue. Commit a crime,[134] and the earth is made of glass. Commit a
|
||
|
crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as
|
||
|
reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel
|
||
|
and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word,[135] you cannot wipe out
|
||
|
the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet
|
||
|
or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and
|
||
|
substances of nature--water, snow, wind, gravitation--become penalties
|
||
|
to the thief.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right
|
||
|
action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just,
|
||
|
as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has
|
||
|
absolute good, which like fire turns everything to its own nature, so
|
||
|
that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against
|
||
|
Napoleon, when he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies
|
||
|
became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offense,
|
||
|
poverty, prove benefactors:--
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Winds blow and waters roll
|
||
|
Strength to the brave, and power and deity,
|
||
|
Yet in themselves are nothing."
|
||
|
|
||
|
The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had
|
||
|
ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had
|
||
|
ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in
|
||
|
the fable[136] admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the
|
||
|
hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the
|
||
|
thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to
|
||
|
thank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he
|
||
|
has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with
|
||
|
the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one,
|
||
|
and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has
|
||
|
he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he
|
||
|
is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help;
|
||
|
and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms
|
||
|
itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and
|
||
|
stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little.
|
||
|
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he
|
||
|
is punished, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something;
|
||
|
he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts;
|
||
|
learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got
|
||
|
moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of
|
||
|
his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his
|
||
|
weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead
|
||
|
skin, and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable.
|
||
|
Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As
|
||
|
long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain
|
||
|
assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are
|
||
|
spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
|
||
|
In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As
|
||
|
the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the
|
||
|
enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the
|
||
|
temptation we resist.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity,
|
||
|
defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are
|
||
|
not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of
|
||
|
wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition
|
||
|
that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be
|
||
|
cheated by anyone but himself,[137] as for a thing to be and not to be
|
||
|
at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains.
|
||
|
The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the
|
||
|
fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to
|
||
|
loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God
|
||
|
in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is
|
||
|
withholden,[138] the better for you; for compound interest on compound
|
||
|
interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature,
|
||
|
to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no
|
||
|
difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A
|
||
|
mob[139] is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of
|
||
|
reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending
|
||
|
to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its
|
||
|
actions are insane like its whole constitution; it persecutes a
|
||
|
principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by
|
||
|
inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who
|
||
|
have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire engines
|
||
|
to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate
|
||
|
spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be
|
||
|
dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison, a
|
||
|
more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the
|
||
|
world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the
|
||
|
earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always
|
||
|
arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen,
|
||
|
and the martyrs are justified.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. The man
|
||
|
is all. Everything has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage
|
||
|
has its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation
|
||
|
is not the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing
|
||
|
these representations, What boots it to do well? there is one event to
|
||
|
good and evil; if I gain any good, I must pay for it; if I lose any
|
||
|
good, I gain some other; all actions are indifferent.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own
|
||
|
nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul _is_.
|
||
|
Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow
|
||
|
with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being.
|
||
|
Essence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. Being is
|
||
|
the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and
|
||
|
swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself. Nature,
|
||
|
truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or
|
||
|
departure of the same. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the
|
||
|
great Night or shade, on which, as a background, the living universe
|
||
|
paints itself forth, but no fact is begotten by it; it cannot work,
|
||
|
for it is not. It cannot work any good; it cannot work any harm. It is
|
||
|
harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the
|
||
|
criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, and does not come to a
|
||
|
crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning
|
||
|
confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore
|
||
|
outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie
|
||
|
with him, he so far deceases from nature. In some manner there will be
|
||
|
a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding also; but should we
|
||
|
not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal account.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude
|
||
|
must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty
|
||
|
to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, I
|
||
|
properly _am_; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into
|
||
|
deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness
|
||
|
receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love;
|
||
|
none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are
|
||
|
considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always
|
||
|
affirms an Optimism,[140] never a Pessimism.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Man's life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust.
|
||
|
Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application to man, of the
|
||
|
_presence of the soul_, and not of its absence; the brave man is
|
||
|
greater than the coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a
|
||
|
man, and not less, than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the
|
||
|
good of virtue; for that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute
|
||
|
existence without any comparative. Material good has its tax, and if
|
||
|
it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind
|
||
|
will blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may
|
||
|
be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which
|
||
|
the heart and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not
|
||
|
earn; for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it
|
||
|
brings with it new burdens. I do not wish more external
|
||
|
goods,--neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The
|
||
|
gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the
|
||
|
knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable
|
||
|
to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I
|
||
|
contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of
|
||
|
St. Bernard,[141]--"Nothing can, work me damage except myself; the
|
||
|
harm, that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real
|
||
|
sufferer but by my own fault."
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of
|
||
|
condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction
|
||
|
of More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel
|
||
|
indignation or malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less
|
||
|
faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. He
|
||
|
almost shuns their eye; he fears they will upbraid God. What should
|
||
|
they do? It seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearly, and
|
||
|
these mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them, as the sun
|
||
|
melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one,
|
||
|
this bitterness of _His_ and _Mine_ ceases. His is mine. I am my
|
||
|
brother, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by
|
||
|
great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that
|
||
|
loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the
|
||
|
discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the
|
||
|
friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied is my own.
|
||
|
It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus[142] and
|
||
|
Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and
|
||
|
incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His[143] virtue,--is not
|
||
|
that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes which
|
||
|
break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements
|
||
|
of a nature whose law is growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic
|
||
|
necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home,
|
||
|
and laws, and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful but
|
||
|
stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly
|
||
|
forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these
|
||
|
revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are
|
||
|
incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him,
|
||
|
becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through which the
|
||
|
living form is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated
|
||
|
heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and of no settled character, in
|
||
|
which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the
|
||
|
man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such
|
||
|
should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead
|
||
|
circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But to
|
||
|
us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not
|
||
|
coöperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We cannot part with our friend. We cannot let our angels go. We do not
|
||
|
see that they only go out, that archangels may come in. We are
|
||
|
idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in
|
||
|
its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any
|
||
|
force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We
|
||
|
linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and
|
||
|
shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and
|
||
|
nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so
|
||
|
graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty
|
||
|
saith, "Up and onward forevermore!" We cannot stay amid the ruins.
|
||
|
Neither will we rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted
|
||
|
eyes, like those monsters who look backwards.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the
|
||
|
understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a
|
||
|
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of
|
||
|
friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure
|
||
|
years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The
|
||
|
death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but
|
||
|
privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius;
|
||
|
for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an
|
||
|
epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up
|
||
|
a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows
|
||
|
the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It
|
||
|
permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the
|
||
|
reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the
|
||
|
next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny
|
||
|
garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for
|
||
|
its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener,
|
||
|
is made the banyan[144] of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to
|
||
|
wide neighborhoods of men.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
SELF-RELIANCE
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Ne te quæsiveris extra."[145]
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
|
||
|
Render an honest and a perfect man,
|
||
|
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
|
||
|
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
|
||
|
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
|
||
|
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."[146]
|
||
|
|
||
|
* * * * *
|
||
|
|
||
|
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
|
||
|
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
|
||
|
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
|
||
|
Power and speed be hands and feet.[147]
|
||
|
|
||
|
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which
|
||
|
were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an
|
||
|
admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The
|
||
|
sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may
|
||
|
contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for
|
||
|
you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.[148]
|
||
|
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal
|
||
|
sense;[149] for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our
|
||
|
first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last
|
||
|
Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest
|
||
|
merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato,[150] and Milton[151] is, that they
|
||
|
set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what
|
||
|
they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of
|
||
|
light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster
|
||
|
of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice
|
||
|
his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize
|
||
|
our own rejected thoughts:[152] they come back to us with a certain
|
||
|
alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson
|
||
|
for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression
|
||
|
with good-humored inflexibility then most when[153] the whole cry of
|
||
|
voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with
|
||
|
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the
|
||
|
time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from
|
||
|
another.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the
|
||
|
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide;[154]
|
||
|
that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that
|
||
|
though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn
|
||
|
can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground
|
||
|
which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new
|
||
|
in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor
|
||
|
does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one
|
||
|
character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none.
|
||
|
This sculpture in the memory is not without preëstablished harmony.
|
||
|
The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of
|
||
|
that particular ray. We but half express ourselves,[155] and are
|
||
|
ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be
|
||
|
safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be
|
||
|
faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by
|
||
|
cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his
|
||
|
work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall
|
||
|
give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the
|
||
|
attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no
|
||
|
hope.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Trust thyself:[156] every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept
|
||
|
the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your
|
||
|
contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done
|
||
|
so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,
|
||
|
betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated
|
||
|
at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all
|
||
|
their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind
|
||
|
the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a
|
||
|
protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides,
|
||
|
redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing
|
||
|
on Chaos[157] and the Dark.
|
||
|
|
||
|
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and
|
||
|
behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel
|
||
|
mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed
|
||
|
the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these[158] have not.
|
||
|
Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we
|
||
|
look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody:
|
||
|
all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five[159]
|
||
|
out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth
|
||
|
and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and
|
||
|
made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it
|
||
|
will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he
|
||
|
cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is
|
||
|
sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his
|
||
|
contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us
|
||
|
seniors very unnecessary.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The nonchalance[160] of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would
|
||
|
disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the
|
||
|
healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit
|
||
|
is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from
|
||
|
his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences
|
||
|
them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad,
|
||
|
interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never
|
||
|
about consequences about interests; he gives an independent, genuine
|
||
|
verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as
|
||
|
it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has
|
||
|
once acted or spoken with _éclat_[162] he is a committed person,
|
||
|
watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections
|
||
|
must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe[163] for this. Ah,
|
||
|
that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who[164] can thus avoid
|
||
|
all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same
|
||
|
unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always
|
||
|
be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which
|
||
|
being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts
|
||
|
into the ear of men, and put them in fear.
|
||
|
|
||
|
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint
|
||
|
and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in
|
||
|
conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is
|
||
|
a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better
|
||
|
securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty
|
||
|
and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity.
|
||
|
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators,
|
||
|
but names and customs.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.[165] He who would gather
|
||
|
immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must
|
||
|
explore if it be goodness.[166] Nothing is at last sacred but the
|
||
|
integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall
|
||
|
have the suffrage[167] of the world. I remember an answer which when
|
||
|
quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont
|
||
|
to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my
|
||
|
saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live
|
||
|
wholly from within? my friend suggested: "But these impulses may be
|
||
|
from below, not from above." I replied: "They do not seem to me to be
|
||
|
such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil."
|
||
|
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but
|
||
|
names very readily transferable to that or this;[168] the only right
|
||
|
is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A
|
||
|
man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if
|
||
|
everything were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think
|
||
|
how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and
|
||
|
dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and
|
||
|
sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and
|
||
|
speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat
|
||
|
of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this
|
||
|
bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from
|
||
|
Barbadoes,[169] why should I not say to him: "Go love thy infant; love
|
||
|
thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and
|
||
|
never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible
|
||
|
tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is
|
||
|
spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth
|
||
|
is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have
|
||
|
some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be
|
||
|
preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules
|
||
|
and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my
|
||
|
genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post,
|
||
|
_Whim_.[170] I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we
|
||
|
cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I
|
||
|
seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good
|
||
|
man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good
|
||
|
situations. Are they _my_ poor? I tell thee, thou foolish
|
||
|
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give
|
||
|
to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There
|
||
|
is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought
|
||
|
and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your
|
||
|
miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools;
|
||
|
the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now
|
||
|
stand; alms to sots; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;--though I
|
||
|
confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a
|
||
|
wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the
|
||
|
rule. There is the man _and_ his virtues. Men do what is called a good
|
||
|
action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a
|
||
|
fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are
|
||
|
done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as
|
||
|
invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances.
|
||
|
I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not
|
||
|
for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so
|
||
|
it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and
|
||
|
unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and
|
||
|
bleeding.[171] I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse
|
||
|
this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it
|
||
|
makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are
|
||
|
reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I
|
||
|
have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am,
|
||
|
and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows
|
||
|
any secondary testimony.
|
||
|
|
||
|
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
|
||
|
This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may
|
||
|
serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is
|
||
|
the harder, because you will always find those who think they know
|
||
|
what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to
|
||
|
live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after
|
||
|
our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps
|
||
|
with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.[172]
|
||
|
|
||
|
The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is,
|
||
|
that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the
|
||
|
impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church,
|
||
|
contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for
|
||
|
the government or against it, spread your table like base
|
||
|
housekeepers,--under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the
|
||
|
precise[173] man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn
|
||
|
from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you.[174] Do
|
||
|
your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what
|
||
|
a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I
|
||
|
anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and
|
||
|
topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I
|
||
|
not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous
|
||
|
word? Do I not know that, with[175] all this ostentation of examining
|
||
|
the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not
|
||
|
know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,--the
|
||
|
permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a
|
||
|
retained attorney, and these airs of the bench[176] are the emptiest
|
||
|
affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another
|
||
|
handkerchief,[177] and attached themselves to some one of these
|
||
|
communities of opinion.[178] This conformity makes them not false in a
|
||
|
few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars.
|
||
|
Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two,
|
||
|
their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us,
|
||
|
and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is
|
||
|
not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we
|
||
|
adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by
|
||
|
degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying
|
||
|
experience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself also in
|
||
|
the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced
|
||
|
smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in
|
||
|
answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not
|
||
|
spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow
|
||
|
tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable
|
||
|
sensation.
|
||
|
|
||
|
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.[179] And
|
||
|
therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders
|
||
|
look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If
|
||
|
this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his
|
||
|
own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces
|
||
|
of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are
|
||
|
put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.[180] Yet is
|
||
|
the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the
|
||
|
senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the
|
||
|
world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is
|
||
|
decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable
|
||
|
themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the
|
||
|
people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the
|
||
|
unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made
|
||
|
to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to
|
||
|
treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The other terror[181] that scares us from self-trust is our
|
||
|
consistency;[182] a reverence for our past act or word, because the
|
||
|
eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit[183] than
|
||
|
our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about
|
||
|
this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat[184] you have
|
||
|
stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict
|
||
|
yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on
|
||
|
your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring
|
||
|
the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in
|
||
|
a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the
|
||
|
Deity; yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them
|
||
|
heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color.
|
||
|
Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and
|
||
|
flee.[185]
|
||
|
|
||
|
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
|
||
|
little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a
|
||
|
great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself
|
||
|
with the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words,
|
||
|
and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though
|
||
|
it contradict everything you said to-day.--"Ah, so you shall be sure
|
||
|
to be misunderstood."--Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?
|
||
|
Pythagoras[186] was misunderstood, and Socrates,[187] and Jesus, and
|
||
|
Luther,[188] and Copernicus,[189] and Galileo,[190] and Newton,[191]
|
||
|
and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to
|
||
|
be misunderstood.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will
|
||
|
are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of
|
||
|
Andes[192] and Himmaleh[193] are insignificant in the curve of the
|
||
|
sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is
|
||
|
like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;[194]--read it forward,
|
||
|
backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing,
|
||
|
contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my
|
||
|
honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it
|
||
|
will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My
|
||
|
book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The
|
||
|
swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he
|
||
|
carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are.
|
||
|
Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate
|
||
|
their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue
|
||
|
or vice emit a breath every moment.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be
|
||
|
each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions
|
||
|
will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost
|
||
|
sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One
|
||
|
tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line
|
||
|
of a hundred tacks.[195] See the line from a sufficient distance, and
|
||
|
it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action
|
||
|
will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your
|
||
|
conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already
|
||
|
done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If
|
||
|
I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes,[196] I must
|
||
|
have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will,
|
||
|
do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force
|
||
|
of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their
|
||
|
health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate
|
||
|
and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a
|
||
|
train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on
|
||
|
the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels.
|
||
|
That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's[197] voice, and dignity
|
||
|
into Washington's port, and America into Adams's[198] eye. Honor is
|
||
|
venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient
|
||
|
virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it
|
||
|
and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage,
|
||
|
but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old
|
||
|
immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and
|
||
|
consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.
|
||
|
Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the
|
||
|
Spartan[199] fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is
|
||
|
coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he
|
||
|
should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I
|
||
|
would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand
|
||
|
the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl
|
||
|
in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the
|
||
|
upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and
|
||
|
Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no
|
||
|
other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there
|
||
|
is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily,
|
||
|
everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other
|
||
|
person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes
|
||
|
place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must
|
||
|
make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a
|
||
|
country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time
|
||
|
fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his
|
||
|
steps as a train of clients. A man Cæsar[200] is born, and for ages
|
||
|
after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds
|
||
|
so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue
|
||
|
and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of
|
||
|
one man; as Monachism, of the hermit Antony;[201] the Reformation, of
|
||
|
Luther; Quakerism, of Fox;[202] Methodism, of Wesley;[203] Abolition,
|
||
|
of Clarkson.[204] Scipio,[205] Milton called "the height of Rome"; and
|
||
|
all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few
|
||
|
stout and earnest persons.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him
|
||
|
not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy,
|
||
|
a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But
|
||
|
the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds
|
||
|
to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels
|
||
|
poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, a costly book,
|
||
|
have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem
|
||
|
to say like that, "Who are you, Sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors
|
||
|
for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out
|
||
|
and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to
|
||
|
command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular
|
||
|
fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried
|
||
|
to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed,
|
||
|
and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the
|
||
|
duke, and assured that he had been insane,[206] owes its popularity to
|
||
|
the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the
|
||
|
world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason,
|
||
|
and finds himself a true prince.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination
|
||
|
plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier
|
||
|
vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common
|
||
|
day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total
|
||
|
of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred,[207] and
|
||
|
Scanderbeg,[208] and Gustavus?[209] Suppose they were virtuous; did
|
||
|
they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act
|
||
|
to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men
|
||
|
shall act with original views, the luster will be transferred from the
|
||
|
actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the
|
||
|
eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual
|
||
|
reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which
|
||
|
men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great
|
||
|
proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale
|
||
|
of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money
|
||
|
but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the
|
||
|
hieroglyphic[210] by which they obscurely signified their
|
||
|
consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every
|
||
|
man.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we
|
||
|
inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the
|
||
|
aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What
|
||
|
is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without
|
||
|
parallax,[211] without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of
|
||
|
beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of
|
||
|
independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the
|
||
|
essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity
|
||
|
or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all
|
||
|
later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind
|
||
|
which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the
|
||
|
sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the
|
||
|
soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time,
|
||
|
from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same
|
||
|
source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the
|
||
|
life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in
|
||
|
nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the
|
||
|
fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that
|
||
|
inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied
|
||
|
without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense
|
||
|
intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its
|
||
|
activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do
|
||
|
nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask
|
||
|
whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all
|
||
|
philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can
|
||
|
affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his
|
||
|
mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his
|
||
|
involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the
|
||
|
expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day
|
||
|
and night, not to be disputed. My willful actions and acquisitions are
|
||
|
but roving;--the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command
|
||
|
my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the
|
||
|
statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily;
|
||
|
for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy
|
||
|
that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not
|
||
|
whimsical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it
|
||
|
after me, and in course of time, all mankind,--although it may chance
|
||
|
that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much
|
||
|
a fact as the sun.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is
|
||
|
profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh
|
||
|
he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the
|
||
|
world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls,
|
||
|
from the center of the present thought; and new date and new create
|
||
|
the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom,
|
||
|
old things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples, fall; it lives
|
||
|
now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are
|
||
|
made sacred by relation to it,--one as much as another. All things
|
||
|
are dissolved to their center by their cause, and, in the universal
|
||
|
miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man
|
||
|
claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the
|
||
|
phraseology of some old moldered nation in another country, in another
|
||
|
world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its
|
||
|
fullness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom
|
||
|
he has cast his ripened being?[212] Whence, then, this worship of the
|
||
|
past?[213] The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and
|
||
|
authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors
|
||
|
which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where
|
||
|
it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it
|
||
|
be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and
|
||
|
becoming.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say
|
||
|
"I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before
|
||
|
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window
|
||
|
make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what
|
||
|
they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There
|
||
|
is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
|
||
|
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown
|
||
|
flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its
|
||
|
nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike.
|
||
|
But man postpones, or remembers; he does not live in the present, but
|
||
|
with a reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that
|
||
|
surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be
|
||
|
happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above
|
||
|
time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not
|
||
|
yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not
|
||
|
what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a
|
||
|
price on a few texts, on a few lives.[214] We are like children who
|
||
|
repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they
|
||
|
grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to
|
||
|
see,--painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards,
|
||
|
when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered
|
||
|
those saying, they understand them, and are willing to let the words
|
||
|
go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes.
|
||
|
If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man
|
||
|
to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new
|
||
|
perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded
|
||
|
treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall
|
||
|
be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid;
|
||
|
probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off
|
||
|
remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest
|
||
|
approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have
|
||
|
life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall
|
||
|
not discern the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of
|
||
|
man; you shall not hear any name;--the way, the thought, the good,
|
||
|
shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and
|
||
|
experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that
|
||
|
ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike
|
||
|
beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision,
|
||
|
there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The
|
||
|
soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation,
|
||
|
perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with
|
||
|
knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic
|
||
|
Ocean, the South Sea,--long intervals of time, years, centuries,--are
|
||
|
of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state
|
||
|
of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is
|
||
|
called life, and what is called death.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of
|
||
|
repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new
|
||
|
state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one
|
||
|
fact the world hates, that the soul _becomes_; for that forever
|
||
|
degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to
|
||
|
shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas[215]
|
||
|
equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as
|
||
|
the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent.[216]
|
||
|
To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather
|
||
|
of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience
|
||
|
than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I
|
||
|
must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when
|
||
|
we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height,
|
||
|
and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to
|
||
|
principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities,
|
||
|
nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on
|
||
|
every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE.
|
||
|
Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it
|
||
|
constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into
|
||
|
all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they
|
||
|
contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war eloquence,
|
||
|
personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of
|
||
|
its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature
|
||
|
for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure
|
||
|
of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which
|
||
|
cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise
|
||
|
and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the
|
||
|
vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of
|
||
|
the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the
|
||
|
cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books
|
||
|
and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the
|
||
|
invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here
|
||
|
within.[217] Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our
|
||
|
own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our
|
||
|
native riches.
|
||
|
|
||
|
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his
|
||
|
genius admonished to stay at home to put itself in communication with
|
||
|
the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the
|
||
|
urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before
|
||
|
the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool,
|
||
|
how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or
|
||
|
sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of
|
||
|
our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our
|
||
|
hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and
|
||
|
I have all men's.[218] Not for that will I adopt their petulance or
|
||
|
folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation
|
||
|
must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At
|
||
|
times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with
|
||
|
emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want,
|
||
|
charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, "Come out unto
|
||
|
us." But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men
|
||
|
possess to annoy men, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can
|
||
|
come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by
|
||
|
desire we bereave ourselves of the love."
|
||
|
|
||
|
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith,
|
||
|
let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of
|
||
|
war, and wake Thor and Woden,[219] courage and constancy, in our Saxon
|
||
|
breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth.
|
||
|
Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to
|
||
|
the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we
|
||
|
converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O
|
||
|
friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward
|
||
|
I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law
|
||
|
less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but
|
||
|
proximities.[220] I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support
|
||
|
my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,--but these relations
|
||
|
I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your
|
||
|
customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you,
|
||
|
or you.[221] If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the
|
||
|
happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.
|
||
|
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is
|
||
|
deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever
|
||
|
inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will
|
||
|
love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by
|
||
|
hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth
|
||
|
with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not
|
||
|
selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine,
|
||
|
and all men's however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.
|
||
|
Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by
|
||
|
your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will
|
||
|
bring us out safe at last.[222] But so may you give these friends
|
||
|
pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their
|
||
|
sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when
|
||
|
they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they
|
||
|
justify me, and do the same thing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a
|
||
|
rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism;[223] and the bold
|
||
|
sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the
|
||
|
law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or
|
||
|
the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfill your round of
|
||
|
duties by clearing yourself in the _direct_, or in the _reflex_ way.
|
||
|
Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother,
|
||
|
cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid
|
||
|
you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to
|
||
|
myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the
|
||
|
name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can
|
||
|
discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code.
|
||
|
If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its
|
||
|
commandment one day.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the
|
||
|
common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a
|
||
|
taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight,
|
||
|
that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself,
|
||
|
that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to
|
||
|
others!
|
||
|
|
||
|
If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by
|
||
|
distinction _society_, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew
|
||
|
and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous,
|
||
|
desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune,
|
||
|
afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and
|
||
|
perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our
|
||
|
social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot
|
||
|
satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to
|
||
|
their practical force,[224] and do lean and beg day and night
|
||
|
continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations,
|
||
|
our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has
|
||
|
chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of
|
||
|
fate, where strength is born.
|
||
|
|
||
|
If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all
|
||
|
heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is _ruined_. If the
|
||
|
finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in
|
||
|
an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of
|
||
|
Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is
|
||
|
right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life.
|
||
|
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the
|
||
|
professions, who _teams it, farms it_,[225] _peddles_, keeps a school,
|
||
|
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so
|
||
|
forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet,
|
||
|
is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his
|
||
|
days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does
|
||
|
not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a
|
||
|
hundred chances. Let a Stoic[226] open the resources of man, and tell
|
||
|
men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves;
|
||
|
that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a
|
||
|
man is the word made flesh,[227] born to shed healing to the
|
||
|
nations,[228] that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that
|
||
|
the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books,
|
||
|
idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
|
||
|
thank and revere him,--and that teacher shall restore the life of man
|
||
|
to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution
|
||
|
in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their
|
||
|
education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their
|
||
|
association; in their property; in their speculative views.
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. In what prayers do men allow themselves![229] That which they call
|
||
|
a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad
|
||
|
and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign
|
||
|
virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural,
|
||
|
and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular
|
||
|
commodity,--anything less than all good,--is vicious. Prayer is the
|
||
|
contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It
|
||
|
is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul.[230] It is the
|
||
|
spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to
|
||
|
effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and
|
||
|
not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one
|
||
|
with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The
|
||
|
prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of
|
||
|
the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard
|
||
|
throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach,[231] in Fletcher's
|
||
|
Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate,
|
||
|
replies,--
|
||
|
|
||
|
"His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;
|
||
|
Our valors are our best gods."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want
|
||
|
of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you
|
||
|
can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and
|
||
|
already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base.
|
||
|
We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company,
|
||
|
instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric
|
||
|
shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason.
|
||
|
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods
|
||
|
and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him
|
||
|
all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our
|
||
|
love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We
|
||
|
solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he
|
||
|
held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him
|
||
|
because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said
|
||
|
Zoroaster,[232] "the blessed Immortals are swift."
|
||
|
|
||
|
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a
|
||
|
disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, "Let
|
||
|
not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and
|
||
|
we will obey."[233] Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my
|
||
|
brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables
|
||
|
merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind
|
||
|
is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and
|
||
|
power, a Locke,[234] a Lavoisier,[235] a Hutton,[236] a Betham,[237] a
|
||
|
Fourier,[238] it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new
|
||
|
system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number
|
||
|
of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his
|
||
|
complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which
|
||
|
are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental
|
||
|
thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such is
|
||
|
Calvinism,[239] Quakerism,[240] Swedenborgism.[241] The pupil takes the
|
||
|
same delight in subordinating everything to the new terminology, as a
|
||
|
girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons
|
||
|
thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his
|
||
|
intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in
|
||
|
all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the
|
||
|
end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the
|
||
|
system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the
|
||
|
universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their
|
||
|
master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to
|
||
|
see,--how you can see; "It must be somehow that you stole the light from
|
||
|
us." They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable,
|
||
|
will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and
|
||
|
call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat
|
||
|
new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot
|
||
|
and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed,
|
||
|
million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Traveling,
|
||
|
whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all
|
||
|
educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable
|
||
|
in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an
|
||
|
axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The
|
||
|
soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home, and when his
|
||
|
necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or
|
||
|
into foreign lands, he is at home still; and shall make men sensible
|
||
|
by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of
|
||
|
wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not
|
||
|
like an interloper or a valet.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for
|
||
|
the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is
|
||
|
first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding
|
||
|
somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get
|
||
|
somewhat which he does not carry,[242] travels away from himself, and
|
||
|
grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes,[243] in
|
||
|
Palmyra,[244] his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as
|
||
|
they. He carries ruins to ruins.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the
|
||
|
indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can
|
||
|
be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk,
|
||
|
embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples,
|
||
|
and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting,
|
||
|
identical, that I fled from.[245] I seek the Vatican,[246] and the
|
||
|
palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but
|
||
|
I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. But the rage of traveling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness
|
||
|
affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond,
|
||
|
and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel
|
||
|
when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is
|
||
|
imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our houses are built with
|
||
|
foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our
|
||
|
opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the
|
||
|
Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It
|
||
|
was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an
|
||
|
application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the
|
||
|
conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric[247] or the
|
||
|
Gothic[248] model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and
|
||
|
quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American
|
||
|
artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by
|
||
|
him considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the
|
||
|
wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will
|
||
|
create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and
|
||
|
taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Insist on yourself; never imitate.[249] Your own gift you can present
|
||
|
every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation;
|
||
|
but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous,
|
||
|
half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can
|
||
|
teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has
|
||
|
exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught
|
||
|
Shakespeare?[250] Where is the master who could have instructed
|
||
|
Franklin,[251] or Washington, or Bacon,[252] or Newton?[253] Every great
|
||
|
man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio[254] is precisely that part he
|
||
|
could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of
|
||
|
Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too
|
||
|
much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance
|
||
|
brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias,[255] or
|
||
|
trowel of the Egyptians,[256] or the pen of Moses,[257] or Dante,[258]
|
||
|
but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all
|
||
|
eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if
|
||
|
you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in
|
||
|
the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of
|
||
|
one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy
|
||
|
heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld[259] again.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our
|
||
|
spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of
|
||
|
society, and no man improves.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on
|
||
|
the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is
|
||
|
civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this
|
||
|
change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is
|
||
|
taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a
|
||
|
contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American,
|
||
|
with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the
|
||
|
naked New Zealander,[260] whose property is a club, a spear, a mat,
|
||
|
and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the
|
||
|
health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost
|
||
|
his aboriginal strength. If the traveler tell us truly, strike the
|
||
|
savage with a broad ax, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and
|
||
|
heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow
|
||
|
shall send the white to his grave.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
|
||
|
He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He
|
||
|
has a fine Geneva[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the
|
||
|
hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] he has, and so
|
||
|
being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street
|
||
|
does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not
|
||
|
observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar
|
||
|
of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his
|
||
|
memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases
|
||
|
the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery
|
||
|
does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some
|
||
|
energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some
|
||
|
vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom
|
||
|
where is the Christian?
|
||
|
|
||
|
There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard
|
||
|
of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular
|
||
|
equality may be observed between great men of the first and of the
|
||
|
last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of
|
||
|
the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than
|
||
|
Plutarch's[264] heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in
|
||
|
time is the race progressive. Phocion,[265] Socrates, Anaxagoras,[266]
|
||
|
Diogenes,[267] are great men, but they leave no class. He who is
|
||
|
really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be
|
||
|
his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and
|
||
|
inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate
|
||
|
men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good.
|
||
|
Hudson[268] and Bering[269] accomplished so much in their fishing
|
||
|
boats, as to astonish Parry[270] and Franklin,[271] whose equipment
|
||
|
exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an
|
||
|
opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena
|
||
|
than any one since. Columbus[272] found the New World in an undecked
|
||
|
boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of
|
||
|
means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few
|
||
|
years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man.
|
||
|
We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of
|
||
|
science, and yet Napoleon[273] conquered Europe by the bivouac, which
|
||
|
consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all
|
||
|
aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las
|
||
|
Casas,[274] "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and
|
||
|
carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should
|
||
|
receive his supply of corn, grind it in his handmill, and bake his
|
||
|
bread himself."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is
|
||
|
composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to
|
||
|
the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a
|
||
|
nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments
|
||
|
which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away
|
||
|
from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem
|
||
|
the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property,
|
||
|
and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be
|
||
|
assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what
|
||
|
each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes
|
||
|
ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially
|
||
|
he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental,--came to him by
|
||
|
inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having;
|
||
|
it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there,
|
||
|
because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man
|
||
|
is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is
|
||
|
living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or
|
||
|
revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually
|
||
|
renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life,"
|
||
|
said the Caliph Ali,[275] "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest
|
||
|
from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us
|
||
|
to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in
|
||
|
numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new
|
||
|
uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex![276] The Democrats
|
||
|
from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels
|
||
|
himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In
|
||
|
like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in
|
||
|
multitude. Not so, O friends! will the god deign to enter and inhabit
|
||
|
you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts
|
||
|
off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong
|
||
|
and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a
|
||
|
man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless
|
||
|
mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of
|
||
|
all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is
|
||
|
weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so
|
||
|
perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly
|
||
|
rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs,
|
||
|
works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than
|
||
|
a man who stands on his head.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So use all that is called Fortune.[277] Most men gamble with her, and
|
||
|
gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as
|
||
|
unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the
|
||
|
chancelors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained
|
||
|
the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her
|
||
|
rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your
|
||
|
sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable
|
||
|
event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for
|
||
|
you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
|
||
|
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
FRIENDSHIP.[278]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Barring all
|
||
|
the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human
|
||
|
family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many
|
||
|
persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we
|
||
|
honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in
|
||
|
church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the
|
||
|
language of these wandering eyebeams. The heart knoweth.
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain
|
||
|
cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of
|
||
|
benevolence and complacency which are felt toward others, are likened
|
||
|
to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more
|
||
|
active, more cheering are these fine inward irradiations. From the
|
||
|
highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good will,
|
||
|
they make the sweetness of life.
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The
|
||
|
scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not
|
||
|
furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is
|
||
|
necessary to write a letter to a friend, and, forthwith, troops of
|
||
|
gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words.
|
||
|
See in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation
|
||
|
which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is
|
||
|
expected and announced, and an uneasiness between pleasure and pain
|
||
|
invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear
|
||
|
to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all
|
||
|
things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new,
|
||
|
and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger,
|
||
|
only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard
|
||
|
by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is, what we wish. Having
|
||
|
imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand related in
|
||
|
conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The
|
||
|
same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better than we are
|
||
|
wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb devil
|
||
|
has taken leave for the time. For long hours we can continue a series
|
||
|
of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest,
|
||
|
secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and
|
||
|
acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. But
|
||
|
as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his
|
||
|
definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He
|
||
|
has heard the first, the last and best, he will ever hear from us. He
|
||
|
is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension, are old
|
||
|
acquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress,
|
||
|
and the dinner, but the throbbing of the heart, and the communications
|
||
|
of the soul, no more.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which relume[279] a
|
||
|
young world for me again? What is so delicious as a just and firm
|
||
|
encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their
|
||
|
approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and
|
||
|
the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is
|
||
|
metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all
|
||
|
ennuis vanish; all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity
|
||
|
but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured
|
||
|
that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it
|
||
|
would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
|
||
|
|
||
|
5. I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old
|
||
|
and the new. Shall I not call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth
|
||
|
himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and
|
||
|
yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the
|
||
|
noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.[280] Who hears me,
|
||
|
who understands me, becomes mine,--a possession for all time. Nor is
|
||
|
nature so poor, but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we
|
||
|
weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many
|
||
|
thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by-and-by stand
|
||
|
in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims
|
||
|
is a traditionary globe. My friends have come[281] to me unsought. The
|
||
|
great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of
|
||
|
virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me
|
||
|
and in them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual
|
||
|
character, relation, age, sex and circumstance, at which he usually
|
||
|
connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent
|
||
|
lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and
|
||
|
enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the
|
||
|
first Bard[282]--poetry without stop--hymn, ode and epic,[283] poetry
|
||
|
still flowing, Apollo[284] and the Muses[285] chanting still. Will these
|
||
|
two separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but
|
||
|
I fear it not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by
|
||
|
simple affinity, and the Genius[286] of my life being thus social, the
|
||
|
same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these
|
||
|
men and women, wherever I may be.
|
||
|
|
||
|
6. I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is
|
||
|
almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison,[287] of misused
|
||
|
wine" of the affections. A new person is to me a great event, and
|
||
|
hinders me from sleep. I have had such fine fancies lately about two
|
||
|
or three persons, as have given me delicious hours, but the joy ends
|
||
|
in the day: it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action
|
||
|
is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's
|
||
|
accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property in his virtues.
|
||
|
I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears
|
||
|
applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our
|
||
|
friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer,
|
||
|
his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his
|
||
|
dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds
|
||
|
new and larger from his mouth.
|
||
|
|
||
|
7. Yet the systole and diastole[288] of the heart are not without
|
||
|
their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the
|
||
|
immortality[289] of the soul, is too good to be believed. The lover,
|
||
|
beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily that which he
|
||
|
worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with
|
||
|
shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero
|
||
|
the virtues in which he shines, and afterward worship the form to
|
||
|
which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the
|
||
|
soul does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science,
|
||
|
all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness.
|
||
|
Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical
|
||
|
foundation of this Elysian temple?[290] Shall I not be as real as the
|
||
|
things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they
|
||
|
are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their appearance, though
|
||
|
it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is
|
||
|
not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the
|
||
|
stem short. And I must hazard the production of the bald fact amid
|
||
|
these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at
|
||
|
our banquet.[291] A man who stands united with his thought, conceives
|
||
|
magnificently to himself. He is conscious of a universal success,[292]
|
||
|
even though bought by uniform particular failures. No advantages, no
|
||
|
powers, no gold or force can be any match for him. I cannot choose but
|
||
|
rely on my own poverty, more than on your wealth. I cannot make your
|
||
|
consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles; the planet
|
||
|
has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say of the admirable parts
|
||
|
and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see well that for all
|
||
|
his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is at least a poor
|
||
|
Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast shadow of the
|
||
|
Phenomenal includes thee, also, in its pied and painted
|
||
|
immensity,--thee, also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou
|
||
|
art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,--thou art not my soul, but
|
||
|
a picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already
|
||
|
thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. It is not that the soul puts forth
|
||
|
friends, as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the
|
||
|
germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf?[293] The law of nature
|
||
|
is alternation forevermore. Each electrical state superinduces the
|
||
|
opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter
|
||
|
into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone, for a
|
||
|
season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. This method
|
||
|
betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations. The
|
||
|
instinct of affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and
|
||
|
the returning sense of insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus
|
||
|
every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he
|
||
|
should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this,
|
||
|
to each new candidate for his love:--
|
||
|
|
||
|
DEAR FRIEND:--
|
||
|
|
||
|
If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match
|
||
|
my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles,
|
||
|
in relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise;
|
||
|
my moods are quite attainable; and I respect thy genius; it
|
||
|
is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a
|
||
|
perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a
|
||
|
delicious torment. Thine ever, or never.
|
||
|
|
||
|
8. Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and
|
||
|
not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb,
|
||
|
and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions,
|
||
|
because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams,[294] instead
|
||
|
of the tough fiber of the human heart. The laws of friendship are
|
||
|
great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of
|
||
|
morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a
|
||
|
sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden
|
||
|
of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our
|
||
|
friend not sacredly but with an adulterate passion which would
|
||
|
appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with
|
||
|
subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and
|
||
|
translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to
|
||
|
meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the
|
||
|
very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures
|
||
|
disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual
|
||
|
disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted!
|
||
|
After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be
|
||
|
tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable
|
||
|
apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of
|
||
|
friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both
|
||
|
parties are relieved by solitude.
|
||
|
|
||
|
9. I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how
|
||
|
many friends I have, and what content I can find in conversing with
|
||
|
each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal
|
||
|
from one contest instantly, the joy I find in all the rest becomes
|
||
|
mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other
|
||
|
friends my asylum.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"The valiant warrior[295] famoused for fight,
|
||
|
After a hundred victories, once foiled,
|
||
|
Is from the book of honor razed quite,
|
||
|
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled."
|
||
|
|
||
|
10. Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are
|
||
|
a tough husk in which a delicate organization is protected from
|
||
|
premature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of
|
||
|
the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. Respect the
|
||
|
_naturlangsamkeit_[296] which hardens the ruby in a million years,
|
||
|
and works in duration, in which Alps and Andes come and go as
|
||
|
rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price
|
||
|
of rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but
|
||
|
for the total worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in
|
||
|
our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with
|
||
|
an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth,
|
||
|
impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.
|
||
|
|
||
|
11. The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I
|
||
|
leave, for the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to
|
||
|
speak of that select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute,
|
||
|
and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so
|
||
|
much is this purer, and nothing is so much divine.
|
||
|
|
||
|
12. I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest
|
||
|
courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work,
|
||
|
but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of
|
||
|
experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step
|
||
|
has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In
|
||
|
one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the
|
||
|
sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance
|
||
|
with my brother's soul, is the nut itself whereof all nature and all
|
||
|
thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a
|
||
|
friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to
|
||
|
entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that
|
||
|
relation, and honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for
|
||
|
that covenant comes up, like an Olympian,[297] to the great games,
|
||
|
where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes
|
||
|
himself for contest where Time, Want, Danger are in the lists, and he
|
||
|
alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve
|
||
|
the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The
|
||
|
gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the hap in that
|
||
|
contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles.
|
||
|
There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each
|
||
|
so sovereign, that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason
|
||
|
why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person
|
||
|
with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am
|
||
|
arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may
|
||
|
drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and
|
||
|
second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with
|
||
|
the simplicity and wholeness, with which one chemical atom meets
|
||
|
another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, but diadems and authority,
|
||
|
only to the highest rank, _that_ being permitted to speak truth as
|
||
|
having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is
|
||
|
sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We
|
||
|
parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by
|
||
|
gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him
|
||
|
under a hundred folds. I knew a man who,[298] under a certain
|
||
|
religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliments
|
||
|
and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he
|
||
|
encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was
|
||
|
resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he
|
||
|
could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the
|
||
|
advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true
|
||
|
relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him,
|
||
|
or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But
|
||
|
every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain
|
||
|
dealing and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he
|
||
|
had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not
|
||
|
its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true
|
||
|
relations with men in a false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is it
|
||
|
not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some
|
||
|
civility,--requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some
|
||
|
whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be
|
||
|
questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend
|
||
|
is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives
|
||
|
me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A
|
||
|
friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox[299] in nature. I who alone
|
||
|
am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with
|
||
|
equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being in all
|
||
|
its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so
|
||
|
that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
|
||
|
|
||
|
13. The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to
|
||
|
men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by
|
||
|
lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and
|
||
|
badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much character can
|
||
|
subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed,
|
||
|
and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes
|
||
|
dear to me, I have touched the goal of fortune. I find very little
|
||
|
written directly to the heart of this matter in books. And yet I have
|
||
|
one text which I cannot choose but remember. My author says,[300]--"I
|
||
|
offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and
|
||
|
tender myself least to him to whom I am the most devoted." I wish that
|
||
|
friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must
|
||
|
plant itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. I wish it
|
||
|
to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.[301] We
|
||
|
chide the citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is an exchange
|
||
|
of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neighborhood; it watches with
|
||
|
the sick; it holds the pall at the funeral; and quite loses sight of
|
||
|
the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find
|
||
|
the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we
|
||
|
cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not
|
||
|
substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice,
|
||
|
punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of
|
||
|
friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the
|
||
|
company of plow-boys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed
|
||
|
amity which only celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous
|
||
|
display, by rides in a curricle,[302] and dinners at the best taverns.
|
||
|
The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that
|
||
|
can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is
|
||
|
for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and
|
||
|
death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country
|
||
|
rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty,
|
||
|
and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the
|
||
|
trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs
|
||
|
and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and
|
||
|
unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled, but
|
||
|
should be alert and inventive, and add rhyme and reason to what was
|
||
|
drudgery.
|
||
|
|
||
|
14. Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each
|
||
|
so well-tempered, and so happily adapted, and withal so
|
||
|
circumstanced, (for even in that particular, a poet says, love demands
|
||
|
that the parties be altogether paired,) that its satisfaction can very
|
||
|
seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of
|
||
|
those who are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more
|
||
|
than two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have
|
||
|
never known so high a fellowship as others. I please my imagination
|
||
|
more with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each
|
||
|
other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this
|
||
|
law of _one to one_,[303] peremptory for conversation, which is the
|
||
|
practice and consummation of friendship. Do not mix waters too much.
|
||
|
The best mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have very useful and
|
||
|
cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let all
|
||
|
three of you come together, and you shall not have one new and hearty
|
||
|
word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a
|
||
|
conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. In good company
|
||
|
there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes
|
||
|
place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals at
|
||
|
once merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with
|
||
|
the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend
|
||
|
to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are
|
||
|
there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can
|
||
|
sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to
|
||
|
his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the
|
||
|
high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running
|
||
|
of two souls into one.
|
||
|
|
||
|
15. No two men but being left alone with each other, enter into
|
||
|
simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines _which_ two
|
||
|
shall converse. Unrelated men give little joy to each other; will
|
||
|
never suspect the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great
|
||
|
talent for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some
|
||
|
individuals. Conversation is an evanescent relation,--no more. A man
|
||
|
is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say
|
||
|
a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as
|
||
|
much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the
|
||
|
shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his
|
||
|
thought, he will regain his tongue.
|
||
|
|
||
|
16. Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and
|
||
|
unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent
|
||
|
in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather
|
||
|
than that my friend should overstep by a word or a look his real
|
||
|
sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him
|
||
|
not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being
|
||
|
mine, is that the _not mine_ is _mine_. I hate, where I looked for a
|
||
|
manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of
|
||
|
concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend, than his
|
||
|
echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do
|
||
|
without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There
|
||
|
must be very two before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance
|
||
|
of two large formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared,
|
||
|
before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these
|
||
|
disparities unites them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
17. He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure
|
||
|
that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to
|
||
|
intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this.
|
||
|
Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the
|
||
|
births of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We
|
||
|
talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence
|
||
|
is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he
|
||
|
has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must
|
||
|
needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits
|
||
|
room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend's
|
||
|
buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a
|
||
|
stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the
|
||
|
holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as
|
||
|
property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure instead of
|
||
|
the noblest benefits.
|
||
|
|
||
|
18. Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why
|
||
|
should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them?
|
||
|
Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his
|
||
|
house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by
|
||
|
him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this
|
||
|
touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought,
|
||
|
a sincerity, a glance from him I want, but not news, nor pottage. I
|
||
|
can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences, from cheaper
|
||
|
companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure,
|
||
|
universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is
|
||
|
profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the
|
||
|
horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us
|
||
|
not vilify but raise it to that standard. That great defying eye, that
|
||
|
scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on
|
||
|
reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities;
|
||
|
wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him
|
||
|
as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful
|
||
|
enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to
|
||
|
be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of
|
||
|
the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my friend
|
||
|
I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a
|
||
|
little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give
|
||
|
and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the
|
||
|
heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out
|
||
|
the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism
|
||
|
have yet made good.
|
||
|
|
||
|
19. Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to
|
||
|
prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We
|
||
|
must be our own before we can be another's. There is at least this
|
||
|
satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin proverb;--you can speak
|
||
|
to your accomplice on even terms. _Crimen quos[304] inquinat, æquat_.
|
||
|
To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least
|
||
|
defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire
|
||
|
relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never
|
||
|
mutual respect until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole
|
||
|
world.
|
||
|
|
||
|
20. What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of
|
||
|
spirit we can. Let us be silent,--so we may hear the whisper of the
|
||
|
gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should
|
||
|
say to the select souls, or how to say anything to such? No matter how
|
||
|
ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable
|
||
|
degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be
|
||
|
frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary
|
||
|
and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves
|
||
|
of your lips. The only reward of virtue, is virtue; the only way to
|
||
|
have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting
|
||
|
into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the faster from you,
|
||
|
and you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. We see the noble
|
||
|
afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late,--very
|
||
|
late,--we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, no
|
||
|
consuetudes or habits of society, would be of any avail to establish
|
||
|
us in such relations with them as we desire,--but solely the uprise of
|
||
|
nature in us to the same degree it is in them; then shall we meet as
|
||
|
water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not
|
||
|
want them, for we are already they. In the last analysis, love is only
|
||
|
the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have
|
||
|
sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify
|
||
|
that in their friend each loved his own soul.
|
||
|
|
||
|
21. The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less
|
||
|
easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world.
|
||
|
Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope
|
||
|
cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of
|
||
|
the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which
|
||
|
can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that
|
||
|
the period of nonage,[305] of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is
|
||
|
passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp
|
||
|
heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already
|
||
|
see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no
|
||
|
friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish
|
||
|
alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though
|
||
|
you forfeit the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself,
|
||
|
so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you
|
||
|
draw to you the first-born of the world, those rare pilgrims whereof
|
||
|
only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar
|
||
|
great show as specters and shadows merely.
|
||
|
|
||
|
22. It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if
|
||
|
so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular
|
||
|
views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and
|
||
|
though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater.
|
||
|
Let us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. We are sure
|
||
|
that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we
|
||
|
read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and
|
||
|
reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the
|
||
|
Europe, an old faded garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts.
|
||
|
Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us
|
||
|
even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, "Who are
|
||
|
you? Unhand me. I will be dependent no more." Ah! seest thou not, O
|
||
|
brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform,
|
||
|
and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? A friend
|
||
|
is Janus-faced:[306] he looks to the past and the future. He is the
|
||
|
child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and
|
||
|
the harbinger[307] of a greater friend.
|
||
|
|
||
|
23. I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them
|
||
|
where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on
|
||
|
our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I
|
||
|
cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he is great, he makes
|
||
|
me so great that I cannot descend to converse. In the great days,
|
||
|
presentiments hover before me, far before me in the firmament. I ought
|
||
|
then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go
|
||
|
out that I may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding
|
||
|
into the sky in which now they are only a patch of brighter light.
|
||
|
Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and
|
||
|
study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a
|
||
|
certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual
|
||
|
astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with
|
||
|
you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my
|
||
|
mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall have languid moods, when I
|
||
|
can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects; then I shall
|
||
|
regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were by my side
|
||
|
again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind only with new
|
||
|
visions, not with yourself but with your lusters, and I shall not be
|
||
|
able any more than now to converse with you. So I will owe to my
|
||
|
friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not
|
||
|
what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which
|
||
|
properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they
|
||
|
shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet
|
||
|
as though we met not, and part as though we parted not.
|
||
|
|
||
|
24. It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a
|
||
|
friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the
|
||
|
other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is
|
||
|
not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall
|
||
|
wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the
|
||
|
reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold
|
||
|
companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art
|
||
|
enlarged by thy own shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms,
|
||
|
dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean.[308] It is thought a
|
||
|
disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love
|
||
|
cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and
|
||
|
dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask
|
||
|
crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its
|
||
|
independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a
|
||
|
sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is
|
||
|
entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or
|
||
|
provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may
|
||
|
deify both.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
HEROISM[309]
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Paradise is under the shadow of swords,"[310]
|
||
|
_Mahomet._
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. In the elder English dramatists,[311] and mainly in the plays of
|
||
|
Beaumont and Fletcher,[312] there is a constant recognition of
|
||
|
gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked in the society
|
||
|
of their age, as color is in our American population. When any Rodrigo,
|
||
|
Pedro, or Valerio[313] enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or
|
||
|
governor exclaims, This is a gentleman,--and proffers civilities without
|
||
|
end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight
|
||
|
in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of
|
||
|
character and dialogue,--as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the
|
||
|
Double Marriage,[314]--wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial,
|
||
|
and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the
|
||
|
slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry.
|
||
|
Among many texts, take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered
|
||
|
Athens--all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens,
|
||
|
and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martius, and he
|
||
|
seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles will not ask his life, although
|
||
|
assured, that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"_Valerius._ Bid thy wife farewell.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Soph._ No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen,
|
||
|
Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown.[315]
|
||
|
My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Dor._ Stay, Sophocles--with this, tie up my sight;
|
||
|
Let not soft nature so transformed be,
|
||
|
And lose her gentler sexed humanity,
|
||
|
To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well;
|
||
|
Never one object underneath the sun
|
||
|
Will I behold before my Sophocles:
|
||
|
Farewell; now teach the Romans how to die.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Mar._ Dost know what 'tis to die?
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Soph._ Thou dost not, Martius,
|
||
|
And therefore, not what 'tis to live; to die
|
||
|
Is to begin to live. It is to end
|
||
|
An old, stale, weary work, and to commence
|
||
|
A newer and a better. 'Tis to leave
|
||
|
Deceitful knaves for the society
|
||
|
Of gods and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part
|
||
|
At last, from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs,
|
||
|
And prove thy fortitude what then 'twill do.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Val._ But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus?
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Soph._ Why should I grieve or vex for being sent
|
||
|
To them I ever loved best? Now, I'll kneel,
|
||
|
But with my back toward thee; 'tis the last duty
|
||
|
This trunk can do the gods.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Mar._ Strike, strike, Valerius,
|
||
|
Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth:
|
||
|
This is a man, a woman! Kiss thy lord,
|
||
|
And live with all the freedom you were wont.
|
||
|
O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me
|
||
|
With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart,
|
||
|
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn,
|
||
|
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Val._ What ails my brother?
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Soph._ Martius, oh Martius,
|
||
|
Thou now hast found a way to conquer me.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Dor._ O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak
|
||
|
Fit words to follow such a deed as this?
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Mar._ This admirable duke, Valerius,
|
||
|
With his disdain of fortune and of death,
|
||
|
Captived himself, has captived me,
|
||
|
And though my arm hath ta'en his body here,
|
||
|
His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul.
|
||
|
By Romulus,[316] he is all soul, I think;
|
||
|
He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved;
|
||
|
Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free,
|
||
|
And Martius walks now in captivity."
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or
|
||
|
oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the
|
||
|
same tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often
|
||
|
the sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the ode of
|
||
|
"Dion,"[317] and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and
|
||
|
Scott[318] will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord
|
||
|
Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley.[319] Thomas Carlyle,[320] with
|
||
|
his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has
|
||
|
suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his
|
||
|
biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns[321] has
|
||
|
given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies,[322] there is an
|
||
|
account of the battle of Lutzen,[323] which deserves to be read. And
|
||
|
Simon Ockley's[324] History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of
|
||
|
individual valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of
|
||
|
the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian
|
||
|
Oxford[325] requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence.
|
||
|
But if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to
|
||
|
Plutarch,[326] who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the
|
||
|
Brasidas,[327] the Dion,[328] the Epaminondas,[329] the Scipio[330] of
|
||
|
old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all
|
||
|
the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the
|
||
|
despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A
|
||
|
wild courage, a Stoicism[331] not of the schools, but of the blood,
|
||
|
shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame.
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of
|
||
|
political science, or of private economy. Life is a festival only to
|
||
|
the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a
|
||
|
ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by
|
||
|
our predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The
|
||
|
disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natural,
|
||
|
intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to
|
||
|
breed such compound misery. A lockjaw that bends a man's head back to
|
||
|
his heels, hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes,
|
||
|
insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine
|
||
|
indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by
|
||
|
human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily,
|
||
|
almost no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some
|
||
|
amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a
|
||
|
share in the expiation.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let
|
||
|
him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the
|
||
|
commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go
|
||
|
dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither
|
||
|
defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and
|
||
|
life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the
|
||
|
mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his
|
||
|
behavior.
|
||
|
|
||
|
5. Toward all this external evil, the man within the breast assumes a
|
||
|
warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with
|
||
|
the infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we
|
||
|
give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety
|
||
|
and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust
|
||
|
which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its
|
||
|
energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind
|
||
|
of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but
|
||
|
pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music,
|
||
|
alike in frightful alarms, and in the tipsy mirth of universal
|
||
|
dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there
|
||
|
is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are
|
||
|
of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual
|
||
|
nature. Nevertheless, we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat
|
||
|
in great actions, which does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism
|
||
|
feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a
|
||
|
different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual
|
||
|
activity, would have modified or even reversed the particular action,
|
||
|
yet for the hero, that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not
|
||
|
open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of
|
||
|
the unschooled man, that he finds a quality in him that is negligent
|
||
|
of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and
|
||
|
knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and
|
||
|
all possible antagonists.
|
||
|
|
||
|
6. Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in
|
||
|
contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism
|
||
|
is an obedience[332] to a secret impulse of an individual's character.
|
||
|
Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every
|
||
|
man must be supposed to see a little further on his own proper path
|
||
|
than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his
|
||
|
act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in
|
||
|
unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean
|
||
|
contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself
|
||
|
by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success
|
||
|
at last, and then the prudent also extol.
|
||
|
|
||
|
7. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul
|
||
|
at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood
|
||
|
and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil
|
||
|
agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable,
|
||
|
temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being
|
||
|
scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a
|
||
|
fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common
|
||
|
life. That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt
|
||
|
and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus,[333] is almost
|
||
|
ashamed of its body. What shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums, and
|
||
|
cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and
|
||
|
custard, which rack the wit of all human society. What joys has kind
|
||
|
nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval
|
||
|
between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the
|
||
|
world then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so
|
||
|
innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and
|
||
|
dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying
|
||
|
traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or
|
||
|
a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the
|
||
|
great soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. "Indeed,
|
||
|
these humble considerations[334] make me out of love with greatness.
|
||
|
What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk
|
||
|
stockings thou hast, namely, these and those that were the
|
||
|
peach-colored ones; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for
|
||
|
superfluity, and one other for use!"
|
||
|
|
||
|
8. Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the
|
||
|
inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon
|
||
|
narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: the soul of a
|
||
|
better quality thrusts back the unreasonable economy into the vaults
|
||
|
of life, and says, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire
|
||
|
he will provide. Ibn Hankal,[335] the Arabian geographer, describes a
|
||
|
heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bokhar,[336] "When I was
|
||
|
in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were
|
||
|
open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason,
|
||
|
and was told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a
|
||
|
hundred years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour, and in
|
||
|
whatever number; the master has amply provided for the reception of
|
||
|
the men and their animals, and is never happier than when they tarry
|
||
|
for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any other country."
|
||
|
The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or
|
||
|
shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not for
|
||
|
ostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so
|
||
|
perfect are the compensations of the universe. In some way the time
|
||
|
they seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they seem to take
|
||
|
remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of human love, and
|
||
|
raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hospitality must
|
||
|
be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave
|
||
|
soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its
|
||
|
table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its
|
||
|
own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks[337] and fair water
|
||
|
than belong to city feasts.
|
||
|
|
||
|
9. The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no
|
||
|
dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy,
|
||
|
not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn, and
|
||
|
denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of
|
||
|
tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely
|
||
|
knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision,
|
||
|
his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot,[338] the Indian Apostle,
|
||
|
drank water, and said of wine,--"It is a noble, generous liquor, and
|
||
|
we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was
|
||
|
made before it." Better still is the temperance of king David[339] who
|
||
|
poured out on the ground unto the Lord the water which three of his
|
||
|
warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives.
|
||
|
|
||
|
10. It is told of Brutus,[340] that when he fell on his sword, after
|
||
|
the battle of Philippi,[341] he quoted a line of Euripides,[342]--"O
|
||
|
virtue! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee at last but
|
||
|
a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic
|
||
|
soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to
|
||
|
dine nicely, and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the
|
||
|
perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not
|
||
|
need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.
|
||
|
|
||
|
11. But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, is the
|
||
|
good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common
|
||
|
duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But
|
||
|
these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate,
|
||
|
that they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of
|
||
|
sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio,[343] charged
|
||
|
with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait
|
||
|
for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his
|
||
|
hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344]
|
||
|
condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the
|
||
|
Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346]
|
||
|
playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and
|
||
|
Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his
|
||
|
company,
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Jul._ Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye.
|
||
|
|
||
|
_Master._ Very likely,
|
||
|
'Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye.
|
||
|
|
||
|
These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glow of a
|
||
|
perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything
|
||
|
seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were
|
||
|
the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish
|
||
|
churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of
|
||
|
years. Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world
|
||
|
behind them, and play their own play in innocent defiance of the
|
||
|
Blue-Laws[347] of the world; and such would appear, could we see the
|
||
|
human race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking
|
||
|
together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately
|
||
|
and solemn garb of works and influences.
|
||
|
|
||
|
12. The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a
|
||
|
romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at
|
||
|
school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All
|
||
|
these great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in
|
||
|
beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already
|
||
|
domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great
|
||
|
guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to
|
||
|
disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times,
|
||
|
with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia,
|
||
|
and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the
|
||
|
muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame.
|
||
|
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry
|
||
|
places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But
|
||
|
here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that
|
||
|
here is best. See to it only that thyself is here;--and art and
|
||
|
nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall
|
||
|
not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas,[348]
|
||
|
brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus[349] to
|
||
|
die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The
|
||
|
Jerseys[350] were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and
|
||
|
London streets for the feet of Milton.[351] A great man makes his
|
||
|
climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved
|
||
|
element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest, which is
|
||
|
inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the
|
||
|
imagination in reading the actions of Pericles,[352] Xenophon,[353]
|
||
|
Columbus,[354] Bayard,[355] Sidney,[356] Hampden,[357] teach us how
|
||
|
needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living,
|
||
|
should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on
|
||
|
principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our
|
||
|
days.
|
||
|
|
||
|
13. We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never
|
||
|
ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary.
|
||
|
When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, or
|
||
|
books, or religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw
|
||
|
contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of
|
||
|
a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an
|
||
|
active profession, and the forming Colossus[358] shrinks to the common
|
||
|
size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which
|
||
|
always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge
|
||
|
the moment they put their horses of the sun to plow in its furrow.
|
||
|
They found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What
|
||
|
then? The lesson they gave in their first aspirations, is yet true;
|
||
|
and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their
|
||
|
belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any historical woman,
|
||
|
and think, because Sappho,[359] or Sévigné,[360] or De Staël,[361] or
|
||
|
the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not
|
||
|
satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis,[362] none
|
||
|
can,--certainly not she. Why not? She has a new and unattempted
|
||
|
problem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that ever
|
||
|
bloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way,
|
||
|
accept the hint of each new experience, search, in turn, all the
|
||
|
objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the
|
||
|
charm of her new-born being which is the kindling of a new dawn in the
|
||
|
recesses of space. The fair girl, who repels interference by a decided
|
||
|
and proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and
|
||
|
lofty, inspires every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The
|
||
|
silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear!
|
||
|
Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you
|
||
|
live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.
|
||
|
|
||
|
14. The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. All
|
||
|
men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when
|
||
|
you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to
|
||
|
reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common,
|
||
|
nor the common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the
|
||
|
sympathy of people in those actions whose excellence is that they
|
||
|
outrun sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve
|
||
|
your brother, because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back
|
||
|
your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you.
|
||
|
Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
|
||
|
something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a
|
||
|
decorous age. It was a high counsel[363] that I once heard given to a
|
||
|
young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly
|
||
|
character need never make an apology, but should regard its past
|
||
|
action with the calmness of Phocion,[364] when he admitted that the
|
||
|
event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from
|
||
|
the battle.
|
||
|
|
||
|
15. There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find
|
||
|
consolation in the thought,--this is a part of my constitution, part
|
||
|
of my relation and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted
|
||
|
with me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make a
|
||
|
ridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our
|
||
|
money. Greatness once and forever has done with opinion. We tell our
|
||
|
charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we
|
||
|
think they have great merit, but for our justification. It is a
|
||
|
capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his
|
||
|
charities.
|
||
|
|
||
|
16. To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some
|
||
|
rigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an
|
||
|
asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at
|
||
|
ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the
|
||
|
great multitude of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and
|
||
|
exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of
|
||
|
solitude, of unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with a
|
||
|
bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to
|
||
|
familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of
|
||
|
execration, and the vision of violent death.
|
||
|
|
||
|
17. Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never
|
||
|
shines in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man,
|
||
|
we say, are historically somewhat better in this country, and at this
|
||
|
hour, than perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. It
|
||
|
will not now run against an ax at the first step out of the beaten
|
||
|
track of opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try
|
||
|
his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the
|
||
|
trial of persecution always proceeds. It is but the other day that the
|
||
|
brave Lovejoy[365] gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the
|
||
|
rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to
|
||
|
live.
|
||
|
|
||
|
18. I see not any road to perfect peace which a man can walk, but to
|
||
|
take counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let
|
||
|
him go home much, and establish himself in those courses he approves.
|
||
|
The unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure
|
||
|
duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with
|
||
|
honor, if need be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold. Whatever
|
||
|
outrages have happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily
|
||
|
in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion.
|
||
|
Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may
|
||
|
freely bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he
|
||
|
can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such
|
||
|
penalties, whenever it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient
|
||
|
number of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary.
|
||
|
|
||
|
19. It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible
|
||
|
heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction
|
||
|
of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow
|
||
|
us.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Let them rave:[366]
|
||
|
Thou art quiet in thy grave."
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we
|
||
|
are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy them who have seen
|
||
|
safely to an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of
|
||
|
our politics, but inly congratulates Washington that he is long
|
||
|
already wrapped in his shroud, and forever safe; that he was laid
|
||
|
sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him?
|
||
|
Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave, who are no more to
|
||
|
suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious
|
||
|
complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite
|
||
|
nature? And yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than
|
||
|
treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no
|
||
|
mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable
|
||
|
being.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
MANNERS[367]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. Half the world, it is said, knows not how the other half live. Our
|
||
|
Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee Islanders[368] getting their
|
||
|
dinner off human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and
|
||
|
children. The husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou[369]
|
||
|
(west of old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To set up their
|
||
|
housekeeping, 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 through the
|
||
|
roof, and there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there is
|
||
|
nothing to lose. If the house do not please them, they walk out and
|
||
|
enter another, as there are several hundreds at their command. "It is
|
||
|
somewhat singular," adds Berzoni, to whom we owe this account, "to
|
||
|
talk of Happiness among people who live in sepulchers, among corpses
|
||
|
and rags of an ancient nation which they knew nothing of." In the
|
||
|
deserts of Borgoo[370] the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like
|
||
|
cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their
|
||
|
neighbors to the shrieking of bats, and to the whistling of birds.
|
||
|
Again, the Bornoos[371] have no proper names; individuals are called
|
||
|
after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and have
|
||
|
nick-names 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; countries where man
|
||
|
serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk and
|
||
|
wool; honors himself with architecture;[372] writes laws, and
|
||
|
contrives to execute his will through the hands of many nations; and,
|
||
|
especially, establishes a select society, running through all the
|
||
|
countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or
|
||
|
fraternity of the best, which, without written law, or exact usage of
|
||
|
any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted island, and
|
||
|
adopts and makes its own whatever personal beauty or extraordinary
|
||
|
native endowment anywhere appears.
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. What fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the creation of
|
||
|
the gentleman? Chivalry[373] is that, and loyalty is that, and, in
|
||
|
English literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir
|
||
|
Philip Sidney[374] to Sir Walter Scott,[375] paint this figure. 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
|
||
|
properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with
|
||
|
the name, but the steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed
|
||
|
to the valuable properties which it designates. An element which
|
||
|
unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes them
|
||
|
intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat so precise,
|
||
|
that it is at once felt if an individual lack the masonic sign,[376]
|
||
|
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 average; as the atmosphere is a permanent composition,
|
||
|
whilst so many gases are combined only to be decompounded. _Comme il
|
||
|
faut_, is the Frenchman's description of good society, _as we must
|
||
|
be_. 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 from pure, far from constituting the gladdest
|
||
|
and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society
|
||
|
permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more than of the talent of
|
||
|
men, and is a compound result, into which every great force enters as
|
||
|
an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power.
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. There is something equivocal in all the words in use to express the
|
||
|
excellence of manners and social cultivation, because the qualities
|
||
|
are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the
|
||
|
cause. The word _gentleman_ has not any correlative abstract[377] to
|
||
|
express the quality. _Gentility_ is mean, and _gentilesse_[378] is
|
||
|
obsolete. But we must keep alive in the vernacular the distinction
|
||
|
between _fashion_, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and
|
||
|
the heroic character which the gentleman 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. It is beauty which
|
||
|
is 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. The gentleman is a man of truth, lord
|
||
|
of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not
|
||
|
in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or
|
||
|
possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word
|
||
|
denotes good-nature and benevolence: manhood first, and then
|
||
|
gentleness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease and
|
||
|
fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that
|
||
|
they should possess and dispense the goods of the world. In times of
|
||
|
violence, every eminent person must fall in with many opportunities to
|
||
|
approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that
|
||
|
emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages,[379] rattles in our
|
||
|
ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes out of
|
||
|
fashion. That is still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd of
|
||
|
good society, the men of valor and reality are known, and rise to
|
||
|
their natural place. The competition is transferred from war to
|
||
|
politics and trade, but the personal force appears readily enough in
|
||
|
these new arenas.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade,
|
||
|
bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.
|
||
|
God knows[380] that all sorts of 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 describes a man standing in his
|
||
|
own right, and working 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.[381] The ruling class must
|
||
|
have more, but they must have these, giving in every company the sense
|
||
|
of power,[382] which makes things easy to be done which daunt the
|
||
|
wise. The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and
|
||
|
festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which
|
||
|
intimidate the pale scholar. The courage which girls exhibit is like a
|
||
|
battle of Lundy's Lane,[383] or a sea-fight. The intellect relies on
|
||
|
memory to make some supplies to face these extemporaneous squadrons.
|
||
|
But memory is a base mendicant with basket and badge, in the presence
|
||
|
of these sudden masters. The rulers of society must be up to the work
|
||
|
of the world, and equal to their versatile office: men of the right
|
||
|
Cæsarian pattern,[384] who have great range of affinity. I am far from
|
||
|
believing the timid maxim[385] of Lord Falkland,[386] ("That for
|
||
|
ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go through
|
||
|
the cunningest forms,") and am of opinion that the gentleman is the
|
||
|
bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken through; and only that
|
||
|
plenteous nature is rightful master, which is the complement of
|
||
|
whatever person it converses with. My gentleman gives the law where he
|
||
|
is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the
|
||
|
field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for
|
||
|
pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify
|
||
|
yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I
|
||
|
could as easily exclude myself as him. The famous gentlemen of Asia
|
||
|
and Europe have been of this strong type: Saladin,[387] Sapor,[388]
|
||
|
the Cid,[389] Julius Cæsar,[390] Scipio,[391] Alexander,[392]
|
||
|
Pericles,[393] and the lordliest personages. They sat very carelessly
|
||
|
in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves to value any
|
||
|
condition at a high rate.
|
||
|
|
||
|
5. A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment,
|
||
|
to the completion of this man of the world: and it is a material deputy
|
||
|
which walks through the dance which the first has led. Money is not
|
||
|
essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of
|
||
|
clique and caste, and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the
|
||
|
aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen,
|
||
|
he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people
|
||
|
cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman
|
||
|
shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to
|
||
|
be feared. Diogenes,[394] Socrates,[395] and Epaminondas[396] are
|
||
|
gentlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the condition of poverty,
|
||
|
when that of wealth was equally open to them. I use these old names, but
|
||
|
the men I speak of are my contemporaries.[397] Fortune will not supply
|
||
|
to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every
|
||
|
collection of men furnishes some example of the class: and the politics
|
||
|
of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these
|
||
|
hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and
|
||
|
a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes
|
||
|
their action popular.
|
||
|
|
||
|
6. The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by
|
||
|
men of taste. The association of these masters with each other, and
|
||
|
with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and
|
||
|
stimulating. The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are
|
||
|
repeated and adopted. By swift consent, everything superfluous is
|
||
|
dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners[398] show
|
||
|
themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler
|
||
|
science of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the
|
||
|
skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword,--points
|
||
|
and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more
|
||
|
transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and
|
||
|
not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to
|
||
|
facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to
|
||
|
energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids
|
||
|
traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road,
|
||
|
and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very
|
||
|
soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with
|
||
|
more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions.
|
||
|
Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the
|
||
|
most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which
|
||
|
morals and violence assault in vain.
|
||
|
|
||
|
7. There exists a strict relation between the class of power, and the
|
||
|
exclusive and polished circles. The last are always filled or filling
|
||
|
from the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even to the
|
||
|
petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it.
|
||
|
Napoleon,[399] child of the revolution, destroyer of the old
|
||
|
noblesse,[400] never ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain:[401]
|
||
|
doubtless with the feeling, that fashion is a homage to men of his
|
||
|
stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue.
|
||
|
It is a virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does
|
||
|
not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a
|
||
|
hall of the Past. 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 working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their
|
||
|
children; of those, who, through the value and virtue of somebody,
|
||
|
have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of
|
||
|
cultivation and generosity, and, in their physical organization, a
|
||
|
certain health and excellence, which secures to them, if not the
|
||
|
highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power,
|
||
|
the working heroes, the Cortez,[402] the Nelson,[403] the Napoleon,
|
||
|
see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as
|
||
|
they; that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico,[404] Marengo,[405] and
|
||
|
Trafalgar[406][407] beaten out thin; that the brilliant 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. The city is recruited from the country. In the year
|
||
|
1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The
|
||
|
city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it
|
||
|
was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town
|
||
|
day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day.
|
||
|
|
||
|
8. Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These
|
||
|
mutual selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger in the
|
||
|
least favored class, 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 cream rises in a
|
||
|
bowl of milk: and if the people should destroy class after class,
|
||
|
until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and
|
||
|
would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep
|
||
|
this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of
|
||
|
life, and is one of the estates of the realm.[408] I am the more
|
||
|
struck with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the
|
||
|
administration of such unimportant matters, that we should not look
|
||
|
for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some
|
||
|
strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious
|
||
|
movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and nature. We
|
||
|
think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive,
|
||
|
this of caste or fashion, for example; yet come from year to year, and
|
||
|
see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New York life of man,
|
||
|
where, too, it has not the lease countenance from the law of the land.
|
||
|
Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here are
|
||
|
associations whose ties go over, and under, and through it, a meeting
|
||
|
of merchants, a military corps, a college-class, a fire-club, a
|
||
|
professional association, a political, a religious convention;--the
|
||
|
persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet that assembly once
|
||
|
dispersed, its 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. Each man's rank
|
||
|
in that perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure,
|
||
|
or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its
|
||
|
doors unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. A
|
||
|
natural gentleman finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician
|
||
|
out, who has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself;
|
||
|
good-breeding and personal superiority of 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.[409]
|
||
|
|
||
|
9. To say what good of fashion we can,--it rests on reality, and hates
|
||
|
nothing so much as pretenders;--to exclude and mystify pretenders, and
|
||
|
send them into everlasting "Coventry,"[410] is its delight. We
|
||
|
contemn, in turn, every other gift of men of the world; but the habit,
|
||
|
even in little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our
|
||
|
own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry.
|
||
|
There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and
|
||
|
proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt, and give it
|
||
|
the freedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if
|
||
|
it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will
|
||
|
Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and
|
||
|
find favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new
|
||
|
circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and
|
||
|
cotillions. For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of
|
||
|
behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at her
|
||
|
first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a
|
||
|
ritual according to which every act and compliment must be performed,
|
||
|
or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later, they
|
||
|
learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment,
|
||
|
and speak or abstain, to 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 a new and aboriginal way: and that strong will is
|
||
|
always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion
|
||
|
demands is composure, and self-content. A circle of men perfectly
|
||
|
well-bred would be a company of sensible persons, in which every man's
|
||
|
native manners and character appear. If the fashionist have not this
|
||
|
quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we
|
||
|
excuse in man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in
|
||
|
his position, which asks no leave to be of mine, or any man's good
|
||
|
opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world,
|
||
|
forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing
|
||
|
to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go
|
||
|
where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,--not
|
||
|
bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He
|
||
|
should preserve in a new company the same attitude 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 his tail on![411]--" But Vich Ian Vohr
|
||
|
must always carry his belongings in some fashion, if not added as
|
||
|
honor, then severed as disgrace.
|
||
|
|
||
|
10. There will always be in society certain persons who are
|
||
|
mercuries[412] of its approbation, and whose glance will at any time
|
||
|
determine for the curious their standing in the world. These are the
|
||
|
chamberlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of
|
||
|
grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege.
|
||
|
They are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formidable,
|
||
|
without their own merits. But do not measure the importance of this
|
||
|
class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser
|
||
|
of honor and shame. They pass also at their just rate; for how can
|
||
|
they otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's
|
||
|
office[413] for the sifting of character?
|
||
|
|
||
|
11. 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. Know you before all heaven and earth, that this
|
||
|
is Andrew, and this is Gregory;--they look each other in the eye; they
|
||
|
grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is a
|
||
|
great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his eyes look straight
|
||
|
forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that he has
|
||
|
been met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and
|
||
|
hospitalities? Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or, do
|
||
|
we not insatiably ask. Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a
|
||
|
great household where there is much substance, excellent provision for
|
||
|
comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there any
|
||
|
Amphitryon,[414] who shall subordinate these appendages. I may 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 was therefore a very natural
|
||
|
point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentleman who received a visit,
|
||
|
though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should
|
||
|
wait his arrival at the door of his house. No house, though it were
|
||
|
the Tuileries,[415] or the Escurial,[416] is good for anything without
|
||
|
a master. And yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality.
|
||
|
Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books,
|
||
|
conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to
|
||
|
interpose between himself and his guests. Does it not seem as if man
|
||
|
was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a
|
||
|
full renconter front to front with his fellow? It were unmerciful, I
|
||
|
know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of eminent
|
||
|
convenience, whether the guest is too great, or too little. We call
|
||
|
together many friends who keep each other in play, or by luxuries and
|
||
|
ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. Or if,
|
||
|
perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eyes we
|
||
|
have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and hide
|
||
|
ourselves as Adam[417] at the voice of the Lord God in the garden.
|
||
|
Cardinal Caprara,[418] the Pope's[419] legate at Paris, defended
|
||
|
himself from the glances of Napoleon, by an immense pair of green
|
||
|
spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally 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 free-born eyes,
|
||
|
but fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple barriers of
|
||
|
reserve: and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael,[420] was
|
||
|
wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all
|
||
|
expression. But emperors and rich men are by no means the most
|
||
|
skillful masters of good manners. No rent roll nor army-list can
|
||
|
dignify skulking and dissimulations: and the first point of courtesy
|
||
|
must always be truth, as really all forms of good-breeding point that
|
||
|
way.
|
||
|
|
||
|
12. I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's[421] translation,
|
||
|
Montaigne's[422] account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with
|
||
|
nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time.
|
||
|
His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an
|
||
|
event of some consequence. Wherever 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 house in which he
|
||
|
has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung
|
||
|
up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen.
|
||
|
|
||
|
13. The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all the
|
||
|
points of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is deference.
|
||
|
I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer
|
||
|
a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of fellowship. Let the
|
||
|
incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man
|
||
|
teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have
|
||
|
a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred
|
||
|
sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and
|
||
|
self-poise.[423] We should meet each morning, as from foreign
|
||
|
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
|
||
|
inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all
|
||
|
round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. This
|
||
|
is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers should guard
|
||
|
their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion
|
||
|
and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to a Chinese
|
||
|
etiquette;[424] but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate
|
||
|
fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene
|
||
|
Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious
|
||
|
house with blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience. Not
|
||
|
less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbors's needs. Must
|
||
|
we have a good understanding with one another's palates? as foolish
|
||
|
people who have lived long together, know when each wants salt or
|
||
|
sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for
|
||
|
bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them,
|
||
|
and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every natural
|
||
|
function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave
|
||
|
hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should
|
||
|
recall,[425] however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny.
|
||
|
|
||
|
14. The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we
|
||
|
dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts go to its
|
||
|
conformation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the
|
||
|
leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart must
|
||
|
furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine
|
||
|
perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful
|
||
|
carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a
|
||
|
union of kindness and independence. We imperatively require a
|
||
|
perception of, and a homage to, beauty in our companions. Other
|
||
|
virtues are in request in the field and work yard, but a certain
|
||
|
degree of taste is 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 qualities rule the
|
||
|
world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. The same
|
||
|
discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all
|
||
|
parts of life. The average spirit of the energetic class is good
|
||
|
sense, acting under certain limitations and to certain ends. It
|
||
|
entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects
|
||
|
everything which tends to unite men. It delights in measure.[426] The
|
||
|
love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person
|
||
|
who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat,
|
||
|
puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love
|
||
|
measure. You must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will
|
||
|
hide the want of measure. This perception comes in to polish and
|
||
|
perfect the parts of the social instrument. Society will pardon much
|
||
|
to genius and 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 is not good sense absolute, but relative; not
|
||
|
good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates
|
||
|
corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical,
|
||
|
solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total
|
||
|
blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the
|
||
|
highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And
|
||
|
besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct
|
||
|
splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society as the
|
||
|
costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
|
||
|
|
||
|
15. The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must be
|
||
|
tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accuracy is essential
|
||
|
to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick
|
||
|
perceptions. One may be too punctual and too precise. He must leave
|
||
|
the omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into the palace
|
||
|
of beauty. Society loves creole natures,[427] and sleepy, languishing
|
||
|
manners, so that they cover sense, grace, and good-will: the air of
|
||
|
drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps, because such a
|
||
|
person seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not
|
||
|
spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not see the
|
||
|
annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud the brow and
|
||
|
smother the voice of the sensitive.
|
||
|
|
||
|
16. Therefore, besides personal force and so much perception as
|
||
|
constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class,
|
||
|
another element already intimated, which it significantly terms
|
||
|
good-nature, 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 run against one another,
|
||
|
and miss the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. The
|
||
|
secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A
|
||
|
man who is not happy in the company, cannot find any word in his
|
||
|
memory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little
|
||
|
impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the
|
||
|
conversation 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 spirit than wit, who have no
|
||
|
uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company,
|
||
|
contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a
|
||
|
jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich in
|
||
|
gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good
|
||
|
model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox,[428] who
|
||
|
added to his great abilities the most social disposition, and real
|
||
|
love of men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than the
|
||
|
debate, in which Burke[429] and Fox separated in the House of Commons;
|
||
|
when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of old friendship with
|
||
|
such tenderness, that the house was moved to tears. Another anecdote
|
||
|
is so close to my matter, that I must hazard the story. A 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[430]: 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 Sheridan must wait."
|
||
|
Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African slave,
|
||
|
he possessed a great personal popularity; 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."
|
||
|
|
||
|
17. We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever
|
||
|
we insist on benevolence as its foundation. The painted phantasm
|
||
|
Fashion rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. But I will
|
||
|
neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic
|
||
|
institution, nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy.
|
||
|
"We must obtain _that_, if we can; but by all means we must affirm
|
||
|
_this_. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion
|
||
|
which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a
|
||
|
ballroom code. Yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in the
|
||
|
imagination of the best heads on the planet, there is something
|
||
|
necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men
|
||
|
have agreed to be the dupes of anything 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, betray the
|
||
|
universality of the love of cultivated manners. I know that a comic
|
||
|
disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged 'first
|
||
|
circles,' and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and
|
||
|
benefit, to the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes,
|
||
|
sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes and
|
||
|
many rules of probation and admission; and not the best alone. There
|
||
|
is not only the right of conquest, which genius pretends,--the
|
||
|
individual, demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the
|
||
|
best;--but less claims will pass for the time; for Fashion loves
|
||
|
lions, and points, like Circe,[431] to her horned company. This
|
||
|
gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord
|
||
|
Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdad; here is Captain Friese, from
|
||
|
Cape Turnagain, and Captain Symmes,[432] from the interior of the
|
||
|
earth; and Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon;
|
||
|
Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and Reverend Jul Bat, who has converted
|
||
|
the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signer Torre del
|
||
|
Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay of Naples;
|
||
|
Spahr, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the exiled nabob of
|
||
|
Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon.--But these are monsters of one
|
||
|
day, and to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens; for, in
|
||
|
these rooms every chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and,
|
||
|
in general, the clerisy,[433] wins its way up into these places, and
|
||
|
gets represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. Another
|
||
|
mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending a year and a day in
|
||
|
St. Michael's Square,[434] being steeped in Cologne water,[435] and
|
||
|
perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and properly grounded in all the
|
||
|
biography, and politics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs.
|
||
|
|
||
|
18. Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque
|
||
|
sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed and
|
||
|
commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of
|
||
|
politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees.
|
||
|
What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of
|
||
|
selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out of
|
||
|
the world? What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his
|
||
|
companion, as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and
|
||
|
also to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose its
|
||
|
nobleness. All generosity is 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. The epitaph of Sir
|
||
|
Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age. "Here
|
||
|
lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy:
|
||
|
what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he
|
||
|
restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he
|
||
|
never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it
|
||
|
his whole body." Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. There
|
||
|
is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the
|
||
|
wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some
|
||
|
absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway
|
||
|
slaves; some friend of Poland;[436] some Philhellene;[437] some
|
||
|
fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second and third generation,
|
||
|
and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some
|
||
|
just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of
|
||
|
fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. And these
|
||
|
are the centers of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses.
|
||
|
These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize
|
||
|
beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are in the theory,
|
||
|
the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir
|
||
|
Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who
|
||
|
worshiped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons who constitute the
|
||
|
natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or only
|
||
|
on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be
|
||
|
greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of
|
||
|
the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, when he appears. The
|
||
|
theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. It
|
||
|
divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods,--
|
||
|
|
||
|
"As Heaven and Earth are fairer far[438]
|
||
|
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though 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,
|
||
|
And fated to excel us, as we pass
|
||
|
In glory that old Darkness:
|
||
|
... for, 'tis the eternal law,
|
||
|
That first in beauty shall be first in might."
|
||
|
|
||
|
19. Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a
|
||
|
narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of
|
||
|
courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and
|
||
|
reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of love
|
||
|
and chivalry. And this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic
|
||
|
dispositions are native, with the love of beauty, the delight in
|
||
|
society, 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 we could, leisurely and critically, inspect their behavior, we
|
||
|
might find no gentleman, and no lady; for although excellent specimens
|
||
|
of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in
|
||
|
the particulars, we should detect offense. Because, 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 which takes that direction: it must be not courteous, but
|
||
|
courtesy. High behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott
|
||
|
is praised for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and
|
||
|
conversation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens,
|
||
|
nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the absurdity
|
||
|
that had been put in their mouths, before the days of Waverley;[439]
|
||
|
but neither does Scott's dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each
|
||
|
other in smart epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume,
|
||
|
and does not please on the second reading; it is not warm with life.
|
||
|
In Shakespeare alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the
|
||
|
dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being
|
||
|
the best-bred man in England, and in Christendom. Once or twice in a
|
||
|
lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the
|
||
|
presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their nature, but whose
|
||
|
character emanates freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful form
|
||
|
is better than a beautiful face: a beautiful behavior is better than a
|
||
|
beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;
|
||
|
it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing in the
|
||
|
midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating
|
||
|
from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude,
|
||
|
and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. I have seen an
|
||
|
individual whose manners though wholly within the conventions of
|
||
|
elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and
|
||
|
commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not
|
||
|
need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; who
|
||
|
exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes of
|
||
|
existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy,
|
||
|
spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood;[440] yet with
|
||
|
the port of an emperor,--if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand
|
||
|
the gaze of millions.
|
||
|
|
||
|
20. The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, are
|
||
|
the places where Man executes his will; let him yield or divide the
|
||
|
scepter at the door of the house. Woman, with her instinct of
|
||
|
behavior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or
|
||
|
imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and
|
||
|
magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an exterior in the
|
||
|
hall. Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and at this
|
||
|
moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in
|
||
|
women. A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may
|
||
|
give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's Rights. Certainly,
|
||
|
let her be as much better placed in the laws and 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 show us
|
||
|
how she shall be served. The wonderful generosity of her sentiments
|
||
|
raises her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies
|
||
|
the pictures of Minerva,[441] Juno,[442] or Polymnia;[443] and, by the
|
||
|
firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the
|
||
|
coarsest calculators that another road exists than that which their
|
||
|
feet know. But besides those who make good in our imagination the
|
||
|
place of muses and of Delphic Sibyls,[444] are there not women who
|
||
|
fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs
|
||
|
over and fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with courtesy;
|
||
|
who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who anoint our eyes, and we
|
||
|
see? We say things we never thought to have said; for once, our walls
|
||
|
of habitual reserve vanished, and left us at large; we were children
|
||
|
playing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we cried,
|
||
|
in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets,
|
||
|
and will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are. Was
|
||
|
it Hafiz[445] or Firdousi[446] 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 joy and
|
||
|
grace on all around her.[447] She was a solvent powerful to reconcile
|
||
|
all heterogeneous persons into one society; like air or water, an
|
||
|
element of such a great range of affinities, that it combines readily
|
||
|
with a thousand substances. Where she is present, all others will be
|
||
|
more than they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever
|
||
|
she did, became her. She had too much sympathy and desire to please,
|
||
|
than that you could say, her manners were 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 of the seven seemed to be written upon her.
|
||
|
For, 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 fullness of her heart, warming them by her
|
||
|
sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all
|
||
|
would show themselves noble."
|
||
|
|
||
|
21. I know that this Byzantine[448] pile of chivalry of Fashion, which
|
||
|
seems so fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary
|
||
|
facts for science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all
|
||
|
spectators. The constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle
|
||
|
to the ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in its
|
||
|
Golden Book,[449] and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and
|
||
|
privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is
|
||
|
shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance: its proudest
|
||
|
gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For
|
||
|
the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer
|
||
|
from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove
|
||
|
your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly
|
||
|
relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which
|
||
|
fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities,
|
||
|
in a few streets, namely. 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
|
||
|
friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.
|
||
|
|
||
|
22. But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. The
|
||
|
worth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste for the emblem.
|
||
|
Everything that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before
|
||
|
the cause and fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities,
|
||
|
namely, the heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire,
|
||
|
which, in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kind
|
||
|
and conquer ind expand all that approaches it. This gives new meanings
|
||
|
to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but
|
||
|
its own. What _is_ rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody? to
|
||
|
succor the unfashionable and the eccentric? rich enough to make the
|
||
|
Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which
|
||
|
commends him "To the charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few
|
||
|
broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by overseers from town
|
||
|
to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel
|
||
|
the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general
|
||
|
bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with
|
||
|
a voice which made them both remember and hope? What is vulgar, but to
|
||
|
refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but
|
||
|
to allow it, and give their heart and yours lone holiday from the
|
||
|
national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
|
||
|
The king of Schiraz[450] could not afford to be so bountiful as the
|
||
|
poor Osman[451] 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[452] as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor
|
||
|
outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool 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 center of the country,--that it seemed as
|
||
|
if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his side. And the
|
||
|
madness which he harbored, he did not share. Is not this to be rich?
|
||
|
this only to be rightly rich?
|
||
|
|
||
|
23. But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill,
|
||
|
and talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see,
|
||
|
that what is called by distinction society and fashion, has good laws
|
||
|
as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd.
|
||
|
Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a
|
||
|
tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its
|
||
|
character. "I overheard Jove,[453] one day," said Silenus,[454]
|
||
|
"talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were
|
||
|
all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days
|
||
|
succeeded each other. Minerva said, she hoped not; they were only
|
||
|
ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had
|
||
|
a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near; if you called
|
||
|
them bad, they would appear so; if you called them good, they would
|
||
|
appear so; and there was no one person or action among them, which
|
||
|
would not puzzle her owl,[455] much more all Olympus, to know whether
|
||
|
it was fundamentally bad or good."
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
GIFTS[456]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Gifts of one who loved me--
|
||
|
'Twas high time they came;
|
||
|
When he ceased to love me,
|
||
|
Time they stopped for shame.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the
|
||
|
world owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into
|
||
|
chancery,[457] and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency,
|
||
|
which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of
|
||
|
the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, and other times,
|
||
|
in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous,
|
||
|
though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the
|
||
|
choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head that a present is due
|
||
|
from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity
|
||
|
is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because
|
||
|
they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the
|
||
|
utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat
|
||
|
stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of
|
||
|
a work-house. Nature does not cocker us:[458] we are children, not
|
||
|
pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or
|
||
|
favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look
|
||
|
like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell
|
||
|
us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it,
|
||
|
because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.
|
||
|
Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom
|
||
|
these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts,[459]
|
||
|
because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic
|
||
|
values being attached to them. If a man should send to 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.
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day,
|
||
|
and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option, since if the
|
||
|
man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you
|
||
|
could procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a
|
||
|
man eat bread or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is
|
||
|
always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity
|
||
|
does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it
|
||
|
seems heroic to let the petitioner[460] be the judge of his necessity,
|
||
|
and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be
|
||
|
a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of
|
||
|
punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to
|
||
|
that of the Furies.[461] Next to things of necessity, the rule for a
|
||
|
gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is that we might convey to
|
||
|
some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was
|
||
|
easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment
|
||
|
and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are
|
||
|
not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of
|
||
|
thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem;
|
||
|
the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the
|
||
|
sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a
|
||
|
handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it
|
||
|
restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's
|
||
|
biography[462] is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an
|
||
|
index of his merit. But it is a cold lifeless business when you go to
|
||
|
the shops to buy me something which does not represent your life and
|
||
|
talent, but a goldsmith's. That is fit for kings, and rich men who
|
||
|
represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of
|
||
|
gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering,[463] or
|
||
|
payment of blackmail.[464]
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful
|
||
|
sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive
|
||
|
gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not
|
||
|
quite forgive a forgiver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of
|
||
|
being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of
|
||
|
receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to
|
||
|
bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems
|
||
|
something of degrading dependence in living by it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Brother, if Jove[465] to thee a present make,
|
||
|
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."
|
||
|
|
||
|
We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society, if
|
||
|
it do not give us besides earth, and fire, and water, opportunity,
|
||
|
love, reverence, and objects of veneration.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad
|
||
|
or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence, I
|
||
|
think, is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a
|
||
|
gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes
|
||
|
from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported;
|
||
|
and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the
|
||
|
donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not
|
||
|
him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me,
|
||
|
correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level,
|
||
|
then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine
|
||
|
his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon
|
||
|
of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this
|
||
|
gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things
|
||
|
for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the
|
||
|
beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons,[466]
|
||
|
not at all 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 my lord, Timon. For, the
|
||
|
expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the
|
||
|
total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to
|
||
|
get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill
|
||
|
luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business,[467] this of
|
||
|
being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A
|
||
|
golden text for these gentlemen is that which I admire in the
|
||
|
Buddhist,[468] who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your
|
||
|
benefactors."
|
||
|
|
||
|
5. The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is no
|
||
|
commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything
|
||
|
to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts
|
||
|
you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend
|
||
|
is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend
|
||
|
stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve
|
||
|
his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my
|
||
|
friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.
|
||
|
Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so
|
||
|
incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments
|
||
|
of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and
|
||
|
humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content
|
||
|
with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a
|
||
|
direct benefit, which is directly received. But rectitude scatters
|
||
|
favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the
|
||
|
thanks of all people.
|
||
|
|
||
|
6. 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 give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There
|
||
|
are persons from whom we always expect fairy tokens; let us not cease
|
||
|
to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our
|
||
|
municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought
|
||
|
and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the
|
||
|
will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not need
|
||
|
me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you
|
||
|
proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only
|
||
|
likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services,
|
||
|
it proved an intellectual trick--no more. They eat your service like
|
||
|
apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel for you, and
|
||
|
delight in you all the time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
NATURE[469]
|
||
|
|
||
|
The rounded world is fair to see,
|
||
|
Nine times folded in mystery:
|
||
|
Though baffled seers cannot impart
|
||
|
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 within
|
||
|
Beckons to spirit of its kin;
|
||
|
Self-kindled every atom glows,
|
||
|
And hints the future which it owes.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. There are days[470] which occur in this climate, at almost any
|
||
|
season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the
|
||
|
air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature
|
||
|
would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the
|
||
|
planet, nothing is 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. These
|
||
|
halcyons[471] may be looked for with a little more assurance in that
|
||
|
pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of Indian
|
||
|
Summer.[472] The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills
|
||
|
and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours,
|
||
|
seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely.
|
||
|
At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced
|
||
|
to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The
|
||
|
knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes
|
||
|
into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and
|
||
|
reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the
|
||
|
circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a
|
||
|
god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close and
|
||
|
crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic
|
||
|
beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape
|
||
|
the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the
|
||
|
sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us.
|
||
|
The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is
|
||
|
stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places
|
||
|
creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like
|
||
|
iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us
|
||
|
to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no
|
||
|
history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and
|
||
|
the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into opening
|
||
|
landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding
|
||
|
each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out
|
||
|
of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present,
|
||
|
and we were led in triumph by nature.
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. These are
|
||
|
plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to our own, and make
|
||
|
friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would
|
||
|
persuade us to despise. We never can part with it; the mind loves its
|
||
|
old home: as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our
|
||
|
eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what
|
||
|
health, what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and
|
||
|
brother, when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest
|
||
|
face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our
|
||
|
nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out
|
||
|
daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much
|
||
|
scope, just as we need water for our bath. There are all degrees of
|
||
|
natural influence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up to her
|
||
|
dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and the soul.
|
||
|
There is the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to
|
||
|
which the chilled traveler rushes for safety,--and there is the
|
||
|
sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in nature, and draw our
|
||
|
living as parasites from her roots and grains, and we receive glances
|
||
|
from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell the
|
||
|
remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and
|
||
|
reality meet. I think, if we should be rapt away into all that we
|
||
|
dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel[473] and Uriel,[474]
|
||
|
the upper sky would be all that would remain of our furniture.
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. 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 still
|
||
|
air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet
|
||
|
over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving rye-fields;
|
||
|
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 odorous south wind, which
|
||
|
converts all trees to wind-harps;[475] the crackling and spurting of
|
||
|
hemlock in the flames; or of pine-logs, which yield glory to the walls
|
||
|
and faces in the sitting-room,--these are the music and pictures of
|
||
|
the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limited
|
||
|
outlook, and on the skirt of the village.[476] But I go with my
|
||
|
friend[477] to the shore of our little river,[478] and with one stroke
|
||
|
of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes,
|
||
|
and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a
|
||
|
delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted
|
||
|
man to enter without novitiate and probation.[479] We penetrate bodily
|
||
|
this incredible beauty: we dip our hands in this painted element: our
|
||
|
eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a
|
||
|
villeggiatura,[480] a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing
|
||
|
festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and
|
||
|
enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these
|
||
|
delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances,
|
||
|
signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention,
|
||
|
the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned
|
||
|
that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty.
|
||
|
I am overinstructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to
|
||
|
please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and
|
||
|
sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance: but a countryman
|
||
|
shall 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 to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal
|
||
|
man. Only as far as 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,[481] villas, garden-houses, islands,
|
||
|
parks, and preserves, to back their faulty personality with these
|
||
|
strong accessories. I do not wonder that the landed interest should be
|
||
|
invincible in the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe
|
||
|
and invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these
|
||
|
tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard what
|
||
|
the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, his wine, and his
|
||
|
company, but the provocation and point of the invitation came out of
|
||
|
these beguiling stars. In their soft glances, I see what men strove to
|
||
|
realize in some Versailles,[482] or Paphos,[483] or Ctesiphon.[484]
|
||
|
Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for
|
||
|
the background, which save all our works of art, which were otherwise
|
||
|
baubles. When the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness,
|
||
|
they should consider the effect of man reputed to be the possessors of
|
||
|
nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were rich as the poor
|
||
|
fancy riches! A boy hears a military band play on the field at night,
|
||
|
and he has kings and queens, and famous chivalry palpably before him.
|
||
|
He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the Notch
|
||
|
Mountains,[485] for example, which converts the mountains into an
|
||
|
Æolian harp,[486] and this supernatural _tiralira_ restores to him the
|
||
|
Dorian[487] mythology, Apollo,[488] Diana,[489] and all divine hunters
|
||
|
and huntresses. Can a musical note be so lofty, so haughtily
|
||
|
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 sake
|
||
|
of his imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if they were not
|
||
|
rich! That they have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park;
|
||
|
that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he has
|
||
|
visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant,
|
||
|
to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the groundwork from
|
||
|
which he has delineated estates of romance, compared with which their
|
||
|
actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays
|
||
|
her son, and enhances the gift of wealthy and well-born beauty, by a
|
||
|
radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests that skirt the
|
||
|
road,--a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to
|
||
|
patricians, a kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power of
|
||
|
the air.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. The moral sensibility which makes Edens[490] and Tempes[491] 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,[492] or the Madeira Islands.[493] We exaggerate the praises of
|
||
|
local scenery. In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the
|
||
|
meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first
|
||
|
hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night
|
||
|
stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common,[494] with all the
|
||
|
spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna,[495] or on the
|
||
|
marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning
|
||
|
and evening, will transfigure maples and alders. The difference
|
||
|
between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great
|
||
|
difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any
|
||
|
particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful under which
|
||
|
every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty
|
||
|
breaks in everywhere.
|
||
|
|
||
|
5. But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this
|
||
|
topic, which school-men called _natura naturata_, or nature passive.
|
||
|
One can hardly speak directly of it without excess. It is as easy to
|
||
|
broach in mixed companies what is called "the subject of religion." A
|
||
|
susceptible person does not like to indulge 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 locality, or he carries a fowling-piece, or a
|
||
|
fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have a good reason. A
|
||
|
dilettantism[496] in nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of fields
|
||
|
is no better than his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunters
|
||
|
and inquisitive of woodcraft and I suppose that such a gazetteer as
|
||
|
wood-cutters and Indians should furnish facts for would take place in
|
||
|
the most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the "Wreaths" and "Flora's
|
||
|
chaplets"[497] of the book-shops; yet ordinarily, whether we are too
|
||
|
clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men
|
||
|
begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most
|
||
|
unfit tribute to Pan,[498] 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. The multitude
|
||
|
of false churches[499] accredits the true religion. Literature,
|
||
|
poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret,
|
||
|
concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or
|
||
|
incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the
|
||
|
city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen. The
|
||
|
sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the
|
||
|
beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the
|
||
|
landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there
|
||
|
were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the
|
||
|
king is in the palace nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is
|
||
|
gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn
|
||
|
from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested
|
||
|
by the pictures and architecture. The critics who complain of the
|
||
|
sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done,
|
||
|
must consider that our hunting of the picturesque is inseparable from
|
||
|
our protest against false society. Man is fallen; nature is erect, and
|
||
|
serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or
|
||
|
absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and
|
||
|
selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are
|
||
|
convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with
|
||
|
compunction; if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should
|
||
|
shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not
|
||
|
with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied
|
||
|
as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology,
|
||
|
mesmerism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy
|
||
|
and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.
|
||
|
|
||
|
6. But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this
|
||
|
topic, but 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 ancient represented nature by Proteus,[500] a
|
||
|
shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in
|
||
|
creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation
|
||
|
on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate
|
||
|
results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a little
|
||
|
motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly
|
||
|
cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes
|
||
|
pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of
|
||
|
boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the
|
||
|
secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures,
|
||
|
and exchange our Mosaic[501] and Ptolemaic schemes[502] for her large
|
||
|
style. We know nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Now we learn
|
||
|
what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed,
|
||
|
then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has
|
||
|
disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door
|
||
|
for the remote Flora,[503] Fauna,[504] Ceres,[505] and Pomona,[506] to
|
||
|
come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how
|
||
|
inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive,[507] and then race after
|
||
|
race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to
|
||
|
Plato,[508] and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all
|
||
|
must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides.
|
||
|
|
||
|
7. Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second
|
||
|
secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be
|
||
|
written on the thumb-nail, or the signet of a ring. The whirling
|
||
|
bubble on the surface of a brook, admits us to the secret of the
|
||
|
mechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it. A
|
||
|
little water made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of the
|
||
|
simpler shells; the addition of matter from 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 stuff,--but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her
|
||
|
dream-like variety. Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water,
|
||
|
tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.
|
||
|
|
||
|
8. Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her
|
||
|
own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms
|
||
|
and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and,
|
||
|
at the same time, she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.
|
||
|
Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird
|
||
|
with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction
|
||
|
is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials, and
|
||
|
begins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage:
|
||
|
otherwise, all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catch
|
||
|
a glance of a system in transition. Plants are the young of the world,
|
||
|
vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward toward
|
||
|
consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their
|
||
|
imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and
|
||
|
probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having
|
||
|
tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissipated:
|
||
|
the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt, when they come
|
||
|
to consciousness, they too will curse and swear. Flowers so strictly
|
||
|
belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel, that their
|
||
|
beautiful generations concern not us: we have had our day; now let the
|
||
|
children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors
|
||
|
with our ridiculous tenderness.
|
||
|
|
||
|
9. 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 to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall
|
||
|
would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as
|
||
|
the city. That identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great
|
||
|
intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural
|
||
|
life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest
|
||
|
curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude
|
||
|
and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is
|
||
|
directly related, there amid essences and billets-doux, to Himalaya
|
||
|
mountain-chains[509] and the axis of the globe. If we consider how
|
||
|
much we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if
|
||
|
that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion
|
||
|
cities. Nature, who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear
|
||
|
too much of rural influences. The cool, disengaged air of natural
|
||
|
objects, makes them 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 eat roots, but let us be men instead of wood-chucks, and the
|
||
|
oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of
|
||
|
ivory on carpets of silk.
|
||
|
|
||
|
10. This guiding identity runs through all the surprises 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 charactered in his brain, therefore
|
||
|
is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in
|
||
|
natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it
|
||
|
was actually verified. A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing
|
||
|
laws which bind the farthest regions of nature: moon, plant, gas,
|
||
|
crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. Common sense knows its
|
||
|
own, and recognizes the fact at first sight in chemical experiment.
|
||
|
The common sense of Franklin,[510] Dalton,[511] Davy[512] and
|
||
|
Black,[513] is the same common sense which made the arrangements which
|
||
|
now it discovers.
|
||
|
|
||
|
11. If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runs
|
||
|
also into organization. The astronomers said,[514] "Give us matter,
|
||
|
and a little motion, and we will construct the universe. It is not
|
||
|
enough that 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 centripetal[515] forces. Once heave the ball from the
|
||
|
hand, and we can show how all this mighty order grew." "A very
|
||
|
unreasonable postulate," said the metaphysicians, "and a plain begging
|
||
|
of the question. Could you not prevail to know the genesis of
|
||
|
projection, 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 much of it, for there is no
|
||
|
end of the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push
|
||
|
propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through
|
||
|
every atom of every ball, through all the races of creatures, and
|
||
|
through the history and performances of every 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, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every
|
||
|
creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper
|
||
|
path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight
|
||
|
generosity, a drop too much. Without electricity the air would rot,
|
||
|
and without this violence of direction which men and women have,
|
||
|
without a spice of bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We
|
||
|
aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of
|
||
|
exaggeration in it. And when now and then comes along some sad,
|
||
|
sharp-eyed 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 of direction to hold them fast to their
|
||
|
several aims; makes them a little wrongheaded in that direction in
|
||
|
which they are rightest, and on goes the game again with new whirl,
|
||
|
for a generation or two more. The child with his sweet pranks, the
|
||
|
fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any
|
||
|
power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a
|
||
|
painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a ginger-bread dog,
|
||
|
individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every
|
||
|
new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this
|
||
|
day of continual petty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered
|
||
|
her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every
|
||
|
faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame,
|
||
|
by all these attitudes and exertions,--an end of the first importance,
|
||
|
which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This
|
||
|
glitter, this opaline luster plays round the top of every toy to his
|
||
|
eye, to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We are
|
||
|
made alive and kept alive by the same arts. Let the Stoics[516] say
|
||
|
what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because
|
||
|
the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The vegetable life does
|
||
|
not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single
|
||
|
seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds,
|
||
|
that if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that
|
||
|
hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity, that, at least,
|
||
|
one may replace the parent. All things betray the same calculated
|
||
|
profusion. The excess of fear with which the animal frame is hedged
|
||
|
round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or a sudden
|
||
|
noise, protects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, from
|
||
|
some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in marriage his private
|
||
|
felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in
|
||
|
his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the
|
||
|
race.
|
||
|
|
||
|
12. But the craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind
|
||
|
and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in
|
||
|
his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make
|
||
|
sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to
|
||
|
heart. Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is
|
||
|
reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the
|
||
|
contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the
|
||
|
overfaith of each man in the importance of what he has to do or say. The
|
||
|
poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he utters than any
|
||
|
hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The strong, self-complacent
|
||
|
Luther[517] declares with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that "God
|
||
|
himself cannot do without wise men." Jacob Behmen[518] and George
|
||
|
Fox[519] betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial
|
||
|
tracts, and James Naylor[520] once suffered himself to be worshiped as
|
||
|
the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify himself with his
|
||
|
thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However this may
|
||
|
discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the
|
||
|
people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words. A
|
||
|
similar experience is not infrequent in private life. Each young and
|
||
|
ardent person writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and
|
||
|
penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus written are, to
|
||
|
him, burning and fragrant: he reads them on his knees by midnight and by
|
||
|
the 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. This is
|
||
|
the man-child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates in
|
||
|
the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet been cut. After some time has
|
||
|
elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed
|
||
|
experience, 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 itself. Days and nights of fervid life, of communion
|
||
|
with angels of darkness and of light, have engraved their shadowy
|
||
|
characters on that tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence or
|
||
|
the heart of his friend. Is there then no friend? He cannot yet credit
|
||
|
that one may have impressive experience, and yet may not know how to put
|
||
|
his private fact into literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom
|
||
|
has other tongues and ministers than we, that though we 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 instinctive and particular, and sees its partiality, he shuts his
|
||
|
mouth in disgust. For, no man can write anything, who does not think
|
||
|
that what he writes is for the time the history of the world; or do
|
||
|
anything well, who does not esteem his work to be of importance. My work
|
||
|
may be of none, but I must not think it is of none, or I shall not do it
|
||
|
with impunity.
|
||
|
|
||
|
13. In like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking,
|
||
|
something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith
|
||
|
with us. All promise outruns the performance. We live in a system of
|
||
|
approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is
|
||
|
also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in
|
||
|
nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to
|
||
|
drink; but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us
|
||
|
hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is the same with all
|
||
|
our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our language itself
|
||
|
are not satisfactions, but suggestions. The hunger for wealth, 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[521] method! What a train of means to secure a little
|
||
|
conversation! This palace 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, country-house and cottage by the
|
||
|
water-side, all for a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual!
|
||
|
Could it not be had as well by beggars on the highway? No, all these
|
||
|
things came from successive efforts of these beggars to remove
|
||
|
friction from the wheels of life, and give opportunity. Conversation,
|
||
|
character, were the avowed ends; wealth was good as it appeased the
|
||
|
animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door,
|
||
|
brought friends together in a warm and quiet room, and kept the
|
||
|
children and the dinner-table in a different apartment. Thought,
|
||
|
virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was known that men of thought
|
||
|
and virtue sometimes 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
|
||
|
lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is
|
||
|
the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the
|
||
|
governments generally of the world, are cities 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; when all is done, it is for
|
||
|
nothing. They are like one who has interrupted the conversation of a
|
||
|
company to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say.
|
||
|
The appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of
|
||
|
aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so great and cogent, as to
|
||
|
exact this immense sacrifice of men?
|
||
|
|
||
|
14. Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be
|
||
|
expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face of external
|
||
|
nature. There is in woods and waters a certain enticement and
|
||
|
flattery, together with a failure to yield a present satisfaction.
|
||
|
This disappointment is felt in every landscape. I have seen the
|
||
|
softness and beauty of the summer 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
|
||
|
fore-looking to such pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. It is
|
||
|
an odd jealousy; but the poet finds himself not near enough to this
|
||
|
object. The pine tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does
|
||
|
not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or this is but
|
||
|
outskirt and far-off reflection[522] and echo of the triumph that has
|
||
|
passed by, and is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance
|
||
|
in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then in the
|
||
|
adjacent woods. The present object shall give you this sense of
|
||
|
stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone by. What splendid
|
||
|
distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the
|
||
|
sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his
|
||
|
foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever and ever. It
|
||
|
is the same among men and women as among the silent trees; always a
|
||
|
referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. Is
|
||
|
it, that beauty can never be grasped? in persons and in landscapes is
|
||
|
equally inaccessible? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the
|
||
|
wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven
|
||
|
whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven, if she stoops
|
||
|
to such a one as he.
|
||
|
|
||
|
15. What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that first
|
||
|
projectile impulse, of this flattery and balking of so many
|
||
|
well-meaning creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe
|
||
|
a slight treachery and derision? Are we not engaged to a serious
|
||
|
resentment of this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and
|
||
|
fools of nature? One looks at the face of heaven and earth lays all
|
||
|
petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the
|
||
|
intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not
|
||
|
be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an
|
||
|
Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain.
|
||
|
Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape
|
||
|
on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the
|
||
|
deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and
|
||
|
report of the return of the curve. But it also appears, that our
|
||
|
actions are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than we
|
||
|
designed. We are escorted on every hand through life by spiritual
|
||
|
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
|
||
|
measure our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if
|
||
|
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 life preëxisting within us in their
|
||
|
highest form.
|
||
|
|
||
|
16. The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain
|
||
|
of causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition
|
||
|
of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel.
|
||
|
Wherever the impulse exceeds the Rest or Identity insinuates its
|
||
|
compensation. All over the wide fields of earth grows the
|
||
|
prunella[524] or self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the
|
||
|
fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engaged with
|
||
|
particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every
|
||
|
experiment the innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the
|
||
|
mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, a present
|
||
|
sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude to
|
||
|
particulars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations. We
|
||
|
anticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, or a balloon;
|
||
|
the new engine brings with it the old checks. They say that by
|
||
|
electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown from the seed whilst your
|
||
|
fowl is roasting for dinner: it is a symbol of our modern aims and
|
||
|
endeavors,--of our condensation and acceleration of objects: but
|
||
|
nothing is gained: nature cannot be cheated: man's life is but seventy
|
||
|
salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In these checks and
|
||
|
impossibilities, however, we find our advantage, not less than in
|
||
|
impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on that side. And
|
||
|
the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being, from the
|
||
|
center to the poles of nature, and have some stake in every
|
||
|
possibility, lends that sublime luster to death, which philosophy and
|
||
|
religion have too outwardly and literally striven to express in the
|
||
|
popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The reality is more
|
||
|
excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent
|
||
|
ball. The divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the
|
||
|
incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes
|
||
|
water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile
|
||
|
essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought.
|
||
|
Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural
|
||
|
objects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, man
|
||
|
crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. That power
|
||
|
which does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and the
|
||
|
particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and
|
||
|
distills its essence into every drop of rain. Every moment instructs
|
||
|
and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been
|
||
|
poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as
|
||
|
pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of
|
||
|
cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence, until after a long
|
||
|
time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
SHAKSPEARE;[525] OR, THE POET
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Transcriber's Note: Shakspeare is spelled as "Shakspeare" as well as
|
||
|
"Shakespeare" in this book. The original spellings have been retained.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
1. Great men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by
|
||
|
originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving,
|
||
|
like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and
|
||
|
making bricks, and building the house; no great men are original. Nor
|
||
|
does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero
|
||
|
is in the press of knights, and the thick of events; and, seeing what
|
||
|
men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of
|
||
|
sight and of arm, to come to the desired point. The greatest genius is
|
||
|
the most indebted man. A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes
|
||
|
uppermost and, because he says everything, saying, at last, something
|
||
|
good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is
|
||
|
nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad
|
||
|
earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with
|
||
|
the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.
|
||
|
|
||
|
2. The Genius[526] of our life is jealous of individuals and will not
|
||
|
have any individual great, except through the general. There is no
|
||
|
choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning,
|
||
|
and say, "I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic
|
||
|
continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and
|
||
|
find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I
|
||
|
foresee a new mechanic power:" no, but he finds himself in the river
|
||
|
of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities
|
||
|
of his contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one
|
||
|
way, and their hands all point in the direction in which he should go.
|
||
|
The church has reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carries out
|
||
|
the advice which her music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by
|
||
|
her chants and processions. He finds a war raging: it educates him, by
|
||
|
trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruction. He finds two
|
||
|
counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of
|
||
|
production to the place of consumption, and he hits on a railroad.
|
||
|
Every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in
|
||
|
his sympathy with his people, and in his love of the materials he
|
||
|
wrought in. What an economy of power! and what a compensation for the
|
||
|
shortness of life! All is done to his hand. The world has brought him
|
||
|
thus far on his way. The human race has gone out before him, sunk the
|
||
|
hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations,
|
||
|
poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into
|
||
|
their labors. Choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out
|
||
|
of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for
|
||
|
himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations. Great
|
||
|
genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at
|
||
|
all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and
|
||
|
suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the
|
||
|
mind.
|
||
|
|
||
|
3. Shakspeare's youth[527] fell in a time when the English people were
|
||
|
importunate for dramatic entertainments. The court took offense easily
|
||
|
at political allusions, and attempted to suppress them. The
|
||
|
Puritans,[528] a growing and energetic party and the religious among
|
||
|
the Anglican Church,[529] would suppress them. But the people wanted
|
||
|
them. Inn-yards, houses without roofs, and extemporaneous inclosures
|
||
|
at country fairs, were the ready theaters of strolling players. The
|
||
|
people had tasted this new joy; and, as we could not hope to suppress
|
||
|
newspapers now,--no, not by the strongest party,--neither then could
|
||
|
king, prelate, or puritan,--alone or united, suppress an organ, which
|
||
|
was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch,[530] and library,
|
||
|
at the same time. Probably king, prelate, and puritan, all found their
|
||
|
own account in it. It had become, by all causes, a national
|
||
|
interest,--by no means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would
|
||
|
have thought of treating it in an English history,--but not a whit
|
||
|
less considerable, because it was cheap, and of no account, like a
|
||
|
baker's shop. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers
|
||
|
which suddenly broke into this field; Kyd, Marlow, Greene,[531]
|
||
|
Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford,
|
||
|
Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher.
|
||
|
|
||
|
4. The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the
|
||
|
first importance to the poet who works for it. He loses no time in
|
||
|
idle experiments. Here is audience and expectation prepared. In the
|
||
|
case of Shakspeare there is much more. At the time when[532] he left
|
||
|
Stratford, and went up to London, a great body of stage-plays, of all
|
||
|
dates and writers, existed in manuscript, and were in turn produced on
|
||
|
the boards. Here is the Tale of Troy,[533] which the audience will
|
||
|
bear hearing some part of, every week; the Death of Julius Cæsar,[534]
|
||
|
and other stories out of Plutarch,[535] which they never tire of; a
|
||
|
shelf full of English history, from the chronicles of Brut[536] and
|
||
|
Arthur,[537] down to the royal Henries,[538] which men hear eagerly;
|
||
|
and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales,[539] and
|
||
|
Spanish voyages,[540] which all the London prentices know. All the
|
||
|
mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright,
|
||
|
and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no
|
||
|
longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the
|
||
|
property of the Theater so long, and so many rising geniuses have
|
||
|
enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole scene, or
|
||
|
adding a song, that no man can any longer claim copyright in this work
|
||
|
of numbers. Happily, no man wishes to. They are not yet desired in
|
||
|
that way. We have few readers, many spectators and hearers. They had
|
||
|
best lie where they are.
|
||
|
|
||
|
5. Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old
|
||
|
plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried.
|
||
|
Had the _prestige_[541] which hedges about a modern tragedy existed,
|
||
|
nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living
|
||
|
England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and gave body
|
||
|
which he wanted to his airy and majestic fancy. The poet needs a
|
||
|
ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again,
|
||
|
may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the
|
||
|
people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so
|
||
|
much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full
|
||
|
strength for the audacities of his imagination. In short, the poet
|
||
|
owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the temple. Sculpture in
|
||
|
Egypt, and in Greece, grew up in subordination to architecture. It was
|
||
|
the ornament of the temple wall: at first, a rude relief carved on
|
||
|
pediments, then the relief became bolder, and a head or arm was
|
||
|
projected from the wall, the groups being still arranged with
|
||
|
reference to the building, which serves also as a frame to hold the
|
||
|
figures; and when, at last, the greatest freedom of style and
|
||
|
treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still
|
||
|
enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as
|
||
|
the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple
|
||
|
or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and
|
||
|
exhibition, took the place of the old temperance. This balance-wheel,
|
||
|
which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous irritability of
|
||
|
poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the
|
||
|
people were already wonted, and which had a certain excellence which
|
||
|
no single genius,[542] however extraordinary, could hope to create.
|
||
|
|
||
|
6. In point of fact, it appears that Shakspeare did owe debts in all
|
||
|
directions, and was able to use whatever he found; and the amount of
|
||
|
indebtedness may be inferred from Malone's[543] laborious computations
|
||
|
in regard to the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in
|
||
|
which, "out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written by some author preceding
|
||
|
Shakspeare; 2373 by him, on the foundation laid by his predecessors;
|
||
|
and 1899 were entirely his own." And the proceeding investigation
|
||
|
hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. Malone's
|
||
|
sentence is an important piece of external history. In Henry VIII, I
|
||
|
think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his
|
||
|
own finer stratum was laid. The first play was written by a superior,
|
||
|
thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know
|
||
|
well their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy,[544] and the following
|
||
|
scene from Cromwell,[545] where,--instead of the meter of Shakspeare,
|
||
|
whose secret is, that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading
|
||
|
for the sense will best bring out the rhythm,--here the lines are
|
||
|
constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit
|
||
|
eloquence. But the play contains, through all its length, unmistakable
|
||
|
traits of Shakspeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the
|
||
|
coronation,[546] are like autographs. What is odd, the compliment to
|
||
|
Queen Elizabeth[547] is in bad rhythm.[548]
|
||
|
|
||
|
7. Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any
|
||
|
invention can. If he lost any credit of design, he augmented his
|
||
|
resources; and, at that day, our petulant demand for originality was
|
||
|
not so much pressed. There was no literature for the million. The
|
||
|
universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. A great poet, who
|
||
|
appears in illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light
|
||
|
which is anywhere radiating. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of
|
||
|
sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his people; and he comes
|
||
|
to value his memory[549] equally with his invention. He is therefore
|
||
|
little solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether
|
||
|
through translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in
|
||
|
distant countries, whether by inspiration; from whatever source, they
|
||
|
are equally welcome to his uncritical audience. Nay, he borrows very
|
||
|
near home. Other men say wise things as well as he; only they say a
|
||
|
good many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken
|
||
|
wisely. He knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high
|
||
|
place, wherever he finds it. Such is the happy position of Homer,[550]
|
||
|
perhaps; of Chaucer,[551] of Saadi.[552] They felt that all wit was
|
||
|
their wit. And they are librarians and historiographers, as well as
|
||
|
poets. Each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales
|
||
|
of the world,--
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Presenting Thebes'[553] and Pelops' line
|
||
|
And the tale of Troy divine."
|
||
|
|
||
|
The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature;
|
||
|
and, more recently, not only Pope[554] and Dryden[555] have been
|
||
|
beholden to him, but, in the whole society of English writers, a large
|
||
|
unacknowledged debt is easily traced. One is charmed with the opulence
|
||
|
which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer is a huge borrower.[556]
|
||
|
Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgat[557] and
|
||
|
Caxton,[558] from Guido di Colonna,[559] whose Latin romance of the
|
||
|
Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phrygius,[560]
|
||
|
Ovid,[561] and Statius.[562] Then Petrarch,[563] Boccaccio,[564] and
|
||
|
the Provençal poets,[565] and his benefactors: the Romaunt of the
|
||
|
Rose[566] is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and
|
||
|
John of Meung: Troilus and Creseide,[567] from Lollius of Urbino: The
|
||
|
Cock and the Fox,[568] from the _Lais_ of Marie: The House of
|
||
|
Fame,[569] from the French or Italian: and poor Gower[570] he uses as
|
||
|
if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build
|
||
|
his house. He steals by this apology,--that what he takes has no worth
|
||
|
where he finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it. It has come to
|
||
|
be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once
|
||
|
shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to
|
||
|
steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the
|
||
|
property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately
|
||
|
place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts;
|
||
|
but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our
|
||
|
own.
|
||
|
|
||
|
8. Thus, all originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective.
|
||
|
The learned member of the legislature, at Westminister,[571] or at
|
||
|
Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. Show us the constituency,
|
||
|
and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of
|
||
|
their wishes, the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by
|
||
|
correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence,
|
||
|
anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and
|
||
|
resistance of something of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert
|
||
|
Peel[572] and Mr. Webster[573] vote, so Locke[574] and Rousseau[575]
|
||
|
think for thousands; and so there were foundations all around
|
||
|
Homer,[576] Menu,[577] Saada,[578] or Milton,[579] from which they
|
||
|
drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,--all
|
||
|
perished,--which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard
|
||
|
speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any
|
||
|
companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there
|
||
|
at last in his breast a Delphi[580] whereof to ask concerning any
|
||
|
thought or thing whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have
|
||
|
answer, and rely on that? All the debts which such a man could
|
||
|
contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of
|
||
|
originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a
|
||
|
whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has
|
||
|
conversed.
|
||
|
|
||
|
9. It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in
|
||
|
the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a
|
||
|
thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. Our English
|
||
|
Bible[581] is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the
|
||
|
English language. But it was not made by one man, or at one time; but
|
||
|
centuries and churches brought it to perfection. There never was a
|
||
|
time when there was not some translation existing. The Liturgy,[582]
|
||
|
admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of
|
||
|
ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the
|
||
|
Catholic church,--these collected, too, in long periods, from the
|
||
|
prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer all over the
|
||
|
world. Grotius[583] makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's
|
||
|
Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already
|
||
|
in use, in the time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms.[584] He picked
|
||
|
out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law,[585]
|
||
|
the impressive forms of our courts, and the precision and substantial
|
||
|
truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the
|
||
|
sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where
|
||
|
these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by
|
||
|
being translation on translation. There never was a time when there
|
||
|
was none. All the truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and
|
||
|
all others successively picked out, and thrown away. Something like
|
||
|
the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these
|
||
|
books. The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas,[586] Æsop's
|
||
|
Fables,[587] Pilpay,[588] Arabian Nights,[589] Cid,[590] Iliad,[591]
|
||
|
Robin Hood,[592] Scottish Minstrelsy,[593] are not the work of single
|
||
|
men. In the composition of such works, the time thinks, the market
|
||
|
thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop,
|
||
|
all think for us. Every book supplies its time with one good word;
|
||
|
every municipal law, every trade, every folly of the day, and the
|
||
|
generic catholic genius who is not afraid or ashamed to owe his
|
||
|
originality to the originality of all, stands with the next age as the
|
||
|
recorder and embodiment of his own.
|
||
|
|
||
|
10. We have to thank the researches of antiquaries, and the Shakspeare
|
||
|
Society,[594] for ascertaining the steps of the English drama, from
|
||
|
the Mysteries[595] celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the
|
||
|
final detachment from the church, and the completion of secular plays,
|
||
|
from Ferrex and Porrex,[596] and Gammer Gurton's Needle,[597] down to
|
||
|
the possession of the stage by the very pieces which Shakspeare
|
||
|
altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success,
|
||
|
and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no
|
||
|
book-stall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old
|
||
|
yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope
|
||
|
to discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached[598] or not, whether he
|
||
|
held horses at the theater-door, whether he kept school, and why he
|
||
|
left in his will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, his wife.
|
||
|
|
||
|
11. There is somewhat touching in the madness with which the passing
|
||
|
age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are
|
||
|
turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching Queen
|
||
|
Elizabeth,[599] and King James,[600] and the Essexes,[601]
|
||
|
Leicesters,[602] Burleighs,[603] and Buckinghams;[604] and lets pass
|
||
|
without a single valuable note the founder of another dynasty, which
|
||
|
alone will cause the Tudor dynasty[605] to be remembered,--the man who
|
||
|
carries the Saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and
|
||
|
on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some
|
||
|
ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias.
|
||
|
A popular player,--nobody suspected he was the poet of the human race;
|
||
|
and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men,
|
||
|
as from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon,[606] who took the
|
||
|
inventory of the human understanding for his times, never mentioned
|
||
|
his name. Ben Jonson,[607] though we have strained his few words of
|
||
|
regard and panegyric, had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first
|
||
|
vibrations he was attempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has
|
||
|
conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question,
|
||
|
the better poet of the two.
|
||
|
|
||
|
12. If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, Shakspeare's
|
||
|
time should be capable of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton[608] was
|
||
|
born four years after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after
|
||
|
him; and I find, among his correspondents and acquaintances, the
|
||
|
following persons:[609] Theodore Beza, Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip
|
||
|
Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton,
|
||
|
Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, Berlarmine,
|
||
|
Charles Cotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus
|
||
|
Gentilis, Paul Sarpi, Arminius; with all of whom exists some token of
|
||
|
his having communicated, without enumerating many others, whom
|
||
|
doubtless[610] he saw,--Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont,
|
||
|
Massinger, two Herberts, Marlow, Chapman and the rest. Since the
|
||
|
constellation of great men who appeared in Greece in the time of
|
||
|
Pericles,[611] there was never any such society;--yet their genius
|
||
|
failed them to find out the best head in the universe. Our poet's mask
|
||
|
was impenetrable. You cannot see the mountain near. It took a century
|
||
|
to make it suspected; and not until two centuries had passed, after
|
||
|
his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear.
|
||
|
It was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare till now; for
|
||
|
he is the father of German literature: it was on the introduction of
|
||
|
Shakspeare into German, by Lessing,[612] and the translation of his
|
||
|
works by Wieland[613] and Schlegel,[614] that the rapid burst of
|
||
|
German literature was most intimately connected. It was not until the
|
||
|
nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living
|
||
|
Hamlet,[615] that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering
|
||
|
readers. Now, literature, philosophy, and thought, are Shakspearized.
|
||
|
His mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see. Our
|
||
|
ears are educated to music by his rhythm. Coleridge[616] and
|
||
|
Goethe[617] are the only critics who have expressed our convictions
|
||
|
with any adequate fidelity; but there is in all cultivated minds a
|
||
|
silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like
|
||
|
Christianity, qualifies the period.
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Transcriber's Note: Number runs from 12 to 14. Number 13 omitted]
|
||
|
|
||
|
14. The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all directions,
|
||
|
advertised the missing facts, offered money for any information that
|
||
|
will lead to proof; and with what result? Beside some important
|
||
|
illustration of the history of the English stage, to which I have
|
||
|
adverted, they have gleaned a few facts touching the property, and
|
||
|
dealings in regard to property, of the poet. It appears that, from
|
||
|
year to year, he owned a larger share in the Blackfriars'
|
||
|
Theater:[618] its wardrobe and other appurtenances were his: and he
|
||
|
bought an estate in his native village, with his earnings, as writer
|
||
|
and shareholder; that he lived in the best house in Stratford;[619]
|
||
|
was intrusted by his neighbors with their commissions in London, as of
|
||
|
borrowing money, and the like; and he was a veritable farmer. About
|
||
|
the time when he was writing Macbeth,[620] he sues Philip Rogers, in
|
||
|
the borough-court of Stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten pence,
|
||
|
for corn delivered to him at different times; and, in all respects,
|
||
|
appears as a good husband with no reputation for eccentricity or
|
||
|
excess. He was a good-natured sort of man, an actor and shareholder in
|
||
|
the theater, not in any striking manner distinguished from other
|
||
|
actors and managers. I admit the importance of this information. It is
|
||
|
well worth the pains that have been taken to procure it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
15. But whatever scraps of information concerning his condition these
|
||
|
researches may have rescued, they can shed no light upon that infinite
|
||
|
invention which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. We
|
||
|
are very clumsy writers of history. We tell the chronicle of
|
||
|
parentage, birth, birth-place, schooling, schoolmates, earning of
|
||
|
money, marriage, publication of books, celebrity, death; and when we
|
||
|
have come to an end of this gossip no ray of relation appears between
|
||
|
it and the goddess-born; and it seems as if, had we dipped at random
|
||
|
into the "Modern Plutarch," and read any other life there, it would
|
||
|
have fitted the poems as well. It is the essence of poetry to spring,
|
||
|
like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish
|
||
|
the past, and refuse all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and
|
||
|
Collier,[621] have wasted their oil. The famed theaters, Covent
|
||
|
Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont,[622] have vainly assisted.
|
||
|
Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready,[623] dedicate their
|
||
|
lives to this genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express.
|
||
|
The genius knows them not. The recitation begins; one golden word
|
||
|
leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly
|
||
|
torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I
|
||
|
remember, I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed performer,[624] the
|
||
|
pride of the English stage; and all I then heard, and all I now
|
||
|
remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the tragedian had no
|
||
|
part; simply, Hamlet's question to the ghost,--
|
||
|
|
||
|
"What may this mean,[625]
|
||
|
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
|
||
|
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?"
|
||
|
|
||
|
That imagination which dilates the closet he writes in to the world's
|
||
|
dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly
|
||
|
reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks
|
||
|
of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any
|
||
|
biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer
|
||
|
Night's Dream[626] admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or
|
||
|
parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of
|
||
|
that delicate creation? The forest of Arden,[627] the nimble air of
|
||
|
Scone Castle,[628] the moonlight of Portia's villa,[629] "the antres
|
||
|
vast[630] and desarts idle," of Othello's captivity,--where is the
|
||
|
third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or
|
||
|
private letter, that has kept one word of those transcendent secrets?
|
||
|
In fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art,--in the
|
||
|
Cyclopean architecture[631] of Egypt and India; in the Phidian
|
||
|
sculpture;[632] the Gothic ministers;[633] the Italian painting;[634]
|
||
|
the Ballads of Spain and Scotland,[635]--the Genius draws up the
|
||
|
ladder after him, when the creative age goes up to heaven, and gives
|
||
|
way to a new, which sees the works, and ask in vain for a history.
|
||
|
|
||
|
16. Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can
|
||
|
tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us; that is, to our most
|
||
|
apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his
|
||
|
tripod,[636] and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique
|
||
|
documents extricated, analyzed, and compared, by the assiduous Dyce and
|
||
|
Collier; and now read one of those skyey sentences,--aerolites,--which
|
||
|
seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but
|
||
|
the man within the breast, has accepted, as words of fate; and tell me
|
||
|
if they match; if the former account in any manner for the latter; or,
|
||
|
which gives the most historical insight into the man.
|
||
|
|
||
|
17. Hence, though our external history is so meager, yet, with
|
||
|
Shakspeare for biographer, instead of Aubrey[637] and Rowe,[638] we
|
||
|
have really the information which is material, that which describes
|
||
|
character and fortune, that which, if we were about to meet the man
|
||
|
and deal with him, would most import us to know. We have his recorded
|
||
|
convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every
|
||
|
heart,--on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the
|
||
|
prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at them; on the
|
||
|
characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect
|
||
|
their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which
|
||
|
defy our science, and which yet interweave their malice and their gift
|
||
|
in our brightest hours. Who ever read the volume of the Sonnets,
|
||
|
without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are
|
||
|
no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the
|
||
|
confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at the same
|
||
|
time, the most intellectual of men? What trait of his private mind has
|
||
|
he hidden in his dramas? One can discern, in his ample pictures of the
|
||
|
gentleman and the king, what forms and humanities pleased him; his
|
||
|
delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful
|
||
|
giving. Let Timon,[639] let Warwick,[640] let Antonio[641] the
|
||
|
merchant, answer for his great heart. So far from Shakspeare's being
|
||
|
the least known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to
|
||
|
us. What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of
|
||
|
religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What
|
||
|
mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or
|
||
|
function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king
|
||
|
has he not taught state, as Talma[642] taught Napoleon? What maiden
|
||
|
has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not
|
||
|
out-loved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not
|
||
|
instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?
|
||
|
|
||
|
18. Some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on
|
||
|
Shakspeare valuable, that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit;
|
||
|
that he is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I think as highly
|
||
|
as these critics of his dramatic merit, who still think it secondary.
|
||
|
He was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and
|
||
|
images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. Had he been
|
||
|
less, we should have had to consider how well he filled his place, how
|
||
|
good a dramatist he was,--and he is the best in the world. But it
|
||
|
turns out, that what he has to say is of that weight, as to withdraw
|
||
|
some attention from the vehicle; and he is like some saint whose
|
||
|
history is to be rendered into all languages, into verse and prose,
|
||
|
into songs and pictures, and cut up into proverbs; so that the
|
||
|
occasion which gave the saint's meaning the form of a conversation, or
|
||
|
of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is immaterial, compared with the
|
||
|
universality of its application. So it fares with the wise Shakspeare
|
||
|
and his book of life. He wrote the airs for all our modern music: he
|
||
|
wrote the text of modern life; the text of manners: he drew the man of
|
||
|
England and Europe; the father of the man in America: he drew the man,
|
||
|
and described the day, and what is done in it: he read the hearts of
|
||
|
men and women, their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the
|
||
|
wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices
|
||
|
slide into their contraries: he could divide the mother's part from
|
||
|
the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine
|
||
|
demarcations of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression
|
||
|
which make the police of nature: and all the sweets and all the
|
||
|
terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the
|
||
|
landscape lies on the eye. And the importance of this wisdom of life
|
||
|
sinks the form, as of Drama or Epic, out of notice. 'Tis like making a
|
||
|
question concerning the paper on which a king's message is written.
|
||
|
|
||
|
19. Shakspeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors, as
|
||
|
he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise; the others,
|
||
|
conceivably. A good reader can, in a sort, nestle into Plato's brain,
|
||
|
and think from thence; but not into Shakspeare's. We are still out of
|
||
|
doors. For executive faculty, for creation, Shakspeare is unique. No
|
||
|
man can imagine it better. He was the farthest reach of subtlety
|
||
|
compatible with an individual self,--the subtilest of authors, and
|
||
|
only just within the possibility of authorship. With this wisdom of
|
||
|
life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and of lyric power. He
|
||
|
clothed the creatures of his legend with form and sentiments, as if
|
||
|
they were people who had lived under his roof; and few real men have
|
||
|
left such distinct characters as these fictions. And they spoke in
|
||
|
language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talents never seduced him
|
||
|
into an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string. An omnipresent
|
||
|
humanity[643] coördinates all his faculties. Give a man of talents a
|
||
|
story to tell, and his partiality will presently appear. He has
|
||
|
certain observations, opinions, topics, which have some accidental
|
||
|
prominence, and which he disposes all to exhibit. He crams this part,
|
||
|
and starves that other part, consulting not the fitness of the thing,
|
||
|
but his fitness and strength. But Shakspeare has no peculiarity, no
|
||
|
importunate topic; but all is duly given; no veins, no curiosities: no
|
||
|
cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no mannerist is he: he has no
|
||
|
discoverable egotism: the great he tells greatly; the small,
|
||
|
subordinately. He is wise without emphasis or assertion; he is strong,
|
||
|
as nature is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without
|
||
|
effort, and by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and
|
||
|
likes as well to do the one as the other. This makes that equality of
|
||
|
power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs; a merit so
|
||
|
incessant, that each reader is incredulous of the perception of other
|
||
|
readers.
|
||
|
|
||
|
20. This power of expression, or of transferring the inmost truth of
|
||
|
things into music and verse, makes him the type of the poet, and has
|
||
|
added a new problem to metaphysics. This is that which throws him into
|
||
|
natural history, as a main production of the globe, and as announcing
|
||
|
new eras and ameliorations. Things were mirrored in his poetry without
|
||
|
loss or blur; he could paint the fine with precision, the great with
|
||
|
compass: the tragic and the comic indifferently, and without any
|
||
|
distortion or favor. He carried his powerful execution into minute
|
||
|
details, to a hair point; finishes an eyelash or a dimple as firmly as
|
||
|
he draws a mountain; and yet these, like nature's, will bear the
|
||
|
scrutiny of the solar microscope.
|
||
|
|
||
|
21. In short, he is the chief example to prove that more or less of
|
||
|
production, more or fewer pictures, is a thing indifferent. He had the
|
||
|
power to make one picture. Daguerre[644] learned how to let one flower
|
||
|
etch its image on his plate of iodine; and then proceeds at leisure to
|
||
|
etch a million. There are always objects; but there was never
|
||
|
representation. Here is perfect representation, at last; and now let
|
||
|
the world of figures sit for their portraits. No recipe can be given
|
||
|
for the making of a Shakspeare; but the possibility of the translation
|
||
|
of things into song is demonstrated.
|
||
|
|
||
|
22. His lyric power lies in the genius of the piece. The sonnets,
|
||
|
though their excellence is lost in the splendor of the dramas, are as
|
||
|
inimitable as they: and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit
|
||
|
of the piece; like the tone of voice of some incomparable person, so
|
||
|
is this a speech of poetic beings, and any clause as unproducible now
|
||
|
as a whole poem.
|
||
|
|
||
|
23. Though the speeches in the plays, and single lines, have a beauty
|
||
|
which tempts the ear to pause on them for their euphuism,[645] yet the
|
||
|
sentence is so loaded with meaning, and so linked with its foregoers
|
||
|
and followers, that the logician is satisfied. His means are as
|
||
|
admirable as his ends; every subordinate invention, by which he helps
|
||
|
himself to connect some irreconcilable opposites, is a poem too. He is
|
||
|
not reduced to dismount and walk, because his horses are running off
|
||
|
with him in some distant direction; he always rides.
|
||
|
|
||
|
24. The finest poetry was first experienced: but the thought has
|
||
|
suffered a transformation since it was an experience. Cultivated men
|
||
|
often attain a good degree of skill in writing verses; but it is easy
|
||
|
to read, through their poems, their personal history: any one
|
||
|
acquainted with parties can name every figure: this is Andrew, and
|
||
|
that is Rachael. The sense thus remains prosaic. It is a caterpillar
|
||
|
with wings, and not yet a butterfly. In the poet's mind, the fact has
|
||
|
gone quite over into the new element of thought, and has lost all that
|
||
|
is exuvial. This generosity bides with Shakspeare. We say, from the
|
||
|
truth and closeness of his pictures, that he knows the lesson by
|
||
|
heart. Yet there is not a trace of egotism.
|
||
|
|
||
|
25. One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his
|
||
|
cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his
|
||
|
aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace: he
|
||
|
delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that
|
||
|
sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds
|
||
|
over the universe. Epicurus[646] relates, that poetry hath such charms
|
||
|
that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And the
|
||
|
true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer
|
||
|
lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi says, "It was
|
||
|
rumored abroad that I was penitent; but what had I to do with
|
||
|
repentance?" Not less sovereign and cheerful,--much more sovereign and
|
||
|
cheerful, is the tone of Shakspeare. His name suggests joy and
|
||
|
emancipation to the heart of men. If he should appear in any company
|
||
|
of human souls, who would not march in his troop? He touches nothing
|
||
|
that does not borrow health and longevity from his festal style.
|
||
|
|
||
|
26. And now, how stands the account of man with this bard and
|
||
|
benefactor, when in solitude, shutting our ears to the reverberations
|
||
|
of his fame, we seek to strike the balance? Solitude has austere
|
||
|
lessons; it can teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and it weighs
|
||
|
Shakspeare also, and finds him to share the halfness and imperfection
|
||
|
of humanity.
|
||
|
|
||
|
27. Shakspeare, Homer, Dante,[647] Chaucer, saw the splendor of
|
||
|
meaning that plays over the visible world; knew that a tree had
|
||
|
another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the
|
||
|
ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: that these things bore
|
||
|
a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its
|
||
|
thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute
|
||
|
commentary on human life. Shakspeare employed them as colors to
|
||
|
compose his picture. He rested in their beauty; and never took the
|
||
|
step which seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to explore the
|
||
|
virtue which resides in these symbols, and imparts this power,--what
|
||
|
is that which they themselves say? He converted the elements, which
|
||
|
waited on his command, into entertainments. He was master of the
|
||
|
revels[648] to mankind. Is it not as if one should have, through
|
||
|
majestic powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or the
|
||
|
planets and their moons, and should draw them from their orbits to
|
||
|
glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, and advertise
|
||
|
in all towns, "very superior pyrotechny this evening!" Are the agents
|
||
|
of nature, and the power to understand them, worth no more than a
|
||
|
street serenade, or the breath of a cigar? One remembers again the
|
||
|
trumpet-text in the Koran,[649]--"The heavens and the earth, and all
|
||
|
that is between them, think ye we have created them in jest?" As long
|
||
|
as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has
|
||
|
not his equal to show. But when the question is to life, and its
|
||
|
materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me? What does it
|
||
|
signify? It is but a Twelfth Night,[650] or Midsummer Night's Dream,
|
||
|
or a Winter Evening's Tale: what signifies another picture more or
|
||
|
less? The Egyptian verdict[651] of the Shakspeare Societies comes to
|
||
|
mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this
|
||
|
fact to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of
|
||
|
keeping with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast. Had he
|
||
|
been less, had he reached only the common measure of great authors, of
|
||
|
Bacon, Milton, Tasso,[652] Cervantes,[653] we might leave the fact in
|
||
|
the twilight of human fate: but, that this man of men, he who gave to
|
||
|
the science of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed,
|
||
|
and planted the standard of humanity some furlongs forward into
|
||
|
Chaos,--that he should not be wise for himself,--it must even go into
|
||
|
the world's history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane
|
||
|
life, using his genius for the public amusement.
|
||
|
|
||
|
28. Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite,[654] German,[655]
|
||
|
and Swede,[656] beheld the same objects: they also saw through them
|
||
|
that which was contained. And to what purpose? The beauty straightway
|
||
|
vanished; they read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an
|
||
|
obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life
|
||
|
became ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim's progress,[657] a probation,
|
||
|
beleaguered round with doleful histories, of Adam's fall[658] and
|
||
|
curse, behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorial[659] and penal fires
|
||
|
before us; and the heart of the seer and the heart of the listener
|
||
|
sank in them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
29. It must be conceded that these are half-views of half-men. The
|
||
|
world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle
|
||
|
with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg
|
||
|
the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal
|
||
|
inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more
|
||
|
beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with
|
||
|
universal wisdom.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
PRUDENCE.[660]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have little, and
|
||
|
that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going
|
||
|
without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit
|
||
|
steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend
|
||
|
well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers
|
||
|
that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate
|
||
|
lubricity[661] and people without perception. Then I have the same
|
||
|
title to write on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness.
|
||
|
We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience.
|
||
|
We paint those qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the
|
||
|
man of energy and tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church
|
||
|
or the bar; and where a man is not vain and egotistic you shall find
|
||
|
what he has not by his praise. Moreover it would be hardly honest in
|
||
|
me not to balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship[662]
|
||
|
with words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real
|
||
|
and constant, not to own it in passing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of
|
||
|
appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God
|
||
|
taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It
|
||
|
is content to seek health of body by complying with physical
|
||
|
conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for
|
||
|
itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of
|
||
|
shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws and knows that its own
|
||
|
office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre where it
|
||
|
works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it is
|
||
|
the Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty
|
||
|
of laws within the narrow scope of the senses.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is
|
||
|
sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class lives
|
||
|
to the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final
|
||
|
good. Another class live above this mark of the beauty of the symbol,
|
||
|
as the poet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A third
|
||
|
class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing
|
||
|
signified; these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the
|
||
|
second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a long
|
||
|
time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol
|
||
|
solidly, then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst
|
||
|
he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not
|
||
|
offer to build houses and barns thereon reverencing the splendor of
|
||
|
the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The world is filled with the proverbs[663] and acts and winkings of a
|
||
|
base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no
|
||
|
other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear;
|
||
|
a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes,
|
||
|
which gives never, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of
|
||
|
any project,--Will it bake bread? This is a disease like a thickening
|
||
|
of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture,
|
||
|
revealing the high origin of the apparent world and aiming at the
|
||
|
perfection of the man as the end, degrades everything else, as health
|
||
|
and bodily life, into means. It sees prudence not to be a several
|
||
|
faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the body and
|
||
|
its wants. Cultivated men always feel and speak so as if a great
|
||
|
fortune, the achievement of a civil or social measure, great personal
|
||
|
influence, a graceful and commanding address, had their value as
|
||
|
proofs of the energy of the spirit. If a man lose his balance and
|
||
|
immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may
|
||
|
be a good wheel or pin,[664] but he is not a cultivated man.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and
|
||
|
cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and
|
||
|
therefore literature's. The true prudence limits this sensualism by
|
||
|
admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. This
|
||
|
recognition once made,--the order of the world and the distribution
|
||
|
of affairs and times being studied with the co-perception of their
|
||
|
subordinate place, will reward any degree of attention. For, our
|
||
|
existence, thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and the
|
||
|
returning moon and the periods which they mark; so susceptible to
|
||
|
climate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond of
|
||
|
splendor and so tender to hunger and cold and debt,--reads all its
|
||
|
primary lessons out of these books.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is? It takes the
|
||
|
laws of the world whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, and
|
||
|
keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects
|
||
|
space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity,[665] growth
|
||
|
and death. There revolve, to give bound and period to his being on all
|
||
|
sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky: here lies
|
||
|
stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here
|
||
|
is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws and fenced
|
||
|
and distributed externally with civil partitions and properties which
|
||
|
impose new restraints on the young inhabitant.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by the air which
|
||
|
blows around us and we are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too
|
||
|
hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible and
|
||
|
divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A
|
||
|
door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood or oil, or
|
||
|
meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax;
|
||
|
and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains, and
|
||
|
the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these
|
||
|
eat up the hours. Do what we can, summer will have its flies.[666] If
|
||
|
we walk in the woods we must feed mosquitoes. If we go a-fishing we
|
||
|
must expect a wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle
|
||
|
persons. We often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but
|
||
|
still we regard the clouds and the rain.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and
|
||
|
years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the
|
||
|
northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the
|
||
|
fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. At
|
||
|
night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild
|
||
|
date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for
|
||
|
his morning meal. The northerner is perforce a householder. He must
|
||
|
brew, bake, salt and preserve his food. He must pile wood and coal. But
|
||
|
as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to without some new
|
||
|
acquaintance with nature; and as nature is inexhaustibly significant,
|
||
|
the inhabitants of these climates[667] have always excelled the
|
||
|
southerner in force. Such is the value of these matters that a man who
|
||
|
knows other things can never know too much of these. Let him have
|
||
|
accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, handle; if eyes,
|
||
|
measure and discriminate; let him accept and hive every fact of
|
||
|
chemistry, natural history and economics; the more he has, the less is
|
||
|
he willing to spare any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that
|
||
|
disclose their value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and
|
||
|
innocent action. The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his
|
||
|
kitchen clock and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on
|
||
|
the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of. The application of
|
||
|
means to ends ensures victory and the songs of victory not less in a
|
||
|
farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or of war. The good husband
|
||
|
finds method as efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed or in
|
||
|
the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns[668]
|
||
|
or the files of the Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a
|
||
|
work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber,
|
||
|
and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein
|
||
|
he tastes an old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of
|
||
|
garrets, presses and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long
|
||
|
housekeeping. His garden or his poultry-yard--very paltry places it may
|
||
|
be--tells him many pleasant anecdotes. One might find argument for
|
||
|
optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine element of pleasure in
|
||
|
every suburb and extremity of the good world. Let a man keep the
|
||
|
law--any law,--and his way will be strown with satisfactions. There is
|
||
|
more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you
|
||
|
think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do
|
||
|
not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of
|
||
|
cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose
|
||
|
and imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have
|
||
|
said,[669]--"If the child says he looked out of this window, when he
|
||
|
looked out of that,--whip him." Our American character is marked by a
|
||
|
more than average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by
|
||
|
the currency of the by-word, "No mistake."
|
||
|
|
||
|
But the discomfort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about
|
||
|
facts, inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The
|
||
|
beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude,
|
||
|
are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands,
|
||
|
instead of honey it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be
|
||
|
fair must be timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the
|
||
|
scythe in the mornings of June; yet what is more lonesome and sad than
|
||
|
the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle[670] when it is too late in
|
||
|
the season to make hay? Scatter brained and "afternoon men" spoil much
|
||
|
more than their own affairs in spoiling the temper of those who deal
|
||
|
with them. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I am
|
||
|
reminded when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to
|
||
|
their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar,[671] a man of superior
|
||
|
understanding, said: "I have sometimes remarked in the presence of
|
||
|
great works of art, and just now especially in Dresden, how much a
|
||
|
certain property contributes to the effect which gives life to the
|
||
|
figures, and to the life an irresistible truth. This property is the
|
||
|
hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. I
|
||
|
mean the placing the figures firm upon their feet, making the hands
|
||
|
grasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where they should look. Even
|
||
|
lifeless figures, as vessels and stools--let them be drawn ever so
|
||
|
correctly--lose all effect so soon as they lack the resting upon their
|
||
|
centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating
|
||
|
appearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery[672] (the only great
|
||
|
affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most
|
||
|
passionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship the
|
||
|
Virgin and child. Nevertheless it awakens a deeper impression than the
|
||
|
contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For, beside all the resistless
|
||
|
beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree the property of the
|
||
|
perpendicularity of all the figures." This perpendicularity we demand
|
||
|
of all the figures in this picture of life. Let them stand on their
|
||
|
feet, and not float and swing. Let us know where to find them. Let
|
||
|
them discriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed.
|
||
|
Let them call a spade a spade.[673] Let them give us facts, and honor
|
||
|
their own senses with trust.
|
||
|
|
||
|
But what man shall dare task another with imprudence? Who is prudent?
|
||
|
The men we call greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a certain
|
||
|
fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, distorting all our modes
|
||
|
of living and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to have
|
||
|
aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to ponder the question of
|
||
|
Reform. We must call the highest prudence to counsel, and ask why
|
||
|
health and beauty and genius should now be the exception rather than
|
||
|
the rule of human nature? We do not know the properties of plants and
|
||
|
animals and the laws of nature, through our sympathy with the same;
|
||
|
but this remains the dream of poets. Poetry and prudence should be
|
||
|
coincident. Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric
|
||
|
inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead
|
||
|
the civil code and the day's work. But now the two things seem
|
||
|
irreconcilably parted. We have violated law upon law until we stand
|
||
|
amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a coincidence between reason
|
||
|
and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of
|
||
|
every man and woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare.
|
||
|
Health or sound organization should be universal. Genius should be the
|
||
|
child of genius, and every child should be inspired; but now it is not
|
||
|
to be predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial
|
||
|
half lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to
|
||
|
money; talent which glitters to-day that it may dine and sleep well
|
||
|
to-morrow; and society is officered by _men of parts_,[674] as they
|
||
|
are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to
|
||
|
refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic; and piety,
|
||
|
and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they
|
||
|
find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have found out[675] fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but
|
||
|
no gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his
|
||
|
transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them
|
||
|
nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art rebukes him.
|
||
|
That never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to
|
||
|
reap where he had not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from
|
||
|
his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense. On him who
|
||
|
scorned the world, as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge.
|
||
|
He that despiseth small things will perish by little and little.
|
||
|
Goethe's Tasso[676] is very likely to be a pretty fair historical
|
||
|
portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine
|
||
|
grief when some tyrannous Richard III.[677] oppresses and slays a
|
||
|
score of innocent persons, as when Antonio and Tasso, both apparently
|
||
|
right, wrong each other. One living after the maxims of this world and
|
||
|
consistent and true to them, the other fired with all divine
|
||
|
sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without
|
||
|
submitting to their law. That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot
|
||
|
untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of
|
||
|
genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws,
|
||
|
self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a
|
||
|
"discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and to others.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The scholar shames us by his bifold[678] life. Whilst something higher
|
||
|
than prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted,
|
||
|
he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cæsar[679] was not so great; to-day,
|
||
|
Job[680] not so miserable. Yesterday, radiant with the light of an
|
||
|
ideal world in which he lives, the first of men, and now oppressed by
|
||
|
wants and by sickness, for which he must thank himself, none is so
|
||
|
poor to do him reverence. He resembles the opium eaters whom
|
||
|
travellers describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who
|
||
|
skulk about all day, the most pitiful drivellers, yellow, emaciated,
|
||
|
ragged, sneaking; then at evening, when the bazaars are open, they
|
||
|
slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become tranquil,
|
||
|
glorious and great. And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent
|
||
|
genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at
|
||
|
last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant
|
||
|
slaughtered by pins?
|
||
|
|
||
|
Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and
|
||
|
mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him,
|
||
|
as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his
|
||
|
own labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social position,
|
||
|
have their importance, and he will give them their due. Let him esteem
|
||
|
Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections the exact measure
|
||
|
of our deviations. Let him make the night night, and the day day. Let
|
||
|
him control the habit of expense. Let him see that as much wisdom may
|
||
|
be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom
|
||
|
may be drawn from it. The laws of the world are written out for him on
|
||
|
every piece of money in his hand. There is nothing he will not be the
|
||
|
better for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor Richard,[681] or
|
||
|
the State-street[682] prudence of buying by the acre to sell by the
|
||
|
foot; or the thrift of the agriculturist, to stick[683] in a tree
|
||
|
between whiles, because it will grow whilst he sleeps; or the prudence
|
||
|
which consists in husbanding little strokes of the tool, little
|
||
|
portions of time, particles of stock and small gains. The eye of
|
||
|
prudence may never shut. Iron, if kept at the ironmonger's, will rust;
|
||
|
beer, if not brewed in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour;
|
||
|
timber of ships will rot at sea, or if laid up high and dry, will
|
||
|
strain, warp and dry-rot. Money, if kept by us, yields no rent and is
|
||
|
liable to loss; if invested, is liable to depreciation of the
|
||
|
particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the iron is white.
|
||
|
Keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and
|
||
|
the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very much
|
||
|
on the extreme of this prudence. It saves itself by its activity. It
|
||
|
takes bank notes,--good, bad, clean, ragged, and saves itself by the
|
||
|
speed with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour,
|
||
|
nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks
|
||
|
depreciate, in the few swift moments in which the Yankee suffers any
|
||
|
one of them to remain in his possession. In skating over thin ice our
|
||
|
safety is in our speed.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn that
|
||
|
everything in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by
|
||
|
luck, and that what he sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command
|
||
|
let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, and not at that of
|
||
|
others, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other
|
||
|
men; for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him practise the
|
||
|
minor virtues.[684] How much of human life is lost in waiting! Let him
|
||
|
not make his fellow creatures wait. How many words and promises are
|
||
|
promises of conversation! Let his be words of fate. When he sees a
|
||
|
folded and sealed scrap of paper float around the globe in a pine ship
|
||
|
and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming
|
||
|
population, let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his
|
||
|
being across all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human
|
||
|
word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive us hither
|
||
|
and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man
|
||
|
reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the most
|
||
|
distant climates.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that
|
||
|
only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The
|
||
|
prudence which secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by
|
||
|
one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another,
|
||
|
but they are reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time,
|
||
|
persons, property and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots
|
||
|
in the soul, and, if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or
|
||
|
would become some other thing, therefore the proper administration of
|
||
|
outward things will always rest on a just apprehension of their cause
|
||
|
and origin; that is, the good man will be the wise man, and the
|
||
|
single-hearted the politic man. Every violation of truth is not only a
|
||
|
sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human
|
||
|
society. On the most profitable lie the course of events presently
|
||
|
lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness proves to be the best
|
||
|
tactics, for it invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient
|
||
|
footing and makes their business a friendship. Trust men and they will
|
||
|
be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves
|
||
|
great, though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules
|
||
|
of trade.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not
|
||
|
consist in evasion or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk
|
||
|
in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw
|
||
|
himself up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst
|
||
|
apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fears
|
||
|
groundless. The Latin proverb says,[685] "in battles the eye is first
|
||
|
overcome." The eye is daunted and greatly exaggerates the perils of
|
||
|
the hour. Entire self-possession may make a battle very little more
|
||
|
dangerous to life than a match at foils or at football. Examples are
|
||
|
cited by soldiers of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire
|
||
|
given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The
|
||
|
terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin.
|
||
|
The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews
|
||
|
itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of
|
||
|
June.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes
|
||
|
readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but
|
||
|
it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently
|
||
|
strong. To himself he seems weak; to others formidable. You are afraid
|
||
|
of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the
|
||
|
good will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill will. But the
|
||
|
sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip
|
||
|
up _his_ claims, is as thin and timid as any; and the peace of society
|
||
|
is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid and the other
|
||
|
dares not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten: bring them hand to
|
||
|
hand, and they are a feeble folk.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is a proverb that "courtesy costs nothing"; but calculation might
|
||
|
come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, but
|
||
|
kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an
|
||
|
eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never
|
||
|
recognize the dividing lines, but meet on what common ground
|
||
|
remains,--if only that the sun shines and the rain rains for
|
||
|
both,--the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it, the
|
||
|
boundary mountains on which the eye had fastened have melted into air.
|
||
|
If he set out to contend,[686] almost St. Paul will lie, almost St.
|
||
|
John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an
|
||
|
argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls. Shuffle
|
||
|
they will and crow, crook and hide, feign to confess here, only that
|
||
|
they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either
|
||
|
party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither
|
||
|
should you put yourself in a false position to your contemporaries by
|
||
|
indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though your views are in
|
||
|
straight antagonism[687] to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment,
|
||
|
assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the
|
||
|
flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not
|
||
|
the infirmity of a doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate
|
||
|
deliverance. The natural emotions of the soul are so much better than
|
||
|
the voluntary ones that you will never do yourself justice in dispute.
|
||
|
The thought is not then taken hold of by the right handle, does not
|
||
|
show itself proportioned and in its true bearings, but bears extorted,
|
||
|
hoarse, and half witness. But assume a consent and it shall presently
|
||
|
be granted, since really and underneath their all external
|
||
|
diversities, all men are of one heart and mind.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly
|
||
|
footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited
|
||
|
for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when?
|
||
|
To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are
|
||
|
preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us.
|
||
|
Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are
|
||
|
too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater
|
||
|
or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and
|
||
|
consuetudes[688] that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the
|
||
|
feet. Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily
|
||
|
whisper names prouder and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's
|
||
|
imagination hath its friends; and pleasant would life be with such
|
||
|
companions. But if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you
|
||
|
cannot have them. If not the Deity but our ambition hews and shapes
|
||
|
the new relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their
|
||
|
flavor in garden beds.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all the virtues
|
||
|
range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a
|
||
|
present well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to be
|
||
|
made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of
|
||
|
manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where we
|
||
|
will[689] we are pretty sure in a short space to be mumbling our ten
|
||
|
commandments.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
CIRCLES.[690]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second;
|
||
|
and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It
|
||
|
is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine[691]
|
||
|
described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere
|
||
|
and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the
|
||
|
copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already
|
||
|
deduced in considering the circular or compensatory character of every
|
||
|
human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action
|
||
|
admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth
|
||
|
that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in
|
||
|
nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another
|
||
|
dawn risen on mid-noon,[692] and under every deep a lower deep opens.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable,
|
||
|
the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at
|
||
|
once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently
|
||
|
serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every
|
||
|
department.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile.
|
||
|
Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a
|
||
|
transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and
|
||
|
holds its fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which
|
||
|
draws after it all this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise
|
||
|
into another idea; they will disappear. The Greek sculpture[693] is
|
||
|
all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice: here and there a
|
||
|
solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of
|
||
|
snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the
|
||
|
genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek
|
||
|
letters[694] last a little longer, but are already passing under the
|
||
|
same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation
|
||
|
of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built
|
||
|
out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the
|
||
|
decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old.[695] See the
|
||
|
investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics;
|
||
|
fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by
|
||
|
steam; steam, by electricity.
|
||
|
|
||
|
You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many
|
||
|
ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which
|
||
|
builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can
|
||
|
topple it down much faster. Better than the hand and nimbler was the
|
||
|
invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the
|
||
|
coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself
|
||
|
the effect of a finer cause. Everything looks permanent until its
|
||
|
secret is known. A rich estate appears to women and children a firm
|
||
|
and lasting fact; to a merchant, one easily created out of any
|
||
|
materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds,
|
||
|
seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a
|
||
|
large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature
|
||
|
looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the
|
||
|
rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so
|
||
|
immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable?
|
||
|
Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no
|
||
|
more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look,
|
||
|
he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his
|
||
|
facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea
|
||
|
which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle,[696]
|
||
|
which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to
|
||
|
new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this
|
||
|
generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the
|
||
|
force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of
|
||
|
each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance,
|
||
|
as for instance an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious
|
||
|
rite, to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify and hem in the life.
|
||
|
But if the soul is quick and strong it bursts over that boundary on all
|
||
|
sides and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up
|
||
|
into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart
|
||
|
refuses to be imprisoned;[697] in its first and narrowest pulses it
|
||
|
already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable
|
||
|
expansions.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general
|
||
|
law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to
|
||
|
disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no
|
||
|
circumference to us. The man finishes his story,--how good! how final!
|
||
|
how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo, on the
|
||
|
other side rises also a man and draws a circle around the circle we
|
||
|
had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our
|
||
|
first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is
|
||
|
forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by
|
||
|
themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be
|
||
|
escaped will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that
|
||
|
seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a
|
||
|
bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to
|
||
|
upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of the
|
||
|
nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet
|
||
|
depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a
|
||
|
suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next
|
||
|
age.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder; the steps are actions,
|
||
|
the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and
|
||
|
judged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by
|
||
|
the new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement is always
|
||
|
hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an
|
||
|
abyss of scepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye
|
||
|
and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit
|
||
|
appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles
|
||
|
before the revelation of the new hour.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass[698] and
|
||
|
material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not;
|
||
|
it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man
|
||
|
supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth
|
||
|
in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can
|
||
|
be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel was
|
||
|
never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That
|
||
|
is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts
|
||
|
and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the
|
||
|
same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write,
|
||
|
whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world: but
|
||
|
yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see
|
||
|
so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was
|
||
|
that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this
|
||
|
will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature;
|
||
|
I am a weed by the wall.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The continual effort to raise himself above himself,[699] to work a
|
||
|
pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. We
|
||
|
thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of
|
||
|
nature is love; yet if I have a friend I am tormented by my
|
||
|
imperfections. The love of me accuses the other party. If he were high
|
||
|
enough[700] to slight me, then could I love him, and rise by my
|
||
|
affection to new heights. A man's growth is seen in the successive
|
||
|
choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he
|
||
|
gains a better. I thought as I walked in the woods and mused on any
|
||
|
friends, why should I play with them this game of idolatry? I know and
|
||
|
see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons
|
||
|
called high and worthy. Rich, noble and great they are by the
|
||
|
liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I
|
||
|
forsake for these, they are not thee! Every personal consideration
|
||
|
that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones of angels
|
||
|
for a short and turbulent pleasure.
|
||
|
|
||
|
How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we
|
||
|
find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you
|
||
|
once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has
|
||
|
he talents? has he enterprises? has he knowledge? It boots not.
|
||
|
Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great
|
||
|
hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a
|
||
|
pond, and you care not if you never see it again.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly
|
||
|
discordant facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato[701]
|
||
|
are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see
|
||
|
that Aristotle platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought,
|
||
|
discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of
|
||
|
one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still
|
||
|
higher vision.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then
|
||
|
all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out
|
||
|
in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.
|
||
|
There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow;
|
||
|
there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names
|
||
|
of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man,
|
||
|
the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and
|
||
|
morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization.
|
||
|
Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind.
|
||
|
Hence the thrill that attends it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot
|
||
|
have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you
|
||
|
will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past
|
||
|
apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from whatever
|
||
|
quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to
|
||
|
society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded
|
||
|
and decease.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it
|
||
|
academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday
|
||
|
of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and
|
||
|
fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see
|
||
|
that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We
|
||
|
learn that God is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows
|
||
|
of him. The idealism of Berkeley[702] is only a crude statement of the
|
||
|
idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact
|
||
|
that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and
|
||
|
organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and the state of the
|
||
|
world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual
|
||
|
classification then existing in the minds of men. The things which are
|
||
|
dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have
|
||
|
emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of
|
||
|
things, as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would
|
||
|
instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the
|
||
|
_termini_[703] which bound the common of silence on every side. The
|
||
|
parties are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even
|
||
|
express under this Pentecost.[704] To-morrow they will have receded
|
||
|
from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping
|
||
|
under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst
|
||
|
it glows on our walls. When each new speaker strikes a new light,
|
||
|
emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker to oppress us
|
||
|
with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields
|
||
|
us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men.
|
||
|
O, what truths profound and executable only in ages and orbs, are
|
||
|
supposed in the announcement of every truth! In common hours, society
|
||
|
sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, empty,--knowing,
|
||
|
possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are
|
||
|
not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god and
|
||
|
converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns
|
||
|
up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very
|
||
|
furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is
|
||
|
manifest. The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of
|
||
|
yesterday,--property, climate, breeding, personal beauty and the like,
|
||
|
have strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned settled
|
||
|
shakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions,
|
||
|
leave their foundations and dance before our eyes. And yet here again
|
||
|
see the swift circumscription! Good as is discourse, silence is
|
||
|
better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the
|
||
|
distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were
|
||
|
at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary
|
||
|
thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal[705] circle through
|
||
|
which a new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford
|
||
|
us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a
|
||
|
purchase by which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient
|
||
|
learning, install ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic,[706]
|
||
|
in Roman houses, only that we may wiselier see French, English and
|
||
|
American houses and modes of living. In like manner[707] we see
|
||
|
literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of
|
||
|
affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from
|
||
|
within the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's
|
||
|
orbit as a base to find the parallax of any star.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is
|
||
|
not in the encyclopædia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body
|
||
|
of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline
|
||
|
to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the
|
||
|
power of change and reform. But some Petrarch[708] or Ariosto,[709]
|
||
|
filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a
|
||
|
brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and
|
||
|
arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits,
|
||
|
and I open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides
|
||
|
of all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once more
|
||
|
of choosing a straight path in theory and practice.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world.
|
||
|
We can never see Christianity from the catechism:--from the pastures,
|
||
|
from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds we
|
||
|
possibly may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the
|
||
|
sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to
|
||
|
cast a right glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear
|
||
|
to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose
|
||
|
breeding had fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text
|
||
|
of Paul's was not specially prized, "Then shall also the Son be
|
||
|
subject unto Him who put all things under him, that God may be all in
|
||
|
all."[710] Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and
|
||
|
welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal
|
||
|
and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of
|
||
|
bigots with this generous word out of the book itself.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric
|
||
|
circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations
|
||
|
which apprize us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed,
|
||
|
but sliding. These manifold tenacious qualities,[711] this chemistry
|
||
|
and vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there
|
||
|
for their own sake, are means and methods only, are words of God, and
|
||
|
as fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his
|
||
|
craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective
|
||
|
affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is
|
||
|
only a partial or approximate statement, namely that like draws to
|
||
|
like, and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you and need
|
||
|
not be pursued with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate
|
||
|
also, and not final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle
|
||
|
subterranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their
|
||
|
counterpart, but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the
|
||
|
eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one
|
||
|
fact.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the
|
||
|
virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man
|
||
|
will not be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so
|
||
|
much deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he
|
||
|
sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to ease and
|
||
|
pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can
|
||
|
well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead.
|
||
|
Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may
|
||
|
be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril.
|
||
|
In many years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to
|
||
|
me that with every precaution you take against such an evil you put
|
||
|
yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose that the highest
|
||
|
prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from
|
||
|
the centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many times we shall
|
||
|
fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the
|
||
|
great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides,
|
||
|
your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The poor and
|
||
|
the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as
|
||
|
well as you. "Blessed be nothing" and "The worse things are, the
|
||
|
better they are" are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of
|
||
|
common life.
|
||
|
|
||
|
One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's
|
||
|
ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same
|
||
|
objects from a higher point of view. One man thinks justice consists
|
||
|
in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who
|
||
|
is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But
|
||
|
that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself
|
||
|
which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the
|
||
|
poor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius
|
||
|
to nature? For you, O broker, there is no other principle but
|
||
|
arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth
|
||
|
of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I
|
||
|
detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my
|
||
|
forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you
|
||
|
shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will
|
||
|
liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a
|
||
|
man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be
|
||
|
injustice? Owes he no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be
|
||
|
postponed to a landlord's or a banker's?
|
||
|
|
||
|
There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of
|
||
|
society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery
|
||
|
that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed
|
||
|
such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too,
|
||
|
Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.[712]
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our
|
||
|
contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by
|
||
|
day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost
|
||
|
time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what
|
||
|
remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a
|
||
|
sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration,
|
||
|
but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to
|
||
|
be done, without time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have
|
||
|
arrived at a fine pyrrhonism,[713] at an equivalence and indifferency
|
||
|
of all actions, and would fain teach us that _if we are true_,
|
||
|
forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall
|
||
|
construct the temple of the true God.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened[714] by
|
||
|
seeing the predominance of the saccharine principle throughout
|
||
|
vegetable nature, and not less by beholding in morals that
|
||
|
unrestrained inundation of the principle of good into every chink and
|
||
|
hole that selfishness has left open, yea into selfishness and sin
|
||
|
itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme
|
||
|
satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head
|
||
|
and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an
|
||
|
experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least
|
||
|
discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as
|
||
|
true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none
|
||
|
are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my
|
||
|
back.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake
|
||
|
could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of
|
||
|
fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of
|
||
|
circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is
|
||
|
somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and
|
||
|
contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and
|
||
|
thought as large and excellent as itself; but in vain; for that which
|
||
|
is made instructs how to make a better.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things
|
||
|
renew, germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into
|
||
|
the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only
|
||
|
disease: all others run into this one. We call it by many
|
||
|
names,--fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime: they are
|
||
|
all forms of old age: they are rest, conservatism, appropriation,
|
||
|
inertia; not newness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see
|
||
|
no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not
|
||
|
grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with
|
||
|
religious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing and abandons
|
||
|
itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and
|
||
|
woman of seventy assume to know all; throw up their hope; renounce
|
||
|
aspiration; accept the actual for the necessary and talk down to the
|
||
|
young. Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be
|
||
|
lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their
|
||
|
wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. This
|
||
|
old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment is
|
||
|
new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is
|
||
|
sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
|
||
|
No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher
|
||
|
love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light
|
||
|
of new thoughts. People wish to be settled: only as far as they are
|
||
|
unsettled is there any hope for them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the
|
||
|
pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being.
|
||
|
Of lower states,--of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat,
|
||
|
but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements
|
||
|
of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth
|
||
|
is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess,
|
||
|
for _so to be_ is the sole inlet of _so to know_. The new position of
|
||
|
the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new.
|
||
|
It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an
|
||
|
exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my once
|
||
|
hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now for the first time seem I
|
||
|
to know any thing rightly. The simplest words,--we do not know what
|
||
|
they mean except when we love and aspire.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the
|
||
|
old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new
|
||
|
and better goals. Character makes an overpowering present, a cheerful,
|
||
|
determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see
|
||
|
that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character
|
||
|
dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror
|
||
|
we do not think much of any one battle or success. We see that we had
|
||
|
exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is not
|
||
|
convulsible or tormentable. He is so much that events pass over him
|
||
|
without much impression. People say sometimes, "See what I have
|
||
|
overcome; see how cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed
|
||
|
over these black events." Not if they still remind me of the black
|
||
|
event,--they have not yet conquered. Is it conquest to be a gay and
|
||
|
decorated sepulchre, or a half-crazed widow, hysterically laughing?
|
||
|
True conquest is the causing the black event to fade and disappear as
|
||
|
an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and
|
||
|
advancing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget
|
||
|
ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our
|
||
|
sempiternal[715] memory and to do something without knowing how or
|
||
|
why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved
|
||
|
without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful. It is by
|
||
|
abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of
|
||
|
performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and
|
||
|
religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell,[716] "never rises so high as
|
||
|
when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the
|
||
|
use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this
|
||
|
oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the
|
||
|
like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in the gaming and
|
||
|
war, ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
NOTES
|
||
|
|
||
|
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 1: Games of strength. The public games of Greece were
|
||
|
athletic and intellectual contests of various kinds. There were four
|
||
|
of importance: the Olympic, held every four years; the Pythian, held
|
||
|
every third Olympic year; and the Nemean and Isthmian, held alternate
|
||
|
years between the Olympic periods. These great national festivals
|
||
|
exercised a strong influence in Greece. They were a secure bond of
|
||
|
union between the numerous independent states and did much to help the
|
||
|
nation to repel its foreign invaders. In Greece the accomplished
|
||
|
athlete was reverenced almost as a god, and cases have been recorded
|
||
|
where altars were erected and sacrifices made in his honor. The
|
||
|
extreme care and cultivation of the body induced by this national
|
||
|
spirit is one of the most significant features of Greek culture, and
|
||
|
one which might wisely be imitated in the modern world.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 2: Troubadours. In southern France during the eleventh
|
||
|
century, wandering poets went from castle to castle reciting or
|
||
|
singing love-songs, composed in the old Provençal dialect, a sort of
|
||
|
vulgarized Latin. The life in the great feudal chateaux was so dull
|
||
|
that the lords and ladies seized with avidity any amusement which
|
||
|
promised to while away an idle hour. The troubadours were made much of
|
||
|
and became a strong element in the development of the Southern spirit.
|
||
|
So-called Courts of Love were formed where questions of an amorous
|
||
|
nature were discussed in all their bearings; learned opinions were
|
||
|
expressed on the most trivial matters, and offenses were tried.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Some of the Provençal poetry is of the highest artistic significance,
|
||
|
though the mass of it is worthless high-flown trash.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 3: At the time this oration was delivered (1837), many of
|
||
|
the authors who have since given America a place in the world's
|
||
|
literature were young men writing their first books. "We were," says
|
||
|
James Russell Lowell, "still socially and intellectually moored to
|
||
|
English thought, till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at
|
||
|
the dangers and glories of blue water."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 4: Pole-star. Polaris is now the nearest conspicuous star to
|
||
|
the north pole of the celestial equator. Owing to the motion of the
|
||
|
pole of the celestial equator around that of the ecliptic, this star
|
||
|
will in course of time recede from its proud position, and the
|
||
|
brilliant star Vega in the constellation Harp will become the
|
||
|
pole-star.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 5: It is now a well-recognized fact in the development of
|
||
|
animal life that as any part of the body falls into disuse it in time
|
||
|
disappears. Good examples of this are the disappearance of powerful
|
||
|
fangs from the mouth of man, the loss of power in the wings of
|
||
|
barnyard fowls; and, _vice versa_, as new uses for a member arise, its
|
||
|
structure changes to meet the new needs. An example of this is the
|
||
|
transformation from the hoof of a horse through the cloven hoofs of
|
||
|
the cow to the eventual development of highly expert fingers in the
|
||
|
monkey and man. Emerson assumed the doctrine of evolution to be
|
||
|
sufficiently established by the anatomical evidence of gradual
|
||
|
development. In his own words: "Man is no up-start in the creation.
|
||
|
His limbs are only a more exquisite organization--say rather the
|
||
|
finish--of the rudimental forms that have been already sweeping the
|
||
|
sea and creeping in the mud. The brother of his hand is even now
|
||
|
cleaving the arctic sea in the fin of the whale, and innumerable ages
|
||
|
since was pawing the marsh in the flipper of the saurian." A view
|
||
|
afterwards condensed into his memorable couplet:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Striving to be man, the worm
|
||
|
Mounts through all the spires of form."
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 6: Stint. A prescribed or allotted task, a share of labor.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 7: Ridden. Here used in the sense of dominated.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 8: Monitory pictures. Instructive warning pictures.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 9: The Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus is the author of
|
||
|
this saying, not "the old oracle." It occurs in the Encheiridion, or
|
||
|
manual, a work put together by a pupil of Epictetus. The original
|
||
|
saying of Epictetus is as follows: "Every thing has two handles, the
|
||
|
one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. If your
|
||
|
brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act by that handle
|
||
|
wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which cannot be
|
||
|
borne: but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that he was
|
||
|
nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle
|
||
|
by which it can be borne."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 10: Every day, the sun (shines).]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 11: Beholden. Emerson here uses this past participle with
|
||
|
its original meaning instead of in its present sense of "indebted."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 12: Here we have a reminder of Emerson's pantheism. He means
|
||
|
the inexplicable continuity "of what I call God, and fools nature," as
|
||
|
Browning expressed it.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 13: His expanding knowledge will become a creator.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 14: Know thyself. Plutarch ascribes this saying to Plato. It
|
||
|
is also ascribed to Pythagoras, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, and
|
||
|
Socrates; also to Phemonië, a mythical Greek poetess of the
|
||
|
ante-Homeric period. Juvenal (Satire XI. 27) says that this precept
|
||
|
descended from heaven. "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much" were
|
||
|
inscribed upon the Delphic oracle.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
|
||
|
The proper study of mankind is man."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 15: Observe the brisk movement of these sentences. How they
|
||
|
catch and hold the attention, giving a new impulse to the reader's
|
||
|
interest!]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 16: Nature abhors a vacuum.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 17: Noxious. Harmful.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 18: John Locke (1632-1704), an English philosopher whose
|
||
|
work was of especial significance in the development of modern
|
||
|
philosophy. The work he is best known by is the exhaustive "Essay on
|
||
|
the Human Understanding," in which he combated the theory of
|
||
|
Descartes, that every man has certain "innate ideas." The innate-idea
|
||
|
theory was first proved by the philosopher Descartes in this way.
|
||
|
Descartes began his speculations from a standpoint of absolute doubt.
|
||
|
Then he said, "I think, therefore I am," and from this formula he
|
||
|
built up a number of ideas innate to the human mind, ideas which we
|
||
|
cannot but hold. Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding" did much
|
||
|
to discredit Descartes' innate ideas, which had been very generally
|
||
|
accepted in Europe before.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 19: Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount Saint Alban's
|
||
|
(1561-1626), a famous English statesman and philosopher. He occupied
|
||
|
high public offices, but in 1621 was convicted of taking bribes in his
|
||
|
office of Lord Chancellor. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to
|
||
|
imprisonment and a fine of forty thousand pounds. Both these sentences
|
||
|
were remitted, however. In the seventeenth century, judicial
|
||
|
corruption was so common that Bacon's offence was not considered so
|
||
|
gross as it would now be. As a philosopher Bacon's rank has been much
|
||
|
disputed. While some claim that to his improved method of studying
|
||
|
nature are chiefly to be attributed the prodigious strides taken by
|
||
|
modern science, others deny him all merit in this respect. His best
|
||
|
known works are: "The Novum Organum," a philosophical treatise; "The
|
||
|
Advancement of Learning," a remarkable argument in favor of
|
||
|
scholarship; and the short essays on subjects of common interest,
|
||
|
usually printed under the simple title "Bacon's Essays."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 20: Third Estate. The thirteenth century was the age when
|
||
|
the national assemblies of most European countries were putting on
|
||
|
their definite shape. In most of them the system of _estates_
|
||
|
prevailed. These in most countries were three--nobles, clergy, and
|
||
|
commons, the commons being the third estate. During the French
|
||
|
Revolution the Third Estate, or Tiers Etat, asserted its rights and
|
||
|
became a powerful factor in French politics, choosing its own leaders
|
||
|
and effecting the downfall of its oppressors.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 21: Restorers of readings. Men who spend their lives trying
|
||
|
to improve and correct the texts of classical authors, by comparing
|
||
|
the old editions with each other and picking out the version which
|
||
|
seem most in accordance with the authors' original work.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 22: Emendators. The same as restorers of readings.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 23: Bibliomaniacs. Men with a mania for collecting rare and
|
||
|
beautiful books. Not a bad sort of mania, though Emerson never had any
|
||
|
sympathy for it.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 24: To many readers Emerson's own works richly fulfill this
|
||
|
obligation. He himself lived continually in such a lofty mental
|
||
|
atmosphere that no one can come within the circle of his influence
|
||
|
without being stimulated and elevated.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 25: Genius, the possession of a thoroughly active soul,
|
||
|
ought not to be the special privilege of favorites of fortune, but the
|
||
|
right of every sound man.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 26: They stunt my mental growth. A man should not accept
|
||
|
another man's conclusions, but merely use them as steps on his upward
|
||
|
path.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 27: If you do not employ such talent as you have in original
|
||
|
labor, in bearing the mental fruit of which you are capable, then you
|
||
|
do not vindicate your claim to a share in the divine nature.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 28: Disservice. Injury.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 29: In original composition of any sort our efforts
|
||
|
naturally flow in the channels worn for us by the first dominating
|
||
|
streams of early genius. The conventional is the continual foe of all
|
||
|
true art.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 30: Emerson is continually stimulating us to look at things
|
||
|
in new ways. Here, for instance, at once the thought comes: "Is it not
|
||
|
perhaps possible that the transcendent genius of Shakespeare has been
|
||
|
rather noxious than beneficent in its influence on the mind of the
|
||
|
world? Has not the all-pervading Shakespearian influence flooded and
|
||
|
drowned out a great deal of original genius?"]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 31: That is,--when in his clear, seeing moments he can
|
||
|
distil some drops of truth from the world about him, let him not waste
|
||
|
his time in studying other men's records of what they have seen.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 32: While Emerson's verse is frequently unmusical, in his
|
||
|
prose we often find passages like this instinct with the fairest
|
||
|
poetry.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 33: Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). The father of English
|
||
|
poetry. Chaucer's chief work is the "Canterbury Tales," a series of
|
||
|
stories told by pilgrims traveling in company to Canterbury.
|
||
|
Coleridge, the poet, wrote of Chaucer: "I take unceasing delight in
|
||
|
Chaucer; his manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my
|
||
|
old age. How exquisitely tender he is, yet how free from the least
|
||
|
touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping." Chaucer's poetry is
|
||
|
above all things fresh. It breathes of the morning of literature. Like
|
||
|
Homer he had at his command all the riches of a new language undefiled
|
||
|
by usage from which to choose.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
|
||
|
On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 34: Andrew Marvell (1620-1678). An eminent English patriot
|
||
|
and satirist. As a writer he is chiefly known by his "Rehearsal
|
||
|
Transposed," written in answer to a fanatical defender of absolute
|
||
|
power. When a young man he was assistant to the poet Milton, who was
|
||
|
then Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell. Marvell's wit and
|
||
|
distinguished abilities rendered him formidable to the corrupt
|
||
|
administration of Charles II., who attempted without success to buy
|
||
|
his friendship. Emerson's literary perspective is a bit unusual when
|
||
|
he speaks of Marvell as "one of the great English poets." Marvell
|
||
|
hardly ranks with Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 35: John Dryden (1631-1700). A celebrated English poet.
|
||
|
Early in life he wrote almost entirely for the stage and achieved
|
||
|
great success. In the latter part of his life, however, according to
|
||
|
Macaulay, he "turned his powers in a new direction with success the
|
||
|
most splendid and decisive. The first rank in poetry was beyond his
|
||
|
reach, but he secured the most honorable place in the second.... With
|
||
|
him died the secret of the old poetical diction of England,--the art
|
||
|
of producing rich effects by familiar words."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 36: Plato (429-347 B.C.). One of the most illustrious
|
||
|
philosophers of all time. Probably no other philosopher has
|
||
|
contributed so much as Plato to the moral and intellectual training of
|
||
|
the human race. This pre-eminence is due not solely to his
|
||
|
transcendent intellect, but also in no small measure to his poetic
|
||
|
power and to that unrivaled grace of style which led the ancients to
|
||
|
say that if Jove should speak Greek he would speak like Plato. He was
|
||
|
a remarkable example of that universal culture of body and mind which
|
||
|
characterized the last period of ancient Greece. He was proficient in
|
||
|
every branch of art and learning and was such a brilliant athlete that
|
||
|
he contended in the Isthmian and Pythian games.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 37: Gowns. The black gown worn occasionally in America and
|
||
|
always in England at the universities; the distinctive academic dress
|
||
|
is a cap and gown.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 38: Pecuniary foundations. Gifts of money for the support of
|
||
|
institutions of learning.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 39: Wit is here used in its early sense of intellect, good
|
||
|
understanding.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 40: Valetudinarian. A person of a weak, sickly
|
||
|
constitution.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 41: Mincing. Affected.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 42: Preamble. A preface or introduction.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 43: Dumb abyss. That vast immensity of the universe about us
|
||
|
which we can never understand.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 44: I comprehend its laws; I lose my fear of it.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 45: Silkworms feed on mulberry-leaves. Emerson describes
|
||
|
what science calls "unconscious cerebration."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 46: Ripe fruit. Emerson's ripe fruit found its way into his
|
||
|
diary, where it lay until he needed it in the preparation of some
|
||
|
lecture or essay.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 47: I. Corinthians xv. 53.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 48: Empyrean. The region of pure light and fire; the ninth
|
||
|
heaven of ancient astronomy.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"The deep-domed empyrean
|
||
|
Rings to the roar of an angel onset."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 49: Ferules. According to the methods of education fifty
|
||
|
years ago, it was quite customary for the teacher to punish a
|
||
|
school-child with his ferule or ruler.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 50: Oliver Wendell Holmes cites this last sentence as the
|
||
|
most extreme development of the distinctively Emersonian style. Such
|
||
|
things must be read not too literally but rapidly, with alert
|
||
|
attention to what the previous train of thought has been.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 51: Savoyards. The people of Savoy, south of Lake Geneva in
|
||
|
Switzerland.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 52: Emerson's style is characterized by the frequent use of
|
||
|
pithy epigrams like this.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 53: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). A great English
|
||
|
philosopher and mathematician. He is famous as having discovered the
|
||
|
law of gravitation.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 54: Unhandselled. Uncultivated, without natural advantages.
|
||
|
A handsel is a gift.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 55: Druids. The ancient priesthood of the Britons in Cæsar's
|
||
|
time. They had immense power among these primitive peoples. They were
|
||
|
the judges as well as the priests and decided all questions. It is
|
||
|
believed that they made human sacrifices to their gods in the depths
|
||
|
of the primeval forest, but not much is known of their rites.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 56: Berserkers. Berserker was a redoubtable hero in
|
||
|
Scandinavian mythology, the grandson of the eight-handed Starkodder
|
||
|
and the beautiful Alfhilde. He had twelve sons who inherited the
|
||
|
wild-battle frenzy, or berserker rage. The sagas, the great
|
||
|
Scandinavian epics, are full of stories of heroes who are seized with
|
||
|
this fierce longing for battle, murder, and sudden death. The name
|
||
|
means bear-shirt and has been connected with the old _were-wolf_
|
||
|
tradition, the myth that certain people were able to change into
|
||
|
man-devouring wolves with a wolfish mad desire to rend and kill.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 57: Alfred, surnamed the Great (848-901), king of the West
|
||
|
Saxons in England. When he ascended the throne his country was in a
|
||
|
deplorable condition from the repeated inroads of northern invaders.
|
||
|
He eventually drove them out and established a secure government.
|
||
|
England owes much to the efforts of Alfred. He not only fought his
|
||
|
country's battles, but also founded schools, translated Latin books
|
||
|
into his native tongue, and did much for the intellectual improvement
|
||
|
of his people.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 58: The hoe and the spade. "In spite of Emerson's habit of
|
||
|
introducing the names of agricultural objects into his writing ('Hay,
|
||
|
corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood' is a line from one of
|
||
|
his poems), his familiarity therewith is evidently not so great as he
|
||
|
would lead one to imagine. 'Take care, papa,' cried his little son,
|
||
|
seeing him at work with a spade, 'you will dig your leg.'"]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 59: John Flamsteed (1646-1719). An eminent English
|
||
|
astronomer. He appears to have been the first to understand the theory
|
||
|
of the equation of time. He passed his life in patient observation and
|
||
|
determined the position of 2884 stars.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 60: Sir William Herschel (1738-1822). One of the greatest
|
||
|
astronomers that any age or nation has produced. Brought up to the
|
||
|
profession of music, it was not until he was thirty years old that he
|
||
|
turned his attention to astronomy. By rigid economy he obtained a
|
||
|
telescope, and in 1781 discovered the planet Uranus. This great
|
||
|
discovery gave him great fame and other substantial advantages. He was
|
||
|
made private astronomer to the king and received a pension. His
|
||
|
discoveries were so far in advance of his time, they had so little
|
||
|
relation with those of his predecessors, that he may almost be said
|
||
|
to have created a new science by revealing the immensity of the scale
|
||
|
on which the universe is constructed.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 61: Nebulous. In astronomy a nebula is a luminous patch in
|
||
|
the heavens far beyond the solar system, composed of a mass of stars
|
||
|
or condensed gases.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 62: Fetich. The word seems to have been applied by
|
||
|
Portuguese sailors and traders on the west coast of Africa to objects
|
||
|
worshiped by the natives, which were regarded as charms or talismans.
|
||
|
Of course the word here means an object of blind admiration and
|
||
|
devotion.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 63: Cry up, to praise, extol.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 64: Ancient and honorable. Isaiah ix. 15.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 65: Complement. What is needed to complete or fill up some
|
||
|
quantity or thing.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 66: Signet. Seal. Emerson is not always felicitous in his
|
||
|
choice of metaphors.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 67: Macdonald. In Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Sancho Panza,
|
||
|
the squire to the "knight of the metaphysical countenance," tells a
|
||
|
story of a gentleman who had asked a countryman to dine with him. The
|
||
|
farmer was pressed to take his seat at the head of the table, and when
|
||
|
he refused out of politeness to his host, the latter became impatient
|
||
|
and cried: "Sit there, clod-pate, for let me sit wherever I will, that
|
||
|
will still be the upper end, and the place of worship to thee." This
|
||
|
saying is commonly attributed to Rob Roy, but Emerson with his usual
|
||
|
inaccuracy in such matters places it in the mouth of Macdonald,--which
|
||
|
Macdonald is uncertain.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 68: Carolus Linnæus (1707-1778). A great Swedish botanist.
|
||
|
He did much to make botany the orderly science it now is.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 69: Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829). The most famous of English
|
||
|
chemists. The most important to mankind of his many discoveries was
|
||
|
the safety-lamp to be used in mines where there is danger of explosion
|
||
|
from fire-damp.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 70: Baron George Cuvier (1769-1832). An illustrious French
|
||
|
philosopher, statesman, and writer who made many discoveries in the
|
||
|
realm of natural history, geology and philosophy.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 71: The moon. The tides are caused by the attraction of the
|
||
|
moon and the sun. The attraction of the moon for the water nearest the
|
||
|
moon is somewhat greater than the attraction of the earth's center.
|
||
|
This causes a slight bulging of the water toward the moon and a
|
||
|
consequent high tide.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 72: Emerson frequently omits the principal verb of his
|
||
|
sentences as here: "In a century _there may exist_ one or two men."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 73: This obscurely constructed sentence means: "For their
|
||
|
acquiescence in a political and social inferiority the poor and low
|
||
|
find some compensation in the immense moral capacity thereby gained."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 74: "They" refers to the hero or poet mentioned some twenty
|
||
|
lines back.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 75: Comprehendeth. Here used in the original sense _to
|
||
|
include_. The perfect man should be so thoroughly developed at every
|
||
|
point that he will possess a share in the nature of every man.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 76: By the Classic age is generally meant the age of Greece
|
||
|
and Rome; and by the Romantic is meant the middle ages.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 77: Introversion. Introspection is the more usual word to
|
||
|
express the analytic self-searching so common in these days.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 78: Second thoughts. Emerson uses the word here in the same
|
||
|
sense as the French _arrière-pensée_, a mental reservation.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 79:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"And thus the native hue of resolution
|
||
|
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
|
||
|
_Hamlet_, Act III, Sc. 1.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 80: Movement. The French Revolution.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 81: Let every common object be credited with the diviner
|
||
|
attributes which will class it among others of the same importance.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 82: Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774). An eminent English poet
|
||
|
and writer. He is best known by the comedy "She Stoops to Conquer,"
|
||
|
the poem "The Deserted Village," and the "Vicar of Wakefield." "Of all
|
||
|
romances in miniature," says Schlegel, the great German critic, "the
|
||
|
'Vicar of Wakefield' is the most exquisite." It is probably the most
|
||
|
popular English work of fiction in Germany.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 83: Robert Burns (1759-1796). A celebrated Scottish poet.
|
||
|
The most striking characteristics of Burns' poetry are simplicity and
|
||
|
intensity, in which he is scarcely, if at all, inferior to any of the
|
||
|
greatest poets that have ever lived.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 84: William Cowper (1731-1800). One of the most popular of
|
||
|
English poets. His poem "The Task" was probably more read in his day
|
||
|
than any poem of equal length in the language. Cowper also made an
|
||
|
excellent translation of Homer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 85: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The most
|
||
|
illustrious name in German literature; a great poet, dramatist,
|
||
|
novelist, philosopher, and critic. The Germans regard Goethe with the
|
||
|
same veneration we accord to Shakespeare. The colossal drama "Faust"
|
||
|
is the most splendid product of his genius, though he wrote a large
|
||
|
number of other plays and poems.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 86: William Wordsworth (1770-1850). By many considered the
|
||
|
greatest of modern English poets. His descriptions of the ever-varying
|
||
|
moods of nature are the most exquisite in the language. Matthew Arnold
|
||
|
in his essay on Emerson says: "As Wordsworth's poetry is, in my
|
||
|
judgment, the most important work done in verse in our language during
|
||
|
the present century, so Emerson's 'Essays' are, I think, the most
|
||
|
important work done in prose."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 87: Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A famous English essayist,
|
||
|
historian, and speculative philosopher. It is scarcely too much to say
|
||
|
that no other author of this century has exerted a greater influence
|
||
|
not merely upon the literature but upon the mind of the English nation
|
||
|
than Carlyle. Emerson was an intimate friend of Carlyle, and during
|
||
|
the greater part of his life maintained a correspondence with the
|
||
|
great Englishman. An interesting description of their meeting will be
|
||
|
found among the "Critical Opinions" at the beginning of the work.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 88: Alexander Pope (1688-1744). The author of the "Essay on
|
||
|
Criticism," "Rape of the Lock," the "Essay on Man," and other famous
|
||
|
poems. Pope possessed little originality or creative imagination, but
|
||
|
he had a vivid sense of the beautiful and an exquisite taste. He owed
|
||
|
much of his popularity to the easy harmony of his verse and the
|
||
|
keenness of his satire.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 89: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). One of the eminent writers
|
||
|
of the eighteenth century. He wrote "Lives of the Poets," poems, and
|
||
|
probably the most remarkable work of the kind ever produced by a
|
||
|
single person, an English dictionary.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 90: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). One of the most distinguished
|
||
|
of English historians. His great work is the "Decline and Fall of the
|
||
|
Roman Empire." Carlyle called Gibbon, "the splendid bridge from the
|
||
|
old world to the new."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 91: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). A great Swedish
|
||
|
theologian, naturalist, and mathematician, and the founder of a
|
||
|
religious sect which has since his death become prominent among the
|
||
|
philosophical schools of Christianity.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 92: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827). A Swiss teacher
|
||
|
and educational reformer of great influence in his time.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
COMPENSATION
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 93: These lines are printed under the title of
|
||
|
_Compensation_ in Emerson's collected poems. He has also another poem
|
||
|
of eight lines with the same title.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 94: Documents, data, facts.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 95: This doctrine, which a little observation would confute,
|
||
|
is still taught by some.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 96: Doubloons, Spanish and South American gold coins of the
|
||
|
value of about $15.60 each.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 97: Polarity, that quality or condition of a body by virtue
|
||
|
of which it exhibits opposite or contrasted properties in opposite or
|
||
|
contrasted directions.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 98: Systole and diastole, the contraction and dilation of
|
||
|
the heart and arteries.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 99: They are increased and consequently want more.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 100: Intenerate, soften.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 101: White House, the popular name of the presidential
|
||
|
mansion at Washington.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 102: Explain the phrase _eat dust_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 103: Overlook, oversee, superintend.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 104: Res nolunt, etc. Translated in the previous sentence.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 105: The world ... dew. Explain the thought. What gives the
|
||
|
earth its shape?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 106: The microscope ... little. This statement is not in
|
||
|
accordance with the facts, if we are to understand _perfect_ in the
|
||
|
sense which the next sentence would suggest.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 107: Emerson has been considered a pantheist.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 108: _[Greek: Hoi kyboi]_, etc. The translation follows in
|
||
|
the text. This old proverb is quoted by Sophocles, (Fragm. LXXIV.2) in
|
||
|
the form:
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Greek: Aei gar eu piptousin oi Dios kyboi],
|
||
|
|
||
|
Emerson uses it in _Nature_ in the form "Nature's dice are always
|
||
|
loaded."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 109: Amain, with full force, vigorously.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 110: The proverb is quoted by Horace, Epistles, I, X.24:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret."
|
||
|
|
||
|
A similar thought is expressed by Juvenal, Seneca, Cicero, and
|
||
|
Aristophanes.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 111: Augustine, Confessions, B. I.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 112: Jupiter, the supreme god of the Romans, the Zeus of the
|
||
|
Greeks.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 113: Tying up the hands. The expression is used
|
||
|
figuratively, of course.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 114: The supreme power in England is vested in Parliament.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 115: Prometheus stole fire from heaven to benefit the race
|
||
|
of men. In punishment for this Jupiter chained him to a rock and set
|
||
|
an eagle to prey upon his liver. Some unknown and terrible danger
|
||
|
threatened Jupiter, the secret of averting which only Prometheus knew.
|
||
|
For this secret Jupiter offered him his freedom.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 116: Minerva, goddess of wisdom, who sprang full-armed from
|
||
|
the brain of Jupiter. The secret which she held is told in the
|
||
|
following lines.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 117: Aurora, goddess of the dawn. Enamored of Tithonus, she
|
||
|
persuaded Jupiter to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for him
|
||
|
immortal youth. Read Tennyson's poem on _Tithonus_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 118: Achilles, the hero of Homer's _Iliad_. His mother
|
||
|
Thetis, to render him invulnerable, plunged him into the waters of the
|
||
|
Styx. The heel by which she held him was not washed by the waters and
|
||
|
remained vulnerable. Here he received a mortal wound.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 119: Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, the old German
|
||
|
epic poem. Having slain a dragon, he bathed in its blood and became
|
||
|
covered with an invulnerable horny hide, only one small spot between
|
||
|
his shoulders which was covered by a leaf remaining vulnerable. Into
|
||
|
this spot the treacherous Hagen plunged his lance.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 120: Nemesis, a Greek female deity, goddess of retribution,
|
||
|
who visited the righteous anger of the gods upon mortals.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 121: The Furies or Eumenides, stern and inexorable ministers
|
||
|
of the vengeance of the gods.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 122: Ajax and Hector, Greek and Trojan heroes in the Trojan
|
||
|
War. See Homer's _Iliad_. Achilles slew Hector and, lashing him to his
|
||
|
chariot with the belt which Ajax had given Hector, dragged him round
|
||
|
the walls of Troy. Ajax committed suicide with the sword which Hector
|
||
|
had presented to him.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 123: Thasians, inhabitants of the island of Thasus. The
|
||
|
story here told of the rival of the athlete Theagenes is found in
|
||
|
Pausanias' _Description of Greece_, Book VI. chap. XI.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 124: Shakespeare, the greatest of English writers, seems to
|
||
|
have succeeded entirely or almost entirely in removing the personal
|
||
|
element from his writings.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 125: Hellenic, Greek.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 126: Tit for tat, etc. This paragraph is composed of a
|
||
|
series of proverbs.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 127: Edmund Burke (1729?-1797), illustrious Irish statesman,
|
||
|
orator, and author.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 128: Pawns, the pieces of lowest rank in chess.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 129: What is the meaning of _obscene_ here? Compare the
|
||
|
Latin.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 130: Polycrates, a tyrant of Samos, who was visited with
|
||
|
such remarkable prosperity that he was advised by a friend to break
|
||
|
the course of it by depriving himself of some valued possession. In
|
||
|
accordance with this advice he cast into the sea an emerald ring which
|
||
|
he considered his rarest treasure. A few days later a fisherman
|
||
|
presented the monarch with a large fish inside of which the ring was
|
||
|
found. Soon after this Polycrates fell into the power of an enemy and
|
||
|
was nailed to a cross.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 131: Scot and lot, "formerly, a parish assessment laid on
|
||
|
subjects according to their ability. Now, a phrase for obligations of
|
||
|
every kind regarded collectively." (Webster.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 132: Read Emerson's essay on _Gifts_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 133: Worm worms, breed worms.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 134: Compare the old proverb "Murder will out." See Chaucer,
|
||
|
_N.P.T._, 232 and 237, and _Pr. T._, 124.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 135:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum."
|
||
|
HORACE, _EPIST._, I. XVIII. 65.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 136: Stag in the fable. See _Æsop_, LXVI. 184, _Cerva et
|
||
|
Leo_; Phædrus I. 12. _Cervus ad fontem_; La Fontaine, vi. 9, _Le Cerf
|
||
|
se Voyant dans l'eau_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 137: See the quotation from St. Bernard farther on.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 138: Withholden, old participle of _withhold_, now
|
||
|
_withheld_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 139: What is the etymology of the word _mob_?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 140: Optimism and Pessimism. The meanings of these two
|
||
|
opposites are readily made out from the Latin words from which they
|
||
|
come.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 141: St. Bernard de Clairvaux (1091-1153), French
|
||
|
ecclesiastic.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 142: Jesus. Holmes writes of Emerson: "Jesus was for him a
|
||
|
divine manifestation, but only as other great human souls have been in
|
||
|
all ages and are to-day. He was willing to be called a Christian just
|
||
|
as he was willing to be called a Platonist.... If he did not worship
|
||
|
the 'man Christ Jesus' as the churches of Christendom have done, he
|
||
|
followed his footsteps so nearly that our good Methodist, Father
|
||
|
Taylor, spoke of him as more like Christ than any man he had known."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 143: The first _his_ refers to Jesus, the second to
|
||
|
Shakespeare.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 144: Banyan. What is the characteristic of this tree that
|
||
|
makes it appropriate for this figure?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
SELF-RELIANCE
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 145: Ne te, etc. "Do not seek for anything outside of
|
||
|
thyself." From Persius, _Sat._ I. 7. Compare Macrobius, _Com. in Somn.
|
||
|
Scip._, I. ix. 3, and Boethius, _De Consol. Phil._, IV. 4.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 146: _Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's
|
||
|
Fortune_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 147: These lines appear in Emerson's _Quatrains_ under the
|
||
|
title _Power_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 148: Genius. See the paragraph on genius in Emerson's
|
||
|
lecture on _The Method of Nature_, one sentence of which runs: "Genius
|
||
|
is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture
|
||
|
from within, going abroad only for audience, and spectator."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 149: "The man that stands by himself, the universe stands by
|
||
|
him also."--EMERSON, _Behavior_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 150: Plato (429-347 B.C.), (See note 36.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 151: Milton (1608-1674), the great English epic poet, author
|
||
|
of _Paradise Lost._
|
||
|
|
||
|
"O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
|
||
|
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
|
||
|
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
|
||
|
Milton, a name to resound for ages."--TENNYSON.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 152: "The great poet makes feel our own wealth."--EMERSON,
|
||
|
_The Over-Soul_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 153: Then most when, most at the time when.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 154: "The imitator dooms himself to hopeless
|
||
|
mediocrity."--EMERSON, _Address to the Senior Class in Divinity
|
||
|
College, Cambridge_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 155:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"For words, like Nature, half reveal
|
||
|
And half conceal the soul within."
|
||
|
TENNYSON, _In Memoriam_, V. I.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 156: Trust thyself. This is the theme of the present essay,
|
||
|
and is a lesson which Emerson is never tired of teaching. In _The
|
||
|
American Scholar_ he says:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended." In the essay on
|
||
|
_Greatness_:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears.... Stick
|
||
|
to your own.... Follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of
|
||
|
heaven for you to walk in."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Carlyle says:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 157: Chaos ([Greek: Chaos]), the confused, unorganized
|
||
|
condition in which the world was supposed to have existed before it
|
||
|
was reduced to harmony and order; hence, utter confusion and
|
||
|
disorder.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 158: These, _i.e._, children, babes, and brutes.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 159: Four or five. Supply the noun.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 160: Nonchalance, a French word meaning _indifference_,
|
||
|
_coolness_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 161: Pit in the playhouse, formerly, the seats on the floor
|
||
|
below the level of the stage. These cheap seats were occupied by a
|
||
|
class who did not hesitate to express their opinions of the
|
||
|
performances.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 162: Eclat, a French word meaning _brilliancy of success_,
|
||
|
_striking effect_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 163: "Lethe, the river of oblivion."--_Paradise Lost_.
|
||
|
Oblivion, forgetfulness.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 164: Who. What is the construction?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 165: Nonconformist, one who does not conform to established
|
||
|
usages or opinions. Emerson considers conformity and consistency as
|
||
|
the two terrors that scare us from self-trust. (See note 182.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 166: Explore if it be goodness, investigate for himself and
|
||
|
see if it be really goodness.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
|
||
|
PAUL, _I. Thes._ v. 21.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 167: Suffrage, approval.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
|
||
|
Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just;
|
||
|
And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel,
|
||
|
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted."
|
||
|
SHAKESPEARE, _II. Henry VI._, III. 2.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 168: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
|
||
|
makes it so." _Hamlet_, II. 2.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 169: Barbadoes, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, one of the
|
||
|
Lesser Antilles. The negroes, composing by far the larger part of the
|
||
|
population, were formerly slaves.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 170: He had rather have his actions ascribed to whim and
|
||
|
caprice than to spend the day in explaining them.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 171: Diet and bleeding, special diet and medical care, used
|
||
|
figuratively, of course.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 172: Read Emerson's essay on _Greatness_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 173: The precise man, precisely what kind of man.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 174: "By their fruits ye shall know them."--_Matthew_, vii.
|
||
|
16 and 20.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 175: With, notwithstanding, in spite of.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 176: Of the bench, of an impartial judge.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 177: Bound their eyes with ... handkerchief, in this game of
|
||
|
blindman's-buff.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 178: "Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve; hast thou not two
|
||
|
eyes of thy own?"--CARLYLE.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 179: Give examples of men who have been made to feel the
|
||
|
displeasure of the world for their nonconformity.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 180: "Nihil tam incertum nec tam inæstimabile est quam animi
|
||
|
multitudinis."--LIVY, xxxi. 34.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Mobile mutatur semper cum principe vulgus."
|
||
|
CLAUDIANUS, _De IV. Consul. Honorii_, 302.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 181: _The other terror._ The first, conformity, has just
|
||
|
been treated.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 182: Consistency. Compare, on the other hand, the well-known
|
||
|
saying, "Consistency, thou art a jewel."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 183: Orbit, course in life.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 184: Somewhat, something.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 185: See _Genesis_, xxxix. 12.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 186: Pythagoras (fl. about 520 B.C.), a Greek philosopher.
|
||
|
His society was scattered and persecuted by the fury of the populace.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 187: Socrates (470?-399 B.C.), the great Athenian
|
||
|
philosopher, whose teachings are the subject of most of Plato's
|
||
|
writings, was accused of corrupting the youth, and condemned to drink
|
||
|
hemlock.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 188: Martin Luther (1483-1546) preached against certain
|
||
|
abuses of the Roman Catholic Church and was excommunicated by the
|
||
|
Pope. He became the leader of the Protestant Reformation.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 189: Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered the error of the old
|
||
|
Ptolemaic system of astronomy and showed that the sun is the centre of
|
||
|
our planetary system. Fearing the persecution of the church, he
|
||
|
hesitated long to publish his discovery, and it was many years after
|
||
|
his death before the world accepted his theory.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 190: Galileo (1564-1642), the famous Italian astronomer and
|
||
|
physicist, discoverer of the satellites of Jupiter and the rings of
|
||
|
Saturn, was thrown into prison by the Inquisition.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 191: Sir Isaac Newton. (See note 53.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 192: Andes, the great mountain system of South America.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 193: Himmaleh, Himalaya, the great mountain system of Asia.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 194: Alexandrian stanza. The Alexandrian line consists of
|
||
|
twelve syllables (iambic hexameter). Neither the acrostic nor the
|
||
|
Alexandrine has the property assigned to it here. A palindrame reads
|
||
|
the same forward as backward, as:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Madam, I'm Adam";
|
||
|
"Signa te signa; temere me tangis et angis";
|
||
|
|
||
|
or the inscription on the church of St. Sophia, Constantinople:
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Greek: "Nipson anomêmata mê monan opsin,"]
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 195: The reference is to sailing vessels, of course.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 196: Scorn eyes, scorn observers.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 197: Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778),
|
||
|
this distinguished statesman and orator. He became very popular as a
|
||
|
statesman and was known as "The Great Commoner."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 198: Adams. The reference is presumably to Samuel Adams
|
||
|
(1722-1803), a popular leader and orator in the cause of American
|
||
|
freedom. He was a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of
|
||
|
the Declaration of Independence. Emerson may have in mind, however,
|
||
|
John Adams (1735-1826), second president of the United States.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 199: Spartan. The ancient Spartans were noted for their
|
||
|
courage and fortitude.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 200: Julius Cæsar (100-44 B.C.), the great Roman general,
|
||
|
statesman, orator, and author.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 201: St. Anthony (251-356), Egyptian founder of monachism,
|
||
|
the system of monastic seclusion.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 202: George Fox (1624-1691), English founder of the Society
|
||
|
of Friends or Quakers.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 203: John Wesley (1703-1791), English founder of the
|
||
|
religious sect known as Methodists.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 204: Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), English philanthropist and
|
||
|
abolitionist.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 205: Scipio (235-184 B.C.), the great Roman general who
|
||
|
defeated Hannibal and decided the fate of Carthage. The quotation is
|
||
|
from _Paradise Lost_, Book IX., line 610.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 206: In the story of _Abou Hassan_ or _The Sleeper Awakened_
|
||
|
in the _Arabian Nights_ Abou Hassan awakes and finds himself treated
|
||
|
in every respect as the Caliph Haroun Al-raschid. Shakespeare has made
|
||
|
use of a similar trick in _Taming of the Shrew_, where Christopher Sly
|
||
|
is put to bed drunk in the lord's room and on awaking is treated as a
|
||
|
lord.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 207: Alfred the Great (849-901), King of the West Saxons. He
|
||
|
was a wise king, a great scholar, and a patron of learning.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 208: Scanderbeg, George Castriota (1404-1467), an Albanian
|
||
|
chief who embraced Christianity and carried on a successful war
|
||
|
against the Turks.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 209: Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632), King of Sweden, the hero
|
||
|
of Protestantism in the Thirty Years' War.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 210: Hieroglyphic, a character in the picture-writing of the
|
||
|
ancient Egyptian priests; hence, hidden sign.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 211: Parallax, an angle used in astronomy in calculating the
|
||
|
distance of a heavenly body. The parallax decreases as the distance of
|
||
|
the body increases.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 212: The child has the advantage of the experience of all
|
||
|
his ancestors. Compare Tennyson's line in _Locksley Hall_:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 213: "Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past,
|
||
|
or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded
|
||
|
wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also."--EMERSON, _Introd. to Nature,
|
||
|
Addresses, etc._]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 214: Explain the thought in this sentence.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 215: Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.]
|
||
|
|
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|
[Footnote 216: Agent, active, acting.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 217: An allusion to the Mohammedan custom of removing the
|
||
|
shoes before entering a mosque.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 218: Of a truth, men are mystically united; a mystic bond of
|
||
|
brotherhood makes all men one.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 219: Thor and Woden. Woden or Odin was the chief god of
|
||
|
Scandinavian mythology. Thor, his elder son, was the god of thunder.
|
||
|
From these names come the names of the days Wednesday and Thursday.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 220: Explain the meaning of this sentence.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 221: You, or you, addressing different persons.]
|
||
|
|
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|
[Footnote 222: "The truth shall make you free."--_John_, viii. 32.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 223: Antinomianism, the doctrine that the moral law is not
|
||
|
binding under the gospel dispensation, faith alone being necessary to
|
||
|
salvation.]
|
||
|
|
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|
[Footnote 224: "There is no sorrow I have thought more about than
|
||
|
that--to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail."
|
||
|
GEORGE ELIOT, _Middlemarch_, lxxvi.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 225: Explain the use of _it_ in these expressions.]
|
||
|
|
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|
[Footnote 226: Stoic, a disciple of the Greek philosopher Zeno, who
|
||
|
taught that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy and grief,
|
||
|
and should submit without complaint to the inevitable.]
|
||
|
|
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|
[Footnote 227: Word made flesh, see _John_, i. 14.]
|
||
|
|
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|
[Footnote 228: Healing to the nations, see _Revelation_, xxii. 2.]
|
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|
|
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|
[Footnote 229: In what prayers do men allow themselves to indulge?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 230:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
|
||
|
Uttered or unexpressed,
|
||
|
The motion of a hidden fire
|
||
|
That trembles in the breast."
|
||
|
MONTGOMERY, _What is Prayer?_
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 231: Caratach (Caractacus) is a historical character in
|
||
|
Fletcher's (1576-1625) tragedy of _Bonduca_(Boadicea).]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 232: Zoroaster, a Persian philosopher, founder of the
|
||
|
ancient Persian religion. He flourished long before the Christian
|
||
|
era.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 233: "Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God
|
||
|
speak with us, lest we die."--_Exodus_, xx. 19. Compare also the
|
||
|
parallel passage in _Deuteronomy_, v. 25-27.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 234: John Locke. (See note 18.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 235: Lavoisier (1743-1794), celebrated French chemical
|
||
|
philosopher, discoverer of the composition of water.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 236: James Hutton (1726-1797), great Scotch geologist,
|
||
|
author of the _Theory of the Earth_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 237: Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), English philosopher,
|
||
|
jurist, and legislative reformer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 238: Fourier (1772-1837), French socialist, founder of the
|
||
|
system of Fourierism.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 239: Calvinism, the doctrines of John Calvin (1509-1564).
|
||
|
French theologian and Protestant reformer. A cardinal doctrine of
|
||
|
Calvinism is predestination.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 240: Quakerism, the doctrines of the Quakers or Friends, a
|
||
|
society founded by George Fox (1624-1691).]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 241: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish theosophist,
|
||
|
founder of the New Jerusalem Church. He is taken by Emerson in his
|
||
|
_Representative Men_ as the type of the mystic, and is often mentioned
|
||
|
in his other works.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 242: "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
|
||
|
we must carry it with us, or we find it not."--EMERSON, _Art_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 243: Thebes, a celebrated ruined city of Upper Egypt.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 244: Palmyra, a ruined city of Asia situated in an oasis of
|
||
|
the Syrian desert, supposed to be the Tadmor built by Solomon in the
|
||
|
wilderness (_II. Chr._, viii. 4).]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 245:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
|
||
|
That bliss which only centers in the mind....
|
||
|
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
|
||
|
Our own felicity we make or find."
|
||
|
GOLDSMITH (and JOHNSON),
|
||
|
_The Traveler_, 423-32.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"He that has light within his own clear breast
|
||
|
May sit i' th' center, and enjoy bright day;
|
||
|
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
|
||
|
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
|
||
|
Himself in his own dungeon."
|
||
|
MILTON, _Comus_, 381-5.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Compare also _Paradise Lost_, I, 255-7.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 246: Vatican, the palace of the pope in Rome, with its
|
||
|
celebrated library, museum, and art gallery.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 247: Doric, the oldest, strongest, and simplest of the three
|
||
|
styles of Grecian architecture.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 248: Gothic, a pointed style of architecture, prevalent in
|
||
|
western Europe in the latter part of the middle ages.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 249: Never imitate. Emerson insists on this doctrine.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 250: Shakespeare (1564-1616), the great English poet and
|
||
|
dramatist. He is mentioned in Emerson's writings more than any other
|
||
|
character in history, and is taken as the type of the poet in his
|
||
|
_Representative Men_.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and
|
||
|
merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature,
|
||
|
like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,--like frost and
|
||
|
snow, rain and dew, hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied
|
||
|
with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith
|
||
|
that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless
|
||
|
or inert,--but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more
|
||
|
we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where
|
||
|
the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!"--DE QUINCY.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 251: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American philosopher,
|
||
|
statesman, diplomatist, and author. He discovered the identity of
|
||
|
lightning with electricity, invented the lightning-rod, went on
|
||
|
several diplomatic missions to Europe, was one of the committee that
|
||
|
drew up the Declaration of Independence, signed the treaty of Paris,
|
||
|
and compiled _Poor Richard's Almanac_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 252: Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a famous English philosopher
|
||
|
and statesman. He became Lord Chancellor under Elizabeth. He is best
|
||
|
known by his _Essays_; he wrote also the _Novum Organum_ and the
|
||
|
_Advancement of Learning_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 253: Sir Isaac Newton. (See note 53.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 254: Scipio. (See note 205.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 255: Phidias (500?-432? B.C.), famous Greek sculptor.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 256: Egyptians. He has in mind the pyramids.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 257: The Pentateuch is attributed to Moses.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 258: Dante (1265-1321), the greatest of Italian poets,
|
||
|
author of the _Divina Commedia_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 259: Foreworld, a former ideal state of the world.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 260: New Zealander, inhabitant of New Zealand, a group of
|
||
|
two islands lying southeast of Australia.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 261: Geneva, a city of Switzerland, situated at the
|
||
|
southwestern extremity of Lake Geneva.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 262: Greenwich nautical almanac. The meridian of the Royal
|
||
|
Observatory at Greenwich, near London, is the prime meridian for
|
||
|
reckoning the longitude of the world. The nautical almanac is a
|
||
|
publication containing astronomical data for the use of navigators and
|
||
|
astronomers. What is the name of the corresponding publication of the
|
||
|
U.S. Observatory at Washington?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 263: Get the meaning of these astronomical terms.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 264: Plutarch. (50?-120? A.D.), Greek philosopher and
|
||
|
biographer, author of _Parallel Lives_, a series of Greek and Roman
|
||
|
biographies. Next after Shakespeare and Plato he is the author most
|
||
|
frequently mentioned by Emerson. Read the essay of Emerson on
|
||
|
Plutarch.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 265: Phocion (402-317 B.C.), Athenian statesman and general.
|
||
|
(See note 364.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 266: Anaxagoras (500-426 B.C.), Greek philosopher of
|
||
|
distinction.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 267: Diogenes (400?-323?), Greek cynic philosopher who
|
||
|
affected great contempt for riches and honors and the comforts of
|
||
|
civilized life, and is said to have taken up his residence in a tub.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 268: Henry Hudson (---- - 1611), English navigator and
|
||
|
explorer, discoverer of the bay and river which bear his name.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 269: Bering or Behring (1680-1741), Danish navigator,
|
||
|
discoverer of Behring Strait.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 270: Sir William Edward Parry (1790-1855), English navigator
|
||
|
and Arctic explorer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 271: Sir John Franklin (1786-1846?), celebrated English
|
||
|
navigator and Arctic explorer, lost in the Arctic seas.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 272: Christopher Columbus (1445?-1506), Genoese navigator
|
||
|
and discoverer of America. His ship, the Santa Maria, appears small
|
||
|
and insignificant in comparison with the modern ocean ship.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 273: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of France, one
|
||
|
of the greatest military geniuses the world has ever seen. He was
|
||
|
defeated in the battle of Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington, and died
|
||
|
in exile on the isle of St. Helena. Emerson takes him as a type of the
|
||
|
man of the world in his _Representative Men_: "I call Napoleon the
|
||
|
agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society.... He was the
|
||
|
agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the
|
||
|
liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors and
|
||
|
markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse.... He had the virtues of
|
||
|
the masses of his constituents: he had also their vices. I am sorry
|
||
|
that the brilliant picture has its reverse."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 274: Comte de las Cases (not Casas) (1766-1842), author of
|
||
|
_Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 275: Ali, Arabian caliph, surnamed the "Lion of God," cousin
|
||
|
and son-in-law of Mohammed. He was assassinated about 661.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 276: The county of Essex in England has several namesakes in
|
||
|
America.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 277: Fortune. In Roman mythology Fortune, the goddess of
|
||
|
fortune or chance, is represented as standing on a ball or wheel.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Nec metuis dubio Fortunæ stantis in orbe
|
||
|
Numen, et exosæ verba superba deæ?"
|
||
|
OVID, _Tristia_, v., 8, 8.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
FRIENDSHIP
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 278: Most of Emerson's _Essays_ were first delivered as
|
||
|
lectures, in practically the form in which they afterwards appeared in
|
||
|
print. The form and style, it is true, were always carefully revised
|
||
|
before publication; this Emerson called 'giving his thoughts a Greek
|
||
|
dress.' His essay on _Friendship_, published in the First Series of
|
||
|
_Essays_ in 1841 was not, so far as we know, delivered as a lecture;
|
||
|
parts of it, however, were taken from lectures which Emerson delivered
|
||
|
on _Society_, _The Heart_, and _Private Life_.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In connection with his essay on _Friendship_, the student should read
|
||
|
the two other notable addresses on the same subject, one the speech by
|
||
|
Cicero, the famous Roman orator, and the other the essay by Lord
|
||
|
Bacon, the great English author.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 279: Relume. Is this a common word? Define it.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 280: Pass my gate. The walk opposite Emerson's house on the
|
||
|
'Great Road' to Boston was a favorite winter walk for Concord people.
|
||
|
Along it passed the philosophic Alcott and the imaginative Hawthorne,
|
||
|
as well as famous townsmen, and school children.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 281: My friends have come to me, etc.: Compare with
|
||
|
Emerson's views here expressed the noble passage in his essay on _The
|
||
|
Over-Soul_: "Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great
|
||
|
and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And
|
||
|
this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a
|
||
|
wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood
|
||
|
rolls uninterruptedly in endless circulation through all men, as the
|
||
|
water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 282: Bard. Poet: originally one who composed and sang to the
|
||
|
music of a harp verses in honor of heroes and heroic deeds.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 283: Hymn, ode, and epic. Define each of these three kinds
|
||
|
of poetry.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 284: Apollo. In classic mythology, the sun god who presided
|
||
|
over music, poetry, and art; he was the guardian and leader of the
|
||
|
Muses.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 285: Muses. In classic mythology, the nine sisters who
|
||
|
presided over music, poetry, art, and science. They were Clio the muse
|
||
|
of history, Euterpe of music, especially the flute, Thalia of comedy,
|
||
|
Melpomene of tragedy, Terpsichore of dancing, Erato of erotic poetry,
|
||
|
mistress of the lyre, Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of
|
||
|
astronomy, Calliope of eloquence and epic poetry.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 286: Genius. According to an old belief, a spirit that
|
||
|
watched over a person to control, guide and aid him.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 287: "Crush the sweet poison," etc. This is a quotation from
|
||
|
_Comus_, a poem by Milton.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 288: Systole and diastole. (See note 98.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 289: Friendship, like the immortality, etc. See on what a
|
||
|
high plane Emerson places this relation of friendship. In 1840 he
|
||
|
wrote in a letter: "I am a worshiper of friendship, and cannot find
|
||
|
any other good equal to it. As soon as any man pronounces the words
|
||
|
which approve him fit for that great office, I make no haste; he is
|
||
|
holy; let me be holy also; our relations are eternal; why should we
|
||
|
count days and weeks?"]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 290: Elysian temple. Temple of bliss. In Greek mythology,
|
||
|
Elysium was the abode of the blessed after death.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 291: An Egyptian skull. Plutarch says that at an Egyptian
|
||
|
feast a skull was displayed, either as a hint to make the most of the
|
||
|
pleasure which can be enjoyed but for a brief space, or as a warning
|
||
|
not to set one's heart upon transitory things.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 292: Conscious of a universal success, etc. Emerson wrote in
|
||
|
his journal: "My entire success, such as it is, is composed wholly of
|
||
|
particular failures."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 293: Extends the old leaf. Compare Emerson's lines:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"When half-gods go
|
||
|
The gods arrive."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 294: A texture of wine and dreams. What does Emerson mean by
|
||
|
this phrase? Explain the whole sentence.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 295: "The valiant warrior," etc. The quotation is from
|
||
|
Shakespeare's _Sonnet_, XXV.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 296: Naturlangsamkeit. A German word meaning slowness. The
|
||
|
slowness of natural development.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 297: Olympian. One who took part in the great Greek games
|
||
|
held every four years on the plain of Olympia. The racing, wrestling
|
||
|
and other contests of strength and skill were accompanied by
|
||
|
sacrifices to the gods, processions, and banquets. There was a sense
|
||
|
of dignity and almost of worship about the games. The Olympic games
|
||
|
have been recently revived, and athletes from all countries of the
|
||
|
world contest for the prizes--simple garlands of wild olive.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 298: I knew a man who, etc. The allusion is to Jonas Very, a
|
||
|
mystic and poet, who lived at Salem, Massachusetts.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 299: Paradox. Define this word. Explain its application to a
|
||
|
friend.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 300: My author says, etc. The quotation is from _A
|
||
|
Consideration upon Cicero_, by the French author, Montaigne. Montaigne
|
||
|
was one of Emerson's favorite authors from his boyhood: of the essays
|
||
|
he says, "I felt as if I myself, had written this book in some former
|
||
|
life, so sincerely it spoke my thoughts."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 301: Cherub. What is the difference between a cherub and a
|
||
|
seraph?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 302: Curricle. A two-wheeled carriage, especially popular in
|
||
|
the eighteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 303: This law of one to one. Emerson felt that this same law
|
||
|
applied to nature. He wrote in his journal: "Nature says to man, 'one
|
||
|
to one, my dear.'"]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 304: Crimen quos, etc. The Latin saying is translated in
|
||
|
the preceding sentence.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 305: Nonage. We use more commonly the word, "minority."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 306: Janus-faced. The word here means simply two-faced,
|
||
|
without the idea of deceit usually attached to it. In Roman mythology,
|
||
|
Janus, the doorkeeper of heaven was the protector of doors and
|
||
|
gateways and the patron of the beginning and end of undertakings. He
|
||
|
was the god of the rising and setting of the sun, and was represented
|
||
|
with two faces, one looking to the east and the other to the west. His
|
||
|
temple at Rome was kept open in time of war and closed in time of
|
||
|
peace.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 307: Harbinger. A forerunner; originally an officer who rode
|
||
|
in advance of a royal person to secure proper lodgings and
|
||
|
accommodations.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 308: Empyrean. Highest and purest heaven; according to the
|
||
|
ancients, the region of pure light and fire.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
HEROISM
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 309: Title. Probably this essay is, essentially at least,
|
||
|
the lecture on _Heroism_ delivered in Boston in the winter of 1837, in
|
||
|
the course of lectures on _Human Culture_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 310: Motto. This saying of Mahomet's was the only motto
|
||
|
prefixed to the essay in the first edition. In later editions, Emerson
|
||
|
prefixed, according to his custom, some original lines;
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Ruby wine is drunk by knaves,
|
||
|
Sugar spends to fatten slaves,
|
||
|
Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons,
|
||
|
Thunder clouds are Jove's festoons,
|
||
|
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread
|
||
|
Lightning-knotted round his head:
|
||
|
The hero is not fed on sweets,
|
||
|
Daily his own heart he eats;
|
||
|
Chambers of the great are jails,
|
||
|
And head-winds right for royal sails."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 311: Elder English dramatists. The dramatists who preceded
|
||
|
Shakespeare. In his essay on _Shakespeare; or, the Poet_, Emerson
|
||
|
enumerates the foremost of these,--"Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Jonson,
|
||
|
Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger,
|
||
|
Beaumont and Fletcher."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 312: Beaumont and Fletcher. Francis Beaumont and John
|
||
|
Fletcher were two dramatists of the Elizabethan age. They wrote
|
||
|
together and their styles were so similar that critics are unable to
|
||
|
identify the share of each in their numerous plays.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 313: Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio. Favorite names for heroes
|
||
|
among the dramatists. Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, known usually by the
|
||
|
title of the Cid, was the national hero of Spain, famous for his
|
||
|
exploits against the Moors. Don Pedro was the Prince of Arragon in
|
||
|
Shakespeare's play, _Much Ado About Nothing_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 314: Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, and Double Marriage.
|
||
|
The first, third and fourth are names of plays by Beaumont and
|
||
|
Fletcher. In the case of the second, Emerson, by a lapse of memory,
|
||
|
gives the name of one of the chief characters instead of the name of
|
||
|
the play--_The Triumph of Honor_ in a piece called _Four Plays in
|
||
|
One_. It is from this play by Beaumont and Fletcher that the passage
|
||
|
in the essay is quoted.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 315: Adriadne's crown. According to Greek mythology, the
|
||
|
crown of Adriadne was, for her beauty and her sufferings, put among
|
||
|
the stars. She was the daughter of Minos, King of Crete; she gave
|
||
|
Theseus the clue by means of which he escaped from the labyrinth and
|
||
|
she was afterwards abandoned by him.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 316: Romulus. The reputed founder of the city of Rome.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 317: Laodamia, Dion. Read these two poems by Wordsworth, the
|
||
|
great English poet, and tell why you think Emerson mentioned them
|
||
|
here.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 318: Scott. Sir Walter Scott, a famous Scotch author.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 319: Lord Evandale, Balfour of Burley. These are characters
|
||
|
in Scott's novel, _Old Mortality_. The passage referred to by Emerson
|
||
|
is in the forty-second chapter.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 320: Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle was a great admirer of heroes,
|
||
|
asserting that history is the biography of great men. One of his most
|
||
|
popular books is _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, on a plan similar to that
|
||
|
of Emerson's _Representative Men_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 321: Robert Burns. A Scotch lyric poet. Emerson was probably
|
||
|
thinking of the patriotic song, _Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 322: Harleian Miscellanies. A collection of manuscripts
|
||
|
published in the eighteenth century, and named for Robert Harley, the
|
||
|
English statesman who collected them.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 323: Lutzen. A small town in Prussia. The battle referred to
|
||
|
was fought in 1632 and in it the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus gained
|
||
|
a great victory over vastly superior numbers. Nearly two hundred years
|
||
|
later another battle was fought at Lutzen, in which Napoleon gained a
|
||
|
victory over the allied Russians and Prussians.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 324: Simon Ockley. An English scholar of the seventeenth
|
||
|
century whose chief work was a _History of the Saracens_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 325: Oxford. One of the two great English universities.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 326: Plutarch. (See note 264.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 327: Brasidas. This hero, described by Plutarch, was a
|
||
|
Spartan general who lived about four hundred years before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 328: Dion. A Greek philosopher who ruled the city of
|
||
|
Syracuse in the fourth century before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 329: Epaminondas. A Greek general and statesman of the
|
||
|
fourth century before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 330: Scipio. (See note 205.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 331: Stoicism. The stern and severe philosophy taught by the
|
||
|
Greek philosopher Zeno; he taught that men should always seek virtue
|
||
|
and be indifferent to pleasure and happiness. This belief, carried to
|
||
|
the extreme of severity, exercised a great influence on many noble
|
||
|
Greeks and Romans.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 332: Heroism is an obedience, etc. In one of his poems
|
||
|
Emerson says:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
|
||
|
So near is God to man,
|
||
|
When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
|
||
|
The youth replies, 'I can.'"
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 333: Plotinus. An Egyptian philosopher who taught in Rome
|
||
|
during the third century. It was said that he so exalted the mind that
|
||
|
he was ashamed of his body.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 334: Indeed these humble considerations, etc. The passage,
|
||
|
like many which Emerson quotes, is rendered inexactly. The Prince says
|
||
|
to Poins: "Indeed these humble considerations make me out of love with
|
||
|
my greatness. What a disgrace it is to me to remember thy name! or to
|
||
|
know thy face to-morrow! or to take note how many pairs of silk
|
||
|
stockings thou hast, that is, these and those that were thy
|
||
|
peach-colored ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one
|
||
|
for superfluity and another for use!" Shakespeare's _Henry IV._, Part
|
||
|
II. 2, 2.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 335: Ibn Hankal. Ibn Hankul, an Arabian geographer and
|
||
|
traveler of the tenth century. He wrote an account of his twenty
|
||
|
years' travels in Mohammedan countries; in 1800 this was translated
|
||
|
into English by Sir William Jones under the title of _The Oriental
|
||
|
Geography of Ibn Hankal_. In that volume this anecdote is told in
|
||
|
slightly different words.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 336: Bokhara. Where is Bokhara? It corresponds to the
|
||
|
ancient Sogdiana.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 337: Bannocks. Thick cakes, made usually of oatmeal. What
|
||
|
does Emerson mean by this sentence? Probably no person ever met his
|
||
|
visitors, many of whom were "exacting and wearisome," and must have
|
||
|
been unwelcome, with more perfect courtesy and graciousness than
|
||
|
Emerson.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 338: John Eliot. Give as full an account as you can of the
|
||
|
life and works of this noble Apostle to the Indians of the seventeenth
|
||
|
century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 339: King David, etc. See First Chronicles, 11, 15-19.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 340: Brutus. Marcus Junius Brutus, a Roman patriot of the
|
||
|
first century before Christ, who took part in the assassination of
|
||
|
Julius Cæsar.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 341: Philippi. A city of Macedonia near which in the year 42
|
||
|
B.C. were fought two battles in which the republican army under Brutus
|
||
|
and Cassius was defeated by Octavius and Antony, friends of Cæsar.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 342: Euripides. A Greek tragic poet of the fifth century
|
||
|
before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 343: Scipio. (See note 205.) Plutarch in his _Morals_ gives
|
||
|
another version of the story: "When Paetilius and Quintus accused him
|
||
|
of many crimes before the people; 'on this very day,' he said, 'I
|
||
|
conquered Hannibal and Carthage. I for my part am going with my crown
|
||
|
on to the Capitol to sacrifice; and let him that pleaseth stay and
|
||
|
pass his vote upon me.' Having thus said, he went his way; and the
|
||
|
people followed him, leaving his accusers declaiming to themselves."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 344: Socrates. (See note 187.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 345: Prytaneum. A public hall at Athens.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 346: Sir Thomas More. An English statesman and author who
|
||
|
was beheaded in 1535 on a charge of high treason. The incident to
|
||
|
which Emerson refers is one which showed his "pleasant wit"
|
||
|
undisturbed by the prospect of death. As the executioner was about to
|
||
|
strike, More moved his head carefully out of reach of the ax. "Pity
|
||
|
that should be cut," he said, "that has never committed treason."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 347: Blue Laws. Any rigid Sunday laws or religious
|
||
|
regulations. The term is usually applied to the early laws of New
|
||
|
Haven and Connecticut which regulated personal and religious conduct.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 348: Epaminondas. (See note 329.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 349: Olympus. A mountain of Greece, the summit of which,
|
||
|
according to Greek mythology, was the home of the gods.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 350: Jerseys. Consult a history of the United States for a
|
||
|
full account of Washington's campaign in New Jersey.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 351: Milton. (See note 151.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 352: Pericles. A famous Greek statesman of the fifth century
|
||
|
before Christ, in whose age Athens was preëminent in naval and
|
||
|
military affairs and in letters and art.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 353: Xenophon. A Greek historian of the fourth century
|
||
|
before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 354: Columbus. Give an account of his life.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 355: Bayard. Chevalier de Bayard was a French gentleman of
|
||
|
the fifteenth century. He is the French national hero, and is called
|
||
|
"The Knight without fear and without reproach."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 356: Sidney. Probably Sir Philip Sidney, an English
|
||
|
gentleman and scholar of the sixteenth century who is the English
|
||
|
national hero as Bayard is the French; another brave Englishman was
|
||
|
Algernon Sidney, a politician and patriot of the seventeenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 357: Hampden. John Hampden was an English statesman and
|
||
|
patriot who was killed in the civil war of the seventeenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 358: Colossus. The Colossus of Rhodes was a gigantic
|
||
|
statue--over a hundred feet in height--of the Rhodian sun god. It was
|
||
|
one of the seven wonders of the world; it was destroyed by an
|
||
|
earthquake about two hundred years before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 359: Sappho. A Greek poet of the seventh century before
|
||
|
Christ. Her fame remains, though most of her poems have been lost.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 360: Sevigné. Marquise de Sevigné was a French author of the
|
||
|
seventeenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 361: De Staël. Madame de Staël was a French writer whose
|
||
|
books and political opinions were condemned by Napoleon.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 362: Themis. A Greek goddess. The personification of law,
|
||
|
order, and justice.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 363: A high counsel, etc. Such was the advice given to the
|
||
|
Emerson boys by their aunt, Miss. Mary Moody Emerson: "Scorn trifles,
|
||
|
lift your aims; do what you are afraid to do; sublimity of character
|
||
|
must come from sublimity of motive." Upon her monument are inscribed
|
||
|
Emerson's words about her: "She gave high counsels. It was the
|
||
|
privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably high standard
|
||
|
indicated to their childhood, a blessing which nothing else in
|
||
|
education could supply."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 364: Phocion. A Greek general and statesman of the fourth
|
||
|
century before Christ who advised the Athenians to make peace with
|
||
|
Philip of Macedon. He was put to death on a charge of treason.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 365: Lovejoy. Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian clergyman
|
||
|
of Maine who published a periodical against slavery. In 1837 an
|
||
|
Illinois mob demanded his printing press, which he refused to give up.
|
||
|
The building containing it was set on fire and when Lovejoy came out
|
||
|
he was shot.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 366: Let them rave, etc. These lines are misquoted, being
|
||
|
evidently given from memory, from Tennyson's _Dirge_. In the poem
|
||
|
occur these lines:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Let them rave.
|
||
|
Thou wilt never raise thine head
|
||
|
From the green that folds thy grave--
|
||
|
Let them rave."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
MANNERS
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 367: The essay on _Manners_ is from the Second Series of
|
||
|
_Essays_, published in 1844, three years after the First Series. The
|
||
|
essays in this volume, like those in the first, were, for the most
|
||
|
part, made up of Emerson's lectures, rearranged and corrected. The
|
||
|
lecture on _Manners_ had been delivered in the winter of 1841. He had
|
||
|
given another lecture on the same subject about four years before, and
|
||
|
several years later he treated of the same subject in his essay on
|
||
|
_Behavior_ in _The Conduct of Life_. You will find it interesting to
|
||
|
read _Behavior_ in connection with this essay.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 368: Feejee islanders. Since this essay was written, the
|
||
|
people of the Feejee, or Fiji, Islands have become Christianized, and,
|
||
|
to a large extent, civilized.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 369: Gournou. This description is found in _A Narrative of
|
||
|
the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids_, by
|
||
|
Belzoni, an Italian traveler and explorer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 370: Borgoo. A province of Africa.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 371: Tibboos, Bornoos. Tribes of Central Africa, mentioned
|
||
|
in Heeren's _Historical Researches_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 372: Honors himself with architecture. Architecture was a
|
||
|
subject in which Emerson was deeply interested. Read his poem, _The
|
||
|
Problem_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 373: Chivalry. Chivalry may be considered "as embodying the
|
||
|
Middle Age conception of the ideal life of ... the Knights"; the word
|
||
|
is often used to express "the ideal qualifications of a knight, as
|
||
|
courtesy, generosity, valor, and dexterity in arms." Fully to
|
||
|
understand the order of Knighthood and the ideals of chivalry, you
|
||
|
must read the history of Europe in the Middle Ages.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 374: Sir Philip Sidney. (See note 356.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 375: Sir Walter Scott. (1771-1832). His historical novels
|
||
|
dealing with the Middle Ages have some fine pictures of the chivalrous
|
||
|
characters in which he delighted.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 376: Masonic sign. A sign of secret brotherhood, like the
|
||
|
sign given by one Mason to another.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 377: Correlative abstract. Corresponding abstract name. Sir
|
||
|
Philip Sidney, himself the ideal gentleman, used the word
|
||
|
"gentlemanliness." He said: "Gentlemanliness is high-erected thoughts
|
||
|
seated in a heart of courtesy."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 378: Gentilesse. Gentle birth and breeding. Emerson was very
|
||
|
fond of the passage on "gentilesse" in Chaucer's _Wife of Bath's
|
||
|
Tale_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 379: Feudal Ages. The Middle Ages in Europe during which the
|
||
|
feudal system prevailed. According to this, land was held by its
|
||
|
owners on condition of certain duties, especially military service,
|
||
|
performed for a superior lord.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 380: God knows, etc. Why is this particularly true of a
|
||
|
republic such as the United States?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 381: The incomparable advantage of animal spirits. Why does
|
||
|
Emerson regard this as of such importance? In his journals he
|
||
|
frequently comments on his own lack of animal spirits, and says that
|
||
|
it unfits him for general society and for action.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 382: The sense of power. "I like people who can do things,"
|
||
|
wrote Emerson in his journal.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 383: Lundy's Lane. Give a full account of this battle in the
|
||
|
War of 1812.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 384: Men of the right Cæsarian pattern. Men versatile as was
|
||
|
Julius Cæsar, the Roman, famous as a general, statesman, orator, and
|
||
|
writer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 385: Timid maxim. Why does Emerson term this saying
|
||
|
"timid"?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 386: Lord Falkland. Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, was an
|
||
|
English politician who espoused the royalist side; he was killed in
|
||
|
battle in the Civil War.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 387: Saladin. A famous sultan of Egypt and Syria who lived
|
||
|
in the twelfth century. Scott describes him as possessing an ideal
|
||
|
knightly character and introduces him, disguised as a physician and
|
||
|
also as a wandering soldier in his historical romance, _The
|
||
|
Talisman_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 388: Sapor. A Persian monarch of the fourth century who
|
||
|
defeated the Romans in battle.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 389: The Cid. See "Rodrigo," in _Heroism_, 313.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 390: Julius Cæsar. See note on "Cæsarian," 384.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 391: Scipio. (See note 205.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 392: Alexander. Alexander, King of Macedon, surnamed the
|
||
|
Great. In the fourth century before Christ he made himself master of
|
||
|
the known world.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 393: Pericles. See note on _Heroism_, 352.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 394: Diogenes. (See note 267.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 395: Socrates. (See note 187.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 396: Epaminondas. (See note 329.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 397: My contemporaries. Emerson probably had in mind, among
|
||
|
others, his friend, the gentle philosopher, Thoreau.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 398: Fine manners. "I think there is as much merit in
|
||
|
beautiful manners as in hard work," said Emerson in his journal.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 399: Napoleon. (See note 273.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 400: Noblesse. Nobility. Why does Emerson use here the
|
||
|
French word?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 401: Faubourg St. Germain. A once fashionable quarter of
|
||
|
Paris, on the south bank of the Seine; it was long the headquarters of
|
||
|
the French royalists.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 402: Cortez. Consult a history of the United States for an
|
||
|
account of this Spanish soldier, the conqueror of Mexico.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 403: Nelson. Horatio Nelson, an English admiral, who won
|
||
|
many great naval victories and was killed in the battle of Trafalgar
|
||
|
in 1805.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 404: Mexico. The scene of Cortez's victories.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 405: Marengo. The scene of a battle in Italy in 1800, in
|
||
|
which Napoleon defeated the Austrians with a larger army and made
|
||
|
himself master of northern Italy.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 406: Trafalgar. A cape on the southern coast of Spain, the
|
||
|
scene of Nelson's last great victory, in which the allied French and
|
||
|
Spanish fleets were defeated.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 407: Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar. Is this the order in
|
||
|
which you would expect these words to occur? Why not?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 408: Estates of the realm. Orders or classes of people with
|
||
|
regard to political rights and powers. In modern times, the nobility,
|
||
|
the clergy, and the people are called "the three estates."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 409: Tournure. Figure; turn of dress,--and so of mind.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 410: Coventry. It is said that the people of Coventry, a
|
||
|
city in England, at one time so disliked soldiers that to send a
|
||
|
military man there meant to exclude him from social intercourse; hence
|
||
|
the expression "to send to Coventry" means to exclude from society.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 411: "If you could see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on." Vich
|
||
|
Ian Vohr is a Scotch chieftain in Scott's novel, _Waverley_. One of
|
||
|
his dependents says to Waverley, the young English officer: "If you
|
||
|
Saxon duinhé-wassal [English gentleman] saw but the Chief with his
|
||
|
tail on." "With his tail on?" echoed Edward in some surprise.
|
||
|
"Yes--that is, with all his usual followers when he visits those of
|
||
|
the same rank." See _Waverley_, chapter 16.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 412: Mercuries. The word here means simply messengers.
|
||
|
According to Greek mythology, Mercury was the messenger of the gods.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 413: Herald's office. In England the Herald's College, or
|
||
|
College of Arms, is a royal corporation the chief business of which is
|
||
|
to grant armorial bearings, or coats of arms, and to trace and
|
||
|
preserve genealogies. What does Emerson mean by comparing certain
|
||
|
circles of society to this corporation?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 414: Amphitryon. Host; it came to have this meaning from an
|
||
|
incident in the story of Amphitryon, a character in Greek legend. At
|
||
|
one time Jupiter assumed the form of Amphitryon and gave a banquet.
|
||
|
The real Amphitryon came in and asserted that he was master of the
|
||
|
house. In the French play, founded on this story, the question is
|
||
|
settled by the assertion of the servants and guests that "he who gives
|
||
|
the feast is the host."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 415: Tuileries. An old royal residence in Paris which was
|
||
|
burned in 1871.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 416: Escurial, or escorial. A celebrated royal edifice near
|
||
|
Madrid in Spain.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 417: Hide ourselves as Adam, etc. See Genesis iii. 8.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 418: Cardinal Caprara. An Italian cardinal, Bishop of Milan,
|
||
|
who negotiated the famous concordat of 1801, an agreement between the
|
||
|
Church and State regulating the relations between civil and
|
||
|
ecclesiastical powers.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 419: The pope. Pope Pius VII.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 420: Madame de Staël. (See note 361.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 421: Mr. Hazlitt. William Hazlitt, an English writer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 422: Montaigne. A French essayist of the sixteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 423: The hint of tranquillity and self-poise. It is
|
||
|
suggested that Emerson had here in mind a favorite passage of the
|
||
|
German author, Richter, in which Richter says of the Greek statues:
|
||
|
"The repose not of weariness but of perfection looks from their eyes
|
||
|
and rests upon their lips."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 424: A Chinese etiquette. What does Emerson mean by this
|
||
|
expression?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 425: Recall. In the first edition, Emerson had here the word
|
||
|
"signify." Which is the better word and why?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 426: Measure. What meaning has this word here? Is this the
|
||
|
sense in which we generally use it?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 427: Creole natures. What is a creole? What does Emerson
|
||
|
mean by "Creole natures"?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 428: Mr. Fox. Charles James Fox, an English statesman and
|
||
|
orator of the eighteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 429: Burke. Both Fox and Burke opposed the taxation of the
|
||
|
American colonies and sympathized with their resistance; it was on the
|
||
|
subject of the French Revolution that the two friends clashed.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 430: Sheridan. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irish
|
||
|
dramatist, member of the famous Literary Club to which both Fox and
|
||
|
Burke belonged.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 431: Circe. According to Greek legend, Circe was a beautiful
|
||
|
enchantress. Men who partook of the draught she offered, were turned
|
||
|
to swine.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 432: Captain Symmes. The only real personage of this group.
|
||
|
He asserted that there was an opening to the interior of the earth
|
||
|
which was stocked with plants and animals.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 433: Clerisy. What word would we be more apt to use here?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 434: St. Michael's (Square). St. Michael's was an order
|
||
|
instituted by Louis XI. of France.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 435: Cologne water. A perfumed water first made at the city
|
||
|
of Cologne in Germany, from which it took its name.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 436: Poland. This kingdom of Europe was, in the eighteenth
|
||
|
century, taken possession of and divided among its powerful neighbors,
|
||
|
Russia, Prussia, and Austria.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 437: Philhellene. Friend of Greece.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 438: As Heaven and Earth are fairer far, etc. This passage
|
||
|
is quoted from Book II. of Keats' _Hyperion_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 439: Waverley. The Waverley novels, a name applied to all of
|
||
|
Scott's novels from _Waverley_, the title of the first one.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 440: Robin Hood. An English outlaw and popular hero, the
|
||
|
subject of many ballads.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 441: Minerva. In Roman mythology, the goddess of wisdom
|
||
|
corresponding to the Greek Pallas-Athene.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 442: Juno. In Roman mythology, the wife of the supreme god
|
||
|
Jupiter.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 443: Polymnia. In Greek mythology, one of the nine muses who
|
||
|
presided over sacred poetry; the name is more usually written
|
||
|
Polyhymia.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 444: Delphic Sibyl. In ancient mythology, the Sibyls were
|
||
|
certain women who possessed the power of prophecy. One of these who
|
||
|
made her abode at Delphi in Greece was called the Delphian, or
|
||
|
Delphic, sibyl.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 445: Hafiz. A Persian poet of the fourteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 446: Firdousi. A Persian poet of the tenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 447: She was an elemental force, etc. Of this passage Oliver
|
||
|
Wendell Holmes said that Emerson "speaks of woman in language that
|
||
|
seems to pant for rhythm and rhyme."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 448: Byzantine. An ornate style of architecture developed in
|
||
|
the fourth and fifth centuries, marked especially by its use of gold
|
||
|
and color.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 449: Golden Book. In a book, called "the Golden Book," were
|
||
|
recorded the names of all the children of Venetian noblemen.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 450: Schiraz. A province of Persia famous especially for its
|
||
|
roses, wine, and nightingales, and described by the poets as a place
|
||
|
of ideal beauty.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 451: Osman. The name given by Emerson in his journal and
|
||
|
essays to his ideal man, one subject to the same conditions as
|
||
|
himself.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 452: Koran. The sacred book of the Mohammedans.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 453: Jove. Jupiter, the supreme god of Roman mythology.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 454: Silenus. In Greek mythology, the leader of the satyrs.
|
||
|
This fable, which Emerson credits to tradition, was original.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 455: Her owl. The owl was the bird sacred to Minerva, the
|
||
|
goddess of wisdom.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
GIFTS
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 456: This essay was first printed in the periodical called
|
||
|
_The Dial_.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It was a part of Emerson's philosophic faith that there is no such
|
||
|
thing as giving,--everything that belongs to a man or that he ought to
|
||
|
have, will come to him. But in the ordinarily accepted sense of the
|
||
|
word, Emerson was a gracious giver and receiver. In his family the old
|
||
|
New England custom of New Year's presents was kept up to his last
|
||
|
days. His presents were accompanied with verses to be read before the
|
||
|
gift was opened.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 457: Into chancery. The phrase "in chancery," means in
|
||
|
litigation, as an estate, in a court of equity.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 458: Cocker. Spoil, indulge,--a word now little used.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 459: Fruits are acceptable gifts. Emerson took especial
|
||
|
pleasure in the beauty of fruits and the thought of how they had been
|
||
|
evolved from useless, insipid seed cases.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 460: To let the petitioner, etc. We can hardly imagine
|
||
|
Emerson's asking a gift or favor. He often quoted the words of Landor,
|
||
|
an English writer: "The highest price you can pay for a thing is to
|
||
|
ask for it."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 461: Furies. In Roman mythology, three goddesses who sought
|
||
|
out and punished evil-doers.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 462: A man's biography, etc. Emerson wrote in his journal:
|
||
|
"Long ago I wrote of _gifts_ and neglected a capital example. John
|
||
|
Thoreau, Jr. [who, like his brother Henry, was a lover of nature] one
|
||
|
day put a bluebird's box on my barn,--fifteen years ago it must
|
||
|
be,--and there it still is, with every summer a melodious family in it
|
||
|
adorning the place and singing its praises. There's a gift for you
|
||
|
which cost the giver no money, but nothing which he bought could have
|
||
|
been as good."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 463: Sin offering. Under the Hebrew law, a sacrifice or
|
||
|
offering for sin. See Leviticus xxiii. 19. Explain what Emerson means
|
||
|
here by the word.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 464: Blackmail. What is "blackmail"? How may Christmas
|
||
|
gifts, for instance, become a species of blackmail?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 465: Brother, if Jove, etc. In the Greek legend, Epimetheus
|
||
|
gives this advice to his brother Prometheus. The lines are taken from
|
||
|
a translation of _Works and Days_, by the Greek poet, Hesiod.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 466: Timons. Here used in the sense of wealthy givers.
|
||
|
Timon, the hero of Shakespeare's play, _Timon of Athens_, wasted his
|
||
|
fortune in lavish gifts and entertainments, and in his poverty was
|
||
|
exposed to the ingratitude of those whom he had served. He became
|
||
|
morose and died in miserable retirement.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 467: It is a very onerous business, etc. One of Emerson's
|
||
|
favorite passages in the essays of Montaigne, a French writer, was
|
||
|
this: "Oh, how am I obliged to Almighty God, who has been pleased that
|
||
|
I should immediately receive all I have from his bounty, and
|
||
|
particularly reserved all my obligation to himself! How instantly do I
|
||
|
beg of his holy compassion that I may never owe a real thanks to
|
||
|
anyone. O happy liberty in which I have thus far lived! May it
|
||
|
continue with me to the last. I endeavor to have no need of any one."
|
||
|
|
||
|
When Emerson, in his old age, had his house injured by fire, his
|
||
|
friends contributed funds to repair it and to send him to England. The
|
||
|
gift was proffered graciously and accepted gratefully.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 468: Buddhist. A follower of Buddha, a Hindoo religious
|
||
|
teacher of the fifth century before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
NATURE
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 469: Nature. Emerson's first published volume was a little
|
||
|
book of essays, entitled _Nature_, which appeared in 1836. In the
|
||
|
years which followed, he thought more deeply on the subject and,
|
||
|
according to his custom, made notes about it and entries in his
|
||
|
journals. In the winter of 1843 he delivered a lecture on _Relation to
|
||
|
Nature_, and it is probable that this essay is built up from that. The
|
||
|
plan of it, however, had been long in his mind: In 1840 he wrote in
|
||
|
his journal: "I think I must do these eyes of mine the justice to
|
||
|
write a new chapter on Nature. This delight we all take in every show
|
||
|
of night or day or field or forest or sea or city, down to the lowest
|
||
|
particulars, is not without sequel, though we be as yet only wishers
|
||
|
and gazers, not at all knowing what we want. We are predominated here
|
||
|
as elsewhere by an upper wisdom, and resemble those great discoverers
|
||
|
who are haunted for years, sometimes from infancy, with a passion for
|
||
|
the fact, or class of facts in which the secret lies which they are
|
||
|
destined to unlock, and they let it not go until the blessing is won.
|
||
|
So these sunsets and starlights, these swamps and rocks, these bird
|
||
|
notes and animal forms off which we cannot get our eyes and ears, but
|
||
|
hover still, as moths round a lamp, are no doubt a Sanscrit cipher
|
||
|
covering the whole religious history of the universe, and presently we
|
||
|
shall read it off into action and character. The pastures are full of
|
||
|
ghosts for me, the morning woods full of angels."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 470: There are days, etc. The passage in Emerson's journal
|
||
|
is hardly less beautiful. Under date of October 30, 1841, he wrote:
|
||
|
"On this wonderful day when heaven and earth seem to glow with
|
||
|
magnificence, and all the wealth of all the elements is put under
|
||
|
contribution to make the world fine, as if Nature would indulge her
|
||
|
offspring, it seemed ungrateful to hide in the house. Are there not
|
||
|
dull days enough in the year for you to write and read in, that you
|
||
|
should waste this glittering season when Florida and Cuba seem to have
|
||
|
left their glittering seats and come to visit us with all their
|
||
|
shining hours, and almost we expect to see the jasmine and cactus
|
||
|
burst from the ground instead of these last gentians and asters which
|
||
|
have loitered to attend this latter glory of the year? All insects are
|
||
|
out, all birds come forth, the very cattle that lie on the ground seem
|
||
|
to have great thoughts, and Egypt and India look from their eyes."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 471: Halcyons. Halcyon days, ones of peace and tranquillity;
|
||
|
anciently, days of calm weather in mid-winter, when the halcyon, or
|
||
|
kingfisher, was supposed to brood. It was fabled that this bird laid
|
||
|
its eggs in a nest that floated on the sea, and that it charmed the
|
||
|
winds and waves to make them calm while it brooded.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 472: Indian Summer. Calm, dry, hazy weather which comes in
|
||
|
the autumn in America. The Century Dictionary says it was called
|
||
|
Indian Summer because the season was most marked in the sections of
|
||
|
the upper eastern Mississippi valley inhabited by Indians about the
|
||
|
time the term became current.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 473: Gabriel. One of the seven archangels. The Hebrew name
|
||
|
means "God is my strong one."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 474: Uriel. Another of the seven archangels; the name means
|
||
|
"Light of God."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 475: Converts all trees to wind-harps. Compare with this
|
||
|
passage the lines in Emerson's poem, _Woodnotes_:
|
||
|
|
||
|
"And the countless leaves of the pines are strings
|
||
|
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings."
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 476: The village. Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson's home the
|
||
|
greater part of the time from 1832 till his death.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 477: I go with my friend, etc. With Henry Thoreau, the lover
|
||
|
of Nature.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 478: Our little river. The Concord river.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 479: Novitiate and probation. Explain the meaning of these
|
||
|
words, in the Roman Catholic Church. What does Emerson mean by them
|
||
|
here?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 480: Villegiatura. The Italian name for a season spent in
|
||
|
country pleasures.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 481: Hanging gardens. The hanging gardens of Babylon were
|
||
|
one of the seven wonders of the world.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 482: Versailles. A royal residence near Paris, with
|
||
|
beautiful formal gardens.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 483: Paphos. A beautiful city on the island of Cyprus, where
|
||
|
was situated a temple of Astarte, or Venus.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 484: Ctesiphon. One of the chief cities of ancient Persia,
|
||
|
the site of a magnificent royal palace.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 485: Notch Mountains. Probably the White Mountains near
|
||
|
Crawford Notch, a deep, narrow valley which is often called "The
|
||
|
Notch."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 486: Æolian harp. A stringed instrument from which sound is
|
||
|
drawn by the passing of the wind over its strings. It was named for
|
||
|
Æolus, the god of the winds, in Greek mythology.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 487: Dorian. Dorus was one of the four divisions of Greece:
|
||
|
the word is here used in a general sense for Grecian.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 488: Apollo. In Greek and Roman mythology, the sun god, who
|
||
|
presided over music, poetry, and healing.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 489: Diana. In Roman mythology, the goddess of the moon
|
||
|
devoted to the chase.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 490: Edens. Beautiful, sinless places,--like the garden of
|
||
|
Eden.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 491: Tempes. Places like the lovely valley of Tempe in
|
||
|
Thessaly, Greece.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 492: Como Lake. A lake of northern Italy, celebrated for its
|
||
|
beauty.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 493: Madeira Islands. Where are these islands, famous for
|
||
|
picturesque beauty and balmy atmosphere?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 494: Common. What is a common?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 495: Campagna. The plain near Rome.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 496: Dilettantism. Define this word and explain its use
|
||
|
here.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 497: "Wreaths" and "Flora's Chaplets." About the time that
|
||
|
Emerson was writing his essays, volumes of formal, artificial verses
|
||
|
were very fashionable, more as parlor ornaments than as literature.
|
||
|
Two such volumes were _A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England_ and
|
||
|
_The Floral Offering_ by Mrs. Frances Osgood, a New England writer.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 498: Pan. In Greek mythology, the god of woods, fields,
|
||
|
flocks, and shepherds.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 499: The multitude of false cherubs, etc. Explain the
|
||
|
meaning of this sentence. If true money were valueless, would people
|
||
|
make false money?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 500: Proteus. In Greek mythology, a sea god who had the
|
||
|
power of assuming different shapes. If caught and held fast, however,
|
||
|
he was forced to assume his own shape and answer the questions put to
|
||
|
him.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 501: Mosaic ... Schemes. The conception of the world as
|
||
|
given in Genesis on which the law of Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver,
|
||
|
was founded.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 502: Ptolemaic schemes. The system of geography and
|
||
|
astronomy taught in the second century by Ptolemy of Alexandria; it
|
||
|
was accepted till the sixteenth century, when the Copernican system
|
||
|
was established. Ptolemy believed that the sun, planets, and stars
|
||
|
revolve around the earth; Copernicus taught that the planets revolve
|
||
|
around the sun.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 503: Flora. In Roman mythology, the goddess of the spring
|
||
|
and of flowers.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 504: Fauna. In Roman mythology, the goddess of fields and
|
||
|
shepherds; she represents the fruitfulness of the earth.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 505: Ceres. The Roman goddess of grain and harvest,
|
||
|
corresponding to the Greek goddess, Demeter.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 506: Pomona. The Roman goddess of fruit trees and gardens.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 507: All duly arrive. Emerson deducts from nature the
|
||
|
doctrine of evolution. What is its teaching?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 508: Plato. (See note 36.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 509: Himalaya Mountain chains. (See note 193.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 510: Franklin. Give an account of Benjamin Franklin, the
|
||
|
famous American scientist and patriot. What did he prove about
|
||
|
lightening?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 511: Dalton. John Dalton was an English chemist who, about
|
||
|
the beginning of the nineteenth century, perfected the atomic theory,
|
||
|
that is, the theory that all chemical combinations take place in
|
||
|
certain ways between the atoms, or ultimate particles, of bodies.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 512: Davy. (See note 69.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 513: Black. Joseph Black, a Scotch chemist who made valuable
|
||
|
discoveries about latent heat and carbon dioxide, or carbonic acid
|
||
|
gas.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 514: The astronomers said, etc. Beginning with this passage,
|
||
|
several pages of this essay was published in 1844, under the title of
|
||
|
_Tantalus_, in the next to the last number of _The Dial_, which
|
||
|
Emerson edited.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 515: Centrifugal, centripetal. Define these words.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 516: Stoics. See "Stoicism," 331.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 517: Luther. (See note 188.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 518: Jacob Behmen. A German mystic of the sixteenth century;
|
||
|
his name is usually written Boehme.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 519: George Fox. (See note 202.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 520: James Naylor. An English religious enthusiast of the
|
||
|
seventeenth century; he was first a Puritan and later a Quaker.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 521: Operose. Laborious.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 522: Outskirt and far-off reflection, etc. Compare with this
|
||
|
passage Emerson's poem, _The Forerunners_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 523: Oedipus. In Greek mythology, the King of Thebes who
|
||
|
solved the riddle of the Sphinx, a fabled monster.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 524: Prunella. A widely scattered plant, called self-heal,
|
||
|
because a decoction of its leaves and stems was, and to some extent
|
||
|
is, valued as an application to wounds. An editor comments on the fact
|
||
|
that during the last years of Emerson's life "the little blue
|
||
|
self-heal crept into the grass before his study window."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 525: Shakespeare; or the Poet is one of seven essays on
|
||
|
great men in various walks of life, published in 1850 under the title
|
||
|
of _Representative Men_. These essays were first delivered as lectures
|
||
|
in Boston in the winter of 1845, and were repeated two years later
|
||
|
before English audiences. They must have been especially interesting
|
||
|
to those Englishmen who had, seven years before, heard Emerson's
|
||
|
friend, Carlyle, deliver his six lectures on great men whom he
|
||
|
selected as representative ones. These lectures were published under
|
||
|
the title of _Heroes and Hero-Worship_. You should read the latter
|
||
|
part of Carlyle's lecture on _The Hero as Poet_ and compare what he
|
||
|
says about Shakespeare with Emerson's words. Both Emerson and Carlyle
|
||
|
reverenced the great English poet as "the master of mankind." Even in
|
||
|
serious New England, the plays of Shakespeare were found upon the
|
||
|
bookshelf beside religious tracts and doctrinal treatises. There the
|
||
|
boy Emerson found them and learned to love them, and the man Emerson
|
||
|
loved them but the more. It was as a record of personal experiences
|
||
|
that he wrote in his journal: "Shakespeare fills us with wonder the
|
||
|
first time we approach him. We go away, and work and think, for years,
|
||
|
and come again,--he astonishes us anew. Then, having drank deeply and
|
||
|
saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of him for another period
|
||
|
of years. By and by we return, and there he stands immeasurable as at
|
||
|
first. We have grown wiser, but only that we should see him wiser than
|
||
|
ever. He resembles a high mountain which the traveler sees in the
|
||
|
morning and thinks he shall quickly near it and pass it and leave it
|
||
|
behind. But he journeys all day till noon, till night. There still is
|
||
|
the dim mountain close by him, having scarce altered its bearings
|
||
|
since the morning light."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 526: Genius. Here instead of speaking as in _Friendship_,
|
||
|
see note 286, of the genius or spirit supposed to preside over each
|
||
|
man's life, Emerson mentions the guardian spirit of human kind.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 527: Shakespeare's youth, etc. It is impossible to
|
||
|
appreciate or enjoy this essay without having some clear general
|
||
|
information about the condition of the English people and English
|
||
|
literature in the glorious Elizabethan age in which Shakespeare lived.
|
||
|
Consult, for this information, some brief history of England and a
|
||
|
comprehensive English literature.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 528: Puritans. Strict Protestants who became so powerful in
|
||
|
England that in the time of the Commonwealth they controlled the
|
||
|
political and religious affairs of the country.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 529: Anglican Church. The Established Church of England; the
|
||
|
Episcopal church.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 530: Punch. The chief character in a puppet show, hence the
|
||
|
puppet show itself.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 531: Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, etc. For an account of these
|
||
|
dramatists consult a text book on English literature. The English
|
||
|
drama seems to have begun in the Middle Ages with what were called
|
||
|
Miracle plays, which were scenes from Bible history; about the same
|
||
|
time were performed the Mystery plays, which dramatized the lives of
|
||
|
saints. These were followed by the Moralities, plays in which were
|
||
|
personified abstract virtues and vices. The first step in the creation
|
||
|
of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical
|
||
|
plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond
|
||
|
of pageants, shows in which classical personages were introduced, and
|
||
|
Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas
|
||
|
accompanied with music. About the middle of the sixteenth century,
|
||
|
rose the English drama,--comedy, tragedy, and historical plays. The
|
||
|
chief among the group of dramatists who attained fame before
|
||
|
Shakespeare began to write were Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. Ben
|
||
|
Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher rank next to Shakespeare among his
|
||
|
contemporaries, and among the other dramatists of the period were
|
||
|
Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Ford, and Massinger.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 532: At the time when, etc. Probably about 1585.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 533: Tale of Troy. Drama founded on the Trojan war. The
|
||
|
subject of famous poems by Latin and Greek poets.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 534: Death of Julius Cæsar. An account of the plots which
|
||
|
ended in the assassination of the great Roman general.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 535: Plutarch. See note on _Heroism_(264). Shakespeare, like
|
||
|
the earlier dramatists, drew freely on Plutarch's _Lives_ for
|
||
|
material.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 536: Brut. A poetical version of the legendary history of
|
||
|
Britain, by Layamon. Its hero is Brutus, a mythical King of Britain.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 537: Arthur. A British King of the sixth century, around
|
||
|
whose life and deeds so many legends have grown up that some
|
||
|
historians say he, too, was a myth. He is the center of the great
|
||
|
cycle of romances told in prose in Mallory's _Morte d'Arthur_ and in
|
||
|
poetry in Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 538: The royal Henries. Among the dramas popular in
|
||
|
Shakespeare's day which he retouched or rewrote are the historical
|
||
|
plays. Henry IV., First and Second Parts; Henry V; Henry VI., First,
|
||
|
Second, and Third Parts; and Henry VIII.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 539: Italian tales. Italian literature was very popular in
|
||
|
Shakespeare's day, and authors drew freely from it for material,
|
||
|
especially from the _Decameron_, a famous collection of a hundred
|
||
|
tales, by Boccaccio, a poet of the fourteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 540: Spanish voyages. In the sixteenth century, Spain was
|
||
|
still a power upon the high seas, and the tales of her conquests and
|
||
|
treasures in the New World were like tales of romance.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 541: Prestige. Can you give an English equivalent for this
|
||
|
French word?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 542: Which no single genius, etc. In the same way, some
|
||
|
critics assure us, the poems credited to the Greek poet, Homer, were
|
||
|
built up by a number of poets.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 543: Malone. An Irish critic and scholar of the eighteenth
|
||
|
century, best known by his edition of Shakespeare's plays.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 544: Wolsey's Soliloquy. See Shakespeare's _Henry VIII._
|
||
|
III, 2. Cardinal Wolsey was prime minister of England in the reign of
|
||
|
Henry VIII.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 545: Scene with Cromwell. See _Henry VIII._ III, 2. Thomas
|
||
|
Cromwell was the son of an English blacksmith; he rose to be lord high
|
||
|
chamberlain of England in the reign of Henry VIII., but, incurring the
|
||
|
King's displeasure, was executed on a charge of treason.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 546: Account of the coronation. See _Henry VIII._ IV, 1.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 547: Compliment to Queen Elizabeth. See _Henry VIII._ V, 5.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 548: Bad rhythm. Too much importance must not be attached to
|
||
|
these matters in deciding authorship, as critics disagree about them.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 549: Value his memory, etc. The Greeks, in appreciation of
|
||
|
the value of memory to the poet, represented the Muses as the
|
||
|
daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 550: Homer. A Greek poet to whom is assigned the authorship
|
||
|
of the two greatest Greek poems, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_; he is
|
||
|
said to have lived about a thousand years before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 551: Chaucer. (See note 33.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 552: Saadi. A Persian poet, supposed to have lived in the
|
||
|
thirteenth century. His best known poems are his odes.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 553: Presenting Thebes, etc. This quotation is from Milton's
|
||
|
poem, _Il Penseroso_. Milton here names the three most popular
|
||
|
subjects of Greek tragedy,--the story of Oedipus, the ill-fated King
|
||
|
of Thebes who slew his father; the tale of the descendants of Pelops,
|
||
|
King of Pisa, who seemed born to woe--Agamemnon was one of his
|
||
|
grandsons; the third subject was the tale of Troy and the heroes of
|
||
|
the Trojan war,--called "divine" because the Greeks represented even
|
||
|
the gods as taking part in the contest.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 554: Pope. (See note 88.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 555: Dryden. (See note 35.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 556: Chaucer is a huge borrower. Taine, the French critic,
|
||
|
says on this subject: "Chaucer was capable of seeking out in the old
|
||
|
common forest of the Middle Ages, stories and legends, to replant them
|
||
|
in his own soil and make them send out new shoots.... He has the right
|
||
|
and power of copying and translating because by dint of retouching he
|
||
|
impresses ... his original work. He recreates what he imitates."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 557: Lydgate. John Lydgate was an English poet who lived a
|
||
|
generation later than Chaucer; in his _Troy Book_ and other poems he
|
||
|
probably borrowed from the sources used by Chaucer; he called himself
|
||
|
"Chaucer's disciple."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 558: Caxton. William Caxton, the English author, more famous
|
||
|
as the first English printer, was not born until after Chaucer's
|
||
|
death. The work from which Emerson supposes the poet to have borrowed
|
||
|
Caxton's translation of _Recueil des Histoires de Troye_, the first
|
||
|
printed English book, appeared about 1474.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 559: Guido di Colonna. A Sicilian poet and historian of the
|
||
|
thirteenth century. Chaucer in his _House of Fame_ placed in his
|
||
|
vision "on a pillar higher than the rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the
|
||
|
Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the other
|
||
|
historians of the war of Troy."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 560: Dares Phrygius. A Latin account of the fall of Troy,
|
||
|
written about the fifth century, which pretends to be a translation of
|
||
|
a lost work on the fall of Troy by Dares, a Trojan priest mentioned in
|
||
|
Homer's _Iliad_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 561: Ovid. A Roman poet who lived about the time of Christ,
|
||
|
whose best-known work is the _Metamorphoses_, founded on classical
|
||
|
legends.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 562: Statius. A Roman poet of the first century after
|
||
|
Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 563: Petrarch. An Italian poet of the fourteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 564: Boccaccio. An Italian novelist and poet of the
|
||
|
fourteenth century. See note on "Italian tales," 539. It is supposed
|
||
|
that the plan of the _Decameron_ suggested the similar but far
|
||
|
superior plan of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 565: Provençal poets. The poets of Provençe, a province of
|
||
|
the southeastern part of France. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated
|
||
|
for its lyric poets, called troubadours.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 566: Romaunt of the Rose, etc. Chaucer's _Romaunt of the
|
||
|
Rose_, written during the period of French influence, is an incomplete
|
||
|
and abbreviated translation of a French poem of the thirteenth
|
||
|
century, _Roman de la Rose_, the first part of which was written by
|
||
|
William of Loris and the latter by John of Meung, or Jean de Meung.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 567: Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian
|
||
|
poem which he followed in his _Troilus and Creseide_ to an unknown
|
||
|
"Lollius of Urbino"; the source of the poem, however, is _Il
|
||
|
Filostrato_, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned.
|
||
|
Chaucer's poem is far more than a translation; more than half is
|
||
|
entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound
|
||
|
knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded
|
||
|
the French poets.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 568: The Cock and the Fox. _The Nun's Priest's Tale_ in the
|
||
|
_Canterbury Tales_ was an original treatment of the _Roman de Renart_,
|
||
|
of Marie of France, a French poet of the twelfth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 569: House of Fame, etc. The plan of the _House of Fame_,
|
||
|
written during the period of Chaucer's Italian influence, shows the
|
||
|
influence of Dante; the general idea of the poem is from Ovid, the
|
||
|
Roman poet.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 570: Gower. John Gower was an English poet, Chaucer's
|
||
|
contemporary and friend; the two poets went to the same sources for
|
||
|
poetic materials, but Chaucer made no such use of Gower's works as we
|
||
|
would infer from this passage. Emerson relied on his memory for facts,
|
||
|
and hence made mistakes, as here in the instances of Lydgate, Caxton,
|
||
|
and Gower.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 571: Westminster, Washington. What legislative body
|
||
|
assembles at Westminster Palace, London? What at Washington?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 572: Sir Robert Peel. An English statesman who died in 1850,
|
||
|
not long after _Representative Men_ was published.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 573: Webster. Daniel Webster, an American statesman and
|
||
|
orator who was living when this essay was written.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 574: Locke. John Locke. (See note 18.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 575: Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher
|
||
|
of the eighteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 576: Homer. (See note 550.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 577: Menn. Menn, or Mann, was in Sanscrit one of fourteen
|
||
|
legendary beings; the one referred to by Emerson, Mann Vaivasvata was
|
||
|
supposed to be the author of the laws of Mann, a collection made about
|
||
|
the second century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 578: Saadi or Sadi. (See note 552.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 579: Milton. Of this great English poet and prose writer of
|
||
|
the seventeenth century, Emerson says: "No man can be named whose mind
|
||
|
still acts on the cultivated intellect of England and America with an
|
||
|
energy comparable to that of Milton. As a poet Shakespeare undoubtedly
|
||
|
transcends and far surpasses him in his popularity with foreign
|
||
|
nations: but Shakespeare is a voice merely: who and what he was that
|
||
|
sang, that sings, we know not."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 580: Delphi. Here, source of prophecy. Delphi was a city in
|
||
|
Greece, where was the oracle of Apollo, the most famous of the oracles
|
||
|
of antiquity.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 581: Our English Bible. The version made in the reign of
|
||
|
King James I. by forty-seven learned divines is a monument of noble
|
||
|
English.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 582: Liturgy. An appointed form of worship used in a
|
||
|
Christian church,--here, specifically, the service of the Episcopal
|
||
|
church. Emerson's mother had been brought up in that church, and
|
||
|
though she attended her husband's church, she always loved and read
|
||
|
her Episcopal prayer book.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 583: Grotius. Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, statesman,
|
||
|
theologian, and poet of the seventeenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 584: Rabbinical forms. The forms used by the rabbis, Jewish
|
||
|
doctors or expounders of the law.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 585: Common law. In a general sense, the system of law
|
||
|
derived from England, in general use among English-speaking people.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 586: Vedas. The sacred books of the Brahmins.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 587: Æsop's Fables. Fables ascribed to Æsop, a Greek slave
|
||
|
who lived in the sixth century before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 588: Pilpay, or Bidpai. Indian sage to whom were ascribed
|
||
|
some fables. From an Arabic translation, these passed into European
|
||
|
languages and were used by La Fontaine, the French fabulist.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 589: Arabian Nights. _The Arabian Nights' Entertainment or A
|
||
|
Thousand and One Nights_ is a collection of Oriental tales, the plan
|
||
|
and name of which are very ancient.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 590: Cid. _The Romances of the Cid_, the story of the
|
||
|
Spanish national hero, mentioned in note on _Heroism_139:5, was
|
||
|
written about the thirteenth century by an unknown author; it supplied
|
||
|
much of the material for two Spanish chronicles and Spanish and French
|
||
|
tragedies written later on the same subject.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 591: Iliad. The poem in which the Greek, poet, Homer,
|
||
|
describes the siege and fall of Troy. Emerson here expresses the view
|
||
|
adopted by many scholars that it was the work, not of one, but of many
|
||
|
men.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 592: Robin Hood. The ballads about Robin Hood, an English
|
||
|
outlaw and popular hero of the twelfth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 593: Scottish Minstrelsy. _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish
|
||
|
Border_, a collection of original and collected poems, published by
|
||
|
Sir Walter Scott in 1802.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 594: Shakespeare Society. The Shakespeare Society, founded
|
||
|
in 1841, was dissolved in 1853. In 1874 The New Shakespeare Society
|
||
|
was founded.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 595: Mysteries. See "Kyd, Marlowe, etc." 531.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 596: Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc. The first regular
|
||
|
English tragedy, by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, printed in
|
||
|
1565.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 597: Gammer Gurtor's Needle. One of the first English
|
||
|
comedies, written by Bishop Still and printed in 1575.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 598: Whether the boy Shakespeare poached, etc. For a fuller
|
||
|
account of the facts of Shakespeare's life, of which some traditions
|
||
|
and facts are mentioned here, consult some good biography of the
|
||
|
poet.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 599: Queen Elizabeth. Dining her reign, 1558-1603, the
|
||
|
English drama rose and attained its height, and there was produced a
|
||
|
prose literature hardly inferior to the poetic.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 600: King James. King James VI. of Scotland and I. of
|
||
|
England who was Elizabeth's kinsman and successor; he reigned in
|
||
|
England from 1603 to 1625.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 601: Essexes. Walter Devereux was a brave English gentleman
|
||
|
whom Elizabeth made Earl of Essex in 1572. His son Robert, the second
|
||
|
Earl of Essex, was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth's.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 602: Leicester. The Earl of Leicester, famous in
|
||
|
Shakespeare's time, was Robert Dudley, an English courtier,
|
||
|
politician, and general, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 603: Burleighs or Burghleys: William Cecil, baron of
|
||
|
Burghley, was an English statesman, who, for forty years, was
|
||
|
Elizabeth's chief minister.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 604: Buckinghams. George Villiers, the first duke of
|
||
|
Buckingham, was an English courtier and politician, a favorite of
|
||
|
James I. and Charles I.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 605: Tudor dynasty. The English dynasty of sovereigns
|
||
|
descended on the male side from Owen Tudor. It began with Henry VII.
|
||
|
and ended with Elizabeth.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 606: Bacon. Consult English literature and history for an
|
||
|
account of the great statesman and author, Francis Bacon, "the wisest,
|
||
|
brightest, meanest of mankind."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 607: Ben Jonson, etc. In his _Timber or Discoveries_, Ben
|
||
|
Jonson, a famous classical dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare,
|
||
|
says: "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry
|
||
|
as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature:
|
||
|
had an excellent fancy; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein
|
||
|
he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should
|
||
|
be stopped.... His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had
|
||
|
been so, too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape
|
||
|
laughter.... But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was
|
||
|
ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 608: Sir Henry Wotton. An English diplomatist and author of
|
||
|
wide culture.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 609: The following persons, etc. The persons enumerated were
|
||
|
all people of note of the seventeenth century. Sir Philip Sidney, Earl
|
||
|
of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane,
|
||
|
Isaac Walton, Dr. John Donne, Abraham Cowley, Charles Cotton, John
|
||
|
Pym, and John Hales were Englishmen, scholars, statesmen, and authors.
|
||
|
Theodore Beza was a French theologian; Isaac Casaubon was a
|
||
|
French-Swiss scholar; Roberto Berlarmine was an Italian cardinal;
|
||
|
Johann Kepler was a German astronomer; Francis Vieta was a French
|
||
|
mathematician; Albericus Gentilis was an Italian jurist; Paul Sarpi
|
||
|
was an Italian historian; Arminius was a Dutch theologian.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 610: Many others whom doubtless, etc. Emerson here
|
||
|
enumerates some famous English authors of the same period, not
|
||
|
mentioned in the preceeding list.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 611: Pericles. See note on _Heroism_, 352.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 612: Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German critic and
|
||
|
poet of the eighteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 613: Wieland. Christopher Martin Wieland was a German
|
||
|
contemporary of Lessing's, who made a prose translation into German of
|
||
|
Shakespeare's plays.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 614: Schlegel. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, a German critic
|
||
|
and poet, who about the first of the nineteenth century translated
|
||
|
some of Shakespeare's plays into classical German.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 615: Hamlet. The hero of Shakespeare's play of the same
|
||
|
name.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 616: Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet,
|
||
|
author of critical lectures and notes on Shakespeare.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 617: Goethe. (See note 85.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 618: Blackfriar's Theater. A famous London theater in which
|
||
|
nearly all the great dramas of the Elizabethan age were performed.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 619: Stratford. Stratford-on-Avon, a little town in
|
||
|
Warwickshire, England, where Shakespeare was born and where he spent
|
||
|
his last years.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 620: Macbeth. One of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies,
|
||
|
written about 1606.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 621: Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier. English scholars
|
||
|
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who edited the works of
|
||
|
Shakespeare.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 622: Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont: The
|
||
|
leading London theaters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 623: Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready, famous
|
||
|
British actors of the Shakespearian parts.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 624: The Hamlet of a famed performer, etc. Macready. Emerson
|
||
|
said to a friend: "I see you are one of the happy mortals who are
|
||
|
capable of being carried away by an actor of Shakespeare. Now,
|
||
|
whenever I visit the theater to witness the performance of one of his
|
||
|
dramas, I am carried away by the poet."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 625: What may this mean, etc. _Hamlet_, I. 4.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 626: Midsummer Night's Dream. One of Shakespeare's plays.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 627: The forest of Arden. In which is laid, the scene of
|
||
|
Shakespeare's play, _As You Like It_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 628: The nimble air of Scone Castle. It was of the air of
|
||
|
Inverness, not of Scone, that "the air nimbly and sweetly recommends
|
||
|
itself unto our gentle senses."--_Macbeth_, I. 6.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 629: Portia's villa. See the moonlight scene, _Merchant of
|
||
|
Venice_, V. 1.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 630: The antres vost, etc. See _Othello_, I. 3. "Antres" is
|
||
|
an old word, meaning caves, caverns.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 631: Cyclopean architecture. In Greek mythology, the Cyclops
|
||
|
were a race of giants. The term 'Cyclopean' is applied here to the
|
||
|
architecture of Egypt and India, because of the majestic size of the
|
||
|
buildings, and the immense size of the stones used, as if it would
|
||
|
require giants to perform such works.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 632: Phidian sculpture. Phidias was a famous Greek sculptor
|
||
|
who lived in the age of Pericles and beautified Athens with his
|
||
|
works.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 633: Gothic minsters. Churches or cathedrals, built in the
|
||
|
Gothic, or pointed, style of architecture which prevailed during the
|
||
|
Middle Ages; it owed nothing to the Goths, and this term was
|
||
|
originally used in reproach, in the sense of "barbarous."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 634: The Italian painting. In Italy during the fifteenth and
|
||
|
sixteenth centuries pictorial art was carried to a degree of
|
||
|
perfection unknown in any other time or country.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 635: Ballads of Spain and Scotland. The old ballads of these
|
||
|
countries are noted for beauty and spirit.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 636: Tripod. Define this word, and explain its
|
||
|
appropriateness here.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 637: Aubrey. John Aubrey, an English antiquarian of the
|
||
|
seventeenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 638: Rowe. Nicholas Rowe, an English author of the
|
||
|
seventeenth century, who wrote a biography of Shakespeare.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 639: Timon. See note on _Gifts_, 466.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 640: Warwick. An English politician and commander of the
|
||
|
fifteenth century, called "the King Maker." He appears in
|
||
|
Shakespeare's plays, _Henry IV._, _V._, and _VI._]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 641: Antonio. The Venetian Merchant in Shakespeare's play,
|
||
|
_The Merchant of Venice_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 642: Talma. François Joseph Talma was a French tragic actor,
|
||
|
to whom Napoleon showed favor.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 643: An omnipresent humanity, etc. See what Carlyle has to
|
||
|
say on this subject in his _Hero as Poet_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 644: Daguerre. Louis Jacques Daguerre, a French painter, one
|
||
|
of the inventors of the daguerreotype process, by means of which an
|
||
|
image is fixed on a metal plate by the chemical action of light.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 645: Euphuism. The word here has rather the force of
|
||
|
euphemism, an entirely different word. Euphuism was an affected ornate
|
||
|
style of expression, so called from _Euphues_, by John Lyly, a
|
||
|
sixteenth century master of that style.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 646: Epicurus. A Greek philosopher of the third century
|
||
|
before Christ. He was the founder of the Epicurean school of
|
||
|
philosophy which taught that pleasure should be man's chief aim and
|
||
|
that the highest pleasure is freedom.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 647: Dante. (See note 258.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 648: Master of the revels, etc. Emerson always expressed
|
||
|
thankfulness for "the spirit of joy which Shakespeare had shed over
|
||
|
the universe." See what Carlyle says in _The Hero as Poet_, about
|
||
|
Shakespeare's "mirthfulness and love of laughter."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 649: Koran. The Sacred book of the Mohammedans.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 650: Twelfth Night, etc. The names of three bright, merry,
|
||
|
or serene plays by Shakespeare.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 651: Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the
|
||
|
sense of "gipsy." He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by
|
||
|
the gipsies.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 652: Tasso. An Italian poet of the sixteenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 653: Cervantes. A Spanish poet and romancer of the sixteenth
|
||
|
century, the author of _Don Quixote_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 654: Israelite. Such Hebrew prophets as Isaiah and
|
||
|
Jeremiah.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 655: German. Such as Luther.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 656: Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of
|
||
|
the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in
|
||
|
_Representative Men_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 657: A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the
|
||
|
English writer, in his famous _Pilgrim's Progress_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 658: Doleful histories of Adam's fall, etc. The subject of
|
||
|
_Paradise Lost,_ the great poem by John Milton.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 659: With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by
|
||
|
Dante in his _Divine Commedia_, an epic about hell, purgatory, and
|
||
|
paradise.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
PRUDENCE
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 660: The essay on _Prudence_ was given as a lecture in
|
||
|
the course on _Human Culture_, in the winter of 1837-8. It was
|
||
|
published in the first series of _Essays_, which appeared in 1841.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 661: Lubricity. The word means literally the state or
|
||
|
quality of being slippery; Emerson uses it several times, in its
|
||
|
derived sense of "instability."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 662: Love and Friendship. The subjects of the two essays
|
||
|
preceding _Prudence_, in the volume of 1841.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 663: The world is filled with the proverbs, etc. Compare
|
||
|
with this passage Emerson's words in _Compensation_ on "the flights of
|
||
|
proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of
|
||
|
birds and flies."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 664: A good wheel or pin. That is, a part of a machine.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 665: The law of polarity. Having two opposite poles, the
|
||
|
properties of the one of which are the opposite of the other.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 666: Summer will have its flies. Emerson discoursed
|
||
|
with philosophic calm about the impediments and disagreeableness which
|
||
|
beset every path; he also accepted them with serenity when he
|
||
|
encountered them in his daily life.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 667: The inhabitants of the climates, etc. As a
|
||
|
northerner, Emerson naturally felt that the advantage and superiority
|
||
|
were with his own section. He expressed in his poems _Voluntaries_ and
|
||
|
_Mayday_ views similar to those declared here.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 668: Peninsular campaign. Emerson here refers to
|
||
|
the military operations carried on from 1808 to 1814 in Portugal,
|
||
|
Spain, and southern France against the French, by the British,
|
||
|
Spanish, and Portuguese forces commanded by Wellington. What was the
|
||
|
"Peninsular campaign" in American history?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 669: Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, etc. Dr.
|
||
|
Samuel Johnson was an eminent English scholar of the eighteenth
|
||
|
century. In this, as in many other instances, Emerson quotes from his
|
||
|
memory instead of from the book. The words of Dr. Johnson, as reported
|
||
|
by his biographer Boswell, are: "Accustom your children constantly to
|
||
|
this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it,
|
||
|
say it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check
|
||
|
them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 670: Rifle. A local name in England and New England
|
||
|
for an instrument, on the order of a whetstone, used for sharpening
|
||
|
scythes; it is made of wood, covered with fine sand or emery.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 671: Last grand duke of Weimar. Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach is a
|
||
|
grand duchy of Germany. The grand duke referred to was Charles
|
||
|
Augustus, who died in 1828. He was the friend and patron of the great
|
||
|
German authors, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 672: The Raphael in the Dresden gallery. The Sistine
|
||
|
Madonna, the most famous picture of the great Italian artist,
|
||
|
Raphael.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 673: Call a spade a spade. Plutarch, the Greek historian,
|
||
|
said, "These Macedonians ... call a spade a spade."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 674: Parts. A favorite eighteenth century term for
|
||
|
abilities, talents.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 675: We have found out, etc. Emerson always insisted that
|
||
|
morals and intellect should be united. He urged that power and
|
||
|
insight are lessened by shortcomings in morals.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 676: Goethe's Tasso. A play by the German poet
|
||
|
Goethe, founded on the belief that the imprisonment of Tasso was due
|
||
|
to his aspiration to the hand of Leonora d'Este, sister of the duke of
|
||
|
Ferrara. Tasso was a famous Italian poet of the seventeenth century.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 677: Richard III. An English king, the last of the
|
||
|
Plantagenet line, the hero--or villain--of Shakespeare's historical
|
||
|
play, Richard III.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 678: Bifold. Give a simpler word that means the same.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 679: Cæsar. Why is Cæsar the great Roman ruler, given as a
|
||
|
type of greatness?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 680: Job. Why is Job, the hero of the Old Testament book of
|
||
|
the same name, given as a type of misery?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 681: Poor Richard. _Poor Richard's Almanac_,
|
||
|
published (1732-1757) by Benjamin Franklin was a collection of maxims
|
||
|
inculcating prudence and thrift. These were given as the sayings of
|
||
|
"Poor Richard."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 682: State Street. A street in Boston, Massachusetts, noted
|
||
|
as a financial center.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 683: Stick in a tree between whiles, etc. "Jock, when ye hae
|
||
|
naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be
|
||
|
growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping."--Scott's _Heart of Midlothian_.
|
||
|
It is said that these were the words of a dying Scotchman to his son.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 684: Minor virtues. Emerson suggests that punctuality and
|
||
|
regard for a promise are two of these. Can you name others?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 685: The Latin proverb says, etc. This is quoted from
|
||
|
Tacitus, the famous Roman historian.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 686: If he set out to contend, etc. In contention,
|
||
|
Emerson holds, the best men would lose their characteristic virtues,
|
||
|
--the fearless apostle Paul, his devotion to truth; the gentle
|
||
|
disciple John, his loving charity.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 687: Though your views are in straight antagonism, &c. This
|
||
|
was Emerson's own method, and by it he won a courteous hearing from
|
||
|
those to whom his views were most objectionable.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 688: Consuetudes. Give a simpler word that has the same
|
||
|
meaning.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 689: Begin where we will, etc. Explain what Emerson means by
|
||
|
this expression.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
CIRCLES
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 690: This essay first appeared in the first series of
|
||
|
_Essays_, published in 1841. Unlike most of the other essays in the
|
||
|
volume, no earlier form of it exists, and it was probably not
|
||
|
delivered first as a lecture.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Dr. Richard Garnett says in his _Life of Emerson_: "The object of this
|
||
|
fine essay quaintly entitled _Circles_ is to reconcile this rigidity
|
||
|
of unalterable law with the fact of human progress. Compensation
|
||
|
illustrates one property of a circle, which always returns to the
|
||
|
point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle
|
||
|
another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always
|
||
|
keeps a reserve of power. His theory of _Circles_ reappears without
|
||
|
the least verbal indebtedness to himself in the splendid essay on
|
||
|
_Love_."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 691: St. Augustine. A celebrated father of the
|
||
|
Latin church, who flourished in the fourth century. His most famous
|
||
|
work is his _Confessions_, an autobiographical volume of religious
|
||
|
meditations.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 692: Another dawn risen on mid-noon. "Another morn has risen
|
||
|
on mid-noon." Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Book V.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 693: Greek sculpture. The greatest development of
|
||
|
the art of sculpture that the world has ever known was that which took
|
||
|
place in Greece, with Athens as the center, in the fifth century
|
||
|
before Christ. The masterpieces which remain are the models on which
|
||
|
modern art formed itself.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 694: Greek letters. In literature--in drama, philosophy and
|
||
|
history--Greece attained an excellence as signal as in art. Emerson as
|
||
|
a scholar, felt that the literature of Greece was more permanent than
|
||
|
its art. Would an artist be apt to take this view?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 695: New arts destroy the old, etc. Tell the ways in which
|
||
|
the improvements and inventions mentioned by Emerson have been
|
||
|
superseded by others; give the reasons. Mention other similar cases of
|
||
|
more recent date.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 696: The life of man is a self-evolving circle, etc. "Throw a
|
||
|
stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the
|
||
|
beautiful type of all influence."--EMERSON, in _Nature_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 697: The heart refuses to be imprisoned. It is a
|
||
|
superstition current in many countries that an evil spirit cannot
|
||
|
escape from a circle drawn round it.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 698: Crass. Gross; coarse.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 699: The continual effort to raise himself above
|
||
|
himself, etc.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Unless above himself he can
|
||
|
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"
|
||
|
SAMUEL DANIEL.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 700: If he were high enough, etc.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Have I a lover
|
||
|
Who is noble and free?--
|
||
|
I would he were nobler
|
||
|
Than to love me.--EMERSON, _The Sphinx._
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 701: Aristotle and Plato. Plato was a famous Greek
|
||
|
philosopher who flourished in the fourth century before Christ. He was
|
||
|
the disciple of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and the founder of
|
||
|
the academic school of philosophy. His exposition of idealism was
|
||
|
founded on the teachings of Socrates. Aristotle, another famous Greek
|
||
|
philosopher, was for twenty years the pupil of Plato. He founded the
|
||
|
peripatetic school of philosophy, and his writing dealt with all the
|
||
|
then known branches of science.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 702: Berkeley. George Berkeley was a British clergyman of
|
||
|
the eighteenth century. He was the author of works on philosophy which
|
||
|
are marked by extreme subjective idealism.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 703: Termini. Boundaries or marks to indicate boundaries. In
|
||
|
Roman mythology, Terminus was the god who presided over boundaries or
|
||
|
landmarks. He is represented with a human head, but without feet or
|
||
|
arms,--to indicate that he never moved from his place.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 704: Pentecost. One of three great Jewish festivals. On the
|
||
|
day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the infant Christian
|
||
|
church, with the gift of tongues. See Acts ii. 1-20.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 705: Hodiernal. Belonging to our present day.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 706: Punic. Of Carthage, a famous ancient city, and
|
||
|
state of northern Africa. Carthage was the rival of Rome, but was,
|
||
|
after long warfare, overcome in the second century before Christ.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 707: In like manner, etc. Emerson always urged that in order
|
||
|
to get the best from all, one must pass from affairs to thought,
|
||
|
society to solitude, books to nature.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"See thou bring not to field or stone
|
||
|
The fancies found in books;
|
||
|
Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
|
||
|
To brave the landscape's look."--EMERSON,
|
||
|
_Waldeinsamkeit_.
|
||
|
|
||
|
]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 708: Petrarch. (See note 563.)]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 709: Ariosto. A famous Italian author of the sixteenth
|
||
|
century, who wrote comedies, satires, and a metrical romance, _Orlando
|
||
|
Furioso_.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 710: "Then shall also the Son", etc. See 1 Corinthians xv.
|
||
|
28: Does Emerson quote the passage verbatim?]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 711: These manifold tenacious qualities, etc. It is
|
||
|
remarked of Emerson that the idea of the symbolism of nature which he
|
||
|
received from Plato, was the source of much of his pleasure in
|
||
|
Swedenborg, the Swedish mystic philosopher. Emerson says in his volume
|
||
|
on _Nature_: "The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as an
|
||
|
apparition of God."]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 712: "Forgive his crimes," etc. This is quoted from _Night
|
||
|
Thoughts_ by the English didactic poet, Edward Young.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 713: Pyrrhonism. A doctrine held by a follower of Pyrrho, a
|
||
|
Greek philosopher of the third century before Christ, who founded the
|
||
|
sceptical school. He taught that it is impossible to attain truth, and
|
||
|
that men should be indifferent to all external circumstances.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 714: I own I am gladdened, etc. Emerson always held fast to
|
||
|
the consoling thought that there was no evil without good, none out of
|
||
|
which Good did not or could not come.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 715: Sempiternal. Everlasting; eternal.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
[Footnote 716: Oliver Cromwell. An Englishman of the middle classes
|
||
|
who became the military and civil leader of the English Revolution of
|
||
|
the seventeenth century. He refused the title of king; but as Lord
|
||
|
Protector of the English commonwealth, he exercised royal power.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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