Essaysby

Ralph WaldoEmerson

A PENN STATE

ELECTRONIC CLASSICS SERIES

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Contents

I. HISTORY ................................................................5

SELF-RELIANCE ......................................................25

II. SELF-RELIANCE ................................................25

COMPENSATION ....................................................49

III. COMPENSATION.............................................50

SPIRITUAL LAWS.....................................................68

IV. SPIRITUAL LAWS ..............................................68

LOVE .........................................................................87

V. LOVE....................................................................87

FRIENDSHIP ............................................................98

VI. FRIENDSHIP .....................................................98

PRUDENCE ............................................................113

VII. PRUDENCE ...................................................113

HEROISM ...............................................................124

VIII. HEROISM .....................................................124

THE OVER-SOUL ..................................................135

IX. THE OVER-SOUL ...........................................135

CIRCLES .................................................................152

X. CIRCLES ............................................................152

INTELLECT ...........................................................164

XI. INTELLECT.....................................................164

ART .........................................................................176

XI. ART........................................................................177

THE POET .............................................................187

XIII. THE POET ....................................................188

EXPERIENCE..........................................................209

XIV. EXPERIENCE ................................................210

CHARACTER ..........................................................231

XV. CHARACTER..................................................231

MANNERS ..............................................................246

XVI. MANNERS ....................................................246

GIFTS .....................................................................266

XVII. GIFTS ...........................................................266

NATURE .................................................................270

XVIII. NATURE .....................................................270

POLITICS ...............................................................285

XIX. POLITICS ......................................................286

NOMINALIST AND REALIST ...............................298

XX. NONIMALIST AND REALIST ......................298

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS .............................311

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS ..........................311

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Essaysby

Ralph Waldo Emerson

HISTHISTHISTHISTHISTORORORORORYYYYY

There is no great and no smallTo the Soul that maketh all:And where it cometh, all things areAnd it cometh everywhere.

I am owner of the sphere,Of the seven stars and the solar year,Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain,Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakspeare’s strain.

I. HISTI. HISTI. HISTI. HISTI. HISTORORORORORYYYYY

THERE IS ONE MIND common to all individual men. Every man is aninlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted tothe right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. WhatPlato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel;what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Whohath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can bedone, for this is the only and sovereign agent.

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Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illus-trated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing lessthan all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spiritgoes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, everythought, every emotion, which belongs to it, in appropriate events.But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of historypreexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circum-stances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but oneat a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation ofa thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul,Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch afterepoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merelythe application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world.

This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinxmust solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, itis all to be explained from individual experience. There is a relationbetween the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air Ibreathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the lighton my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant,as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugaland centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the agesand the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind eachindividual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist inhim. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on whatgreat bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer tonational crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one man’smind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is thekey to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion, and whenit shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of theage. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to becredible or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Ro-mans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fastenthese images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shalllearn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is asmuch an illustration of the mind’s powers and depravations as whathas befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaningfor you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, ‘Under this mask

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did my Proteus nature hide itself.’ This remedies the defect of ourtoo great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into per-spective; and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpotlose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can seemy own vices without heat in the distant persons of Solomon,Alcibiades, and Catiline.

It is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men andthings. Human life, as containing this, is mysterious and inviolable,and we hedge it round with penalties and laws. All laws derive hencetheir ultimate reason; all express more or less distinctly some com-mand of this supreme, illimitable essence. Property also holds of thesoul, covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively we at first hold toit with swords and laws and wide and complex combinations. Theobscure consciousness of this fact is the light of all our day, theclaim of claims; the plea for education, for justice, for charity; thefoundation of friendship and love and of the heroism and grandeurwhich belong to acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involun-tarily we always read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets,the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures, —in the sacerdo-tal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius,—anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, thatthis is for better men; but rather is it true that in their grandeststrokes we feel most at home. All that Shakspeare says of the king,yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of him-self. We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the greatdiscoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men;—because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land wasfound, or the blow was struck, for us, as we ourselves in that placewould have done or applauded.

We have the same interest in condition and character. We honorthe rich because they have externally the freedom, power, and gracewhich we feel to be proper to man, proper to us. So all that is said ofthe wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes toeach reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainableself. All literature writes the character of the wise man. Books, monu-ments, pictures, conversation, are portraits in which he finds thelineaments he is forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him

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and accost him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by per-sonal allusions. A true aspirant therefore never needs look for allu-sions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears the commenda-tion, not of himself, but, more sweet, of that character he seeks, inevery word that is said concerning character, yea further in every factand circumstance,—in the running river and the rustling corn. Praiseis looked, homage tendered, love flows, from mute nature, from themountains and the lights of the firmament.

These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use inbroad day. The student is to read history actively and not passively;to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thuscompelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to thosewho do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that any manwill read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remoteage, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sensethan what he is doing to-day.

The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age orstate of society or mode of action in history to which there is notsomewhat corresponding in his life. Every thing tends in a wonder-ful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. Heshould see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sitsolidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings orempires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and allthe government of the world; he must transfer the point of viewfrom which history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens andLondon, to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court,and if England or Egypt have any thing to say to him he will try thecase; if not, let them for ever be silent. He must attain and maintainthat lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense, and poetry andannals are alike. The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature,betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history.Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. Noanchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy,Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome are passing already into fic-tion. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is po-etry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, whenwe have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal

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sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way. “Whatis history,” said Napoleon, “but a fable agreed upon?” This life ofours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colo-nization, Church, Court and Commerce, as with so many flowersand wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account ofthem. I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain andthe Islands, —the genius and creative principle of each and of alleras, in my own mind.

We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history inour private experience and verifying them here. All history becomessubjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biogra-phy. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,—must goover the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live,it will not know. What the former age has epitomized into a for-mula or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the good ofverifying for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere,sometime, it will demand and find compensation for that loss, bydoing the work itself. Ferguson discovered many things in astronomywhich had long been known. The better for him.

History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the stateenacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in our-selves see the necessary reason of every fact,—see how it could andmust be. So stand before every public and private work; before anoration of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdomof Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson; before aFrench Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging of witches; before afanatic Revival and the Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Provi-dence. We assume that we under like influence should be alike af-fected, and should achieve the like; and we aim to master intellectu-ally the steps and reach the same height or the same degradationthat our fellow, our proxy has done.

All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids,the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Mem-phis,—is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterousThere or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now.Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids ofThebes, until he can see the end of the difference between the mon-

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strous work and himself. When he has satisfied himself, in generaland in detail, that it was made by such a person as he, so armed andso motived, and to ends to which he himself should also have worked,the problem is solved; his thought lives along the whole line of templesand sphinxes and catacombs, passes through them all with satisfac-tion, and they live again to the mind, or are now.

A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done byus. Surely it was by man, but we find it not in our man. But weapply ourselves to the history of its production. We put ourselvesinto the place and state of the builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, the first temples, the adherence to the first type, and thedecoration of it as the wealth of the nation increased; the value whichis given to wood by carving led to the carving over the whole moun-tain of stone of a cathedral. When we have gone through this pro-cess, and added thereto the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, itsprocessions, its Saints’ days and image-worship, we have as it werebeen the man that made the minster; we have seen how it could andmust be. We have the sufficient reason.

The difference between men is in their principle of association.Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents ofappearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of causeand effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision ofcauses, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the phi-losopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all eventsprofitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened onthe life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance,every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause,the variety of appearance.

Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature,soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be such hardpedants, and magnify a few forms? Why should we make accountof time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows them not,and genius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them as a youngchild plays with graybeards and in churches. Genius studies the causalthought, and far back in the womb of things sees the rays partingfrom one orb, that diverge, ere they fall, by infinite diameters. Ge-nius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the

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metempsychosis of nature. Genius detects through the fly, throughthe caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant in-dividual; through countless individuals the fixed species; throughmany species the genus; through all genera the steadfast type; throughall the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is amutable cloud which is always and never the same. She casts thesame thought into troops of forms, as a poet makes twenty fableswith one moral. Through the bruteness and toughness of matter, asubtle spirit bends all things to its own will. The adamant streamsinto soft but precise form before it, and whilst I look at it its outlineand texture are changed again. Nothing is so fleeting as form; yetnever does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace the remains orhints of all that we esteem badges of servitude in the lower races; yetin him they enhance his nobleness and grace; as Io, in Aeschylus,transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how changedwhen as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman withnothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the splen-did ornament of her brows!

The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equallyobvious. There is, at the surface, infinite variety of things; at thecentre there is simplicity of cause. How many are the acts of oneman in which we recognize the same character! Observe the sourcesof our information in respect to the Greek genius. We have the civilhistory of that people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, andPlutarch have given it; a very sufficient account of what manner ofpersons they were and what they did. We have the same nationalmind expressed for us again in their literature, in epic and lyricpoems, drama, and philosophy; a very complete form. Then wehave it once more in their architecture, a beauty as of temperanceitself, limited to the straight line and the square, —a builded geom-etry. Then we have it once again in sculpture, the “tongue on thebalance of expression,” a multitude of forms in the utmost freedomof action and never transgressing the ideal serenity; like votariesperforming some religious dance before the gods, and, though inconvulsive pain or mortal combat, never daring to break the figureand decorum of their dance. Thus of the genius of one remarkablepeople we have a fourfold representation: and to the senses what

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more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble centaur, the peristyleof the Parthenon, and the last actions of Phocion?

Every one must have observed faces and forms which, withoutany resembling feature, make a like impression on the beholder. Aparticular picture or copy of verses, if it do not awaken the sametrain of images, will yet superinduce the same sentiment as somewild mountain walk, although the resemblance is nowise obvious tothe senses, but is occult and out of the reach of the understanding.Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws.She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her works,and delights in startling us with resemblances in the most unex-pected quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem of the forestwhich at once reminded the eye of a bald mountain summit, andthe furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. There aremen whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simpleand awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon and the remainsof the earliest Greek art. And there are compositions of the samestrain to be found in the books of all ages. What is Guido’s RospigliosiAurora but a morning thought, as the horses in it are only a morn-ing cloud? If any one will but take pains to observe the variety ofactions to which he is equally inclined in certain moods of mind,and those to which he is averse, he will see how deep is the chain ofaffinity.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in somesort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of itsform merely,—but, by watching for a time his motions and plays, thepainter enters into his nature and can then draw him at will in everyattitude. So Roos “entered into the inmost nature of a sheep.” I knewa draughtsman employed in a public survey who found that he couldnot sketch the rocks until their geological structure was first explainedto him. In a certain state of thought is the common origin of verydiverse works. It is the spirit and not the fact that is identical. By adeeper apprehension, and not primarily by a painful acquisition ofmany manual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening othersouls to a given activity.

It has been said that “common souls pay with what they do, nobler

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souls with that which they are.” And why? Because a profound natureawakens in us by its actions and words, by its very looks and manners,the same power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture or of picturesaddresses.

Civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, mustbe explained from individual history, or must remain words. Thereis nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,—kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe,—the roots of all thingsare in man. Santa Croce and the Dome of St. Peter’s are lame copiesafter a divine model. Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpartof the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem is the poet’s mind;the true ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him open,we should see the reason for the last flourish and tendril of his work;as every spine and tint in the sea-shell preexists in the secreting or-gans of the fish. The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in cour-tesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all theornament that titles of nobility could ever add.

The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some oldprediction to us and converting into things the words and signswhich we had heard and seen without heed. A lady with whom Iwas riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed toher to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deedsuntil the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry hascelebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the ap-proach of human feet. The man who has seen the rising moon breakout of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel atthe creation of light and of the world. I remember one summer dayin the fields my companion pointed out to me a broad cloud, whichmight extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the horizon, quite accu-rately in the form of a cherub as painted over churches, —a roundblock in the centre, which it was easy to animate with eyes andmouth, supported on either side by wide-stretched symmetricalwings. What appears once in the atmosphere may appear often,and it was undoubtedly the archetype of that familiar ornament. Ihave seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning which at onceshowed to me that the Greeks drew from nature when they paintedthe thunderbolt in the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow-drift along

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the sides of the stone wall which obviously gave the idea of thecommon architectural scroll to abut a tower.

By surrounding ourselves with the original circumstances we in-vent anew the orders and the ornaments of architecture, as we seehow each people merely decorated its primitive abodes. The Dorictemple preserves the semblance of the wooden cabin in which theDorian dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The In-dian and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds and subterra-nean houses of their forefathers. “The custom of making housesand tombs in the living rock,” says Heeren in his Researches on theEthiopians, “determined very naturally the principal character ofthe Nubian Egyptian architecture to the colossal form which it as-sumed. In these caverns, already prepared by nature, the eye wasaccustomed to dwell on huge shapes and masses, so that when artcame to the assistance of nature it could not move on a small scalewithout degrading itself. What would statues of the usual size, orneat porches and wings have been, associated with those gigantichalls before which only Colossi could sit as watchmen or lean onthe pillars of the interior?”

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of theforest trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as thebands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tiedthem. No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, withoutbeing struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, espe-cially in winter, when the barrenness of all other trees shows the lowarch of the Saxons. In the woods in a winter afternoon one will seeas readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which theGothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seenthrough the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can anylover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathe-drals, without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of thebuilder, and that his chisel, his saw and plane still reproduced itsferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce.

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by theinsatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of graniteblooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finishas well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.

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In like manner all public facts are to be individualized, all privatefacts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid andtrue, and Biography deep and sublime. As the Persian imitated inthe slender shafts and capitals of his architecture the stem and flowerof the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its magnificent eranever gave over the nomadism of its barbarous tribes, but travelledfrom Ecbatana, where the spring was spent, to Susa in summer andto Babylon for the winter.

In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and Agricul-ture are the two antagonist facts. The geography of Asia and of Af-rica necessitated a nomadic life. But the nomads were the terror ofall those whom the soil or the advantages of a market had inducedto build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction,because of the perils of the state from nomadism. And in these lateand civil countries of England and America these propensities stillfight out the old battle, in the nation and in the individual. Thenomads of Africa were constrained to wander, by the attacks of thegad-fly, which drives the cattle mad, and so compels the tribe toemigrate in the rainy season and to drive off the cattle to the highersandy regions. The nomads of Asia follow the pasturage from monthto month. In America and Europe the nomadism is of trade andcuriosity; a progress, certainly, from the gad-fly of Astaboras to theAnglo and Italo-mania of Boston Bay. Sacred cities, to which a pe-riodical religious pilgrimage was enjoined, or stringent laws andcustoms, tending to invigorate the national bond, were the checkon the old rovers; and the cumulative values of long residence arethe restraints on the itineracy of the present day. The antagonism ofthe two tendencies is not less active in individuals, as the love ofadventure or the love of repose happens to predominate. A man ofrude health and flowing spirits has the faculty of rapid domestica-tion, lives in his wagon and roams through all latitudes as easily as aCalmuc. At sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as warm,dines with as good appetite, and associates as happily as beside hisown chimneys. Or perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in the in-creased range of his faculties of observation, which yield him pointsof interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The pastoral na-tions were needy and hungry to desperation; and this intellectual

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nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind through the dissipa-tion of power on a miscellany of objects. The home-keeping wit, onthe other hand, is that continence or content which finds all theelements of life in its own soil; and which has its own perils of mo-notony and deterioration, if not stimulated by foreign infusions.

Every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to hisstates of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as hisonward thinking leads him into the truth to which that fact or se-ries belongs.

The primeval world,—the Fore-World, as the Germans say, —Ican dive to it in myself as well as grope for it with researching fin-gers in catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos ofruined villas.

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek his-tory, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods from the Heroic orHomeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spar-tans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every manpasses personally through a Grecian period. The Grecian state is theera of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses,—of the spiri-tual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. In it existed thosehuman forms which supplied the sculptor with his models of Her-cules, Phoebus, and Jove; not like the forms abounding in the streetsof modern cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of features, butcomposed of incorrupt, sharply defined and symmetrical features,whose eye-sockets are so formed that it would be impossible forsuch eyes to squint and take furtive glances on this side and on that,but they must turn the whole head. The manners of that period areplain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities;courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, swiftness, a loudvoice, a broad chest. Luxury and elegance are not known. A sparsepopulation and want make every man his own valet, cook, butcherand soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs educates thebody to wonderful performances. Such are the Agamemnon andDiomed of Homer, and not far different is the picture Xenophongives of himself and his compatriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thou-sand. “After the army had crossed the river Teleboas in Armenia, therefell much snow, and the troops lay miserably on the ground covered

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with it. But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, began to splitwood; whereupon others rose and did the like.” Throughout his armyexists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, theywrangle with the generals on each new order, and Xenophon is assharp-tongued as any and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives asgood as he gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys,with such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have?

The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the oldliterature, is that the persons speak simply,—speak as persons whohave great good sense without knowing it, before yet the reflectivehabit has become the predominant habit of the mind. Our admira-tion of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.The Greeks are not reflective, but perfect in their senses and in theirhealth, with the finest physical organization in the world. Adultsacted with the simplicity and grace of children. They made vases,tragedies, and statues, such as healthy senses should,—that is, ingood taste. Such things have continued to be made in all ages, andare now, wherever a healthy physique exists; but, as a class, fromtheir superior organization, they have surpassed all. They combinethe energy of manhood with the engaging unconsciousness of child-hood. The attraction of these manners is that they belong to man,and are known to every man in virtue of his being once a child;besides that there are always individuals who retain these character-istics. A person of childlike genius and inborn energy is still a Greek,and revives our love of the Muse of Hellas. I admire the love ofnature in the Philoctetes. In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep,to the stars, rocks, mountains and waves, I feel time passing away asan ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his thought.The Greek had it seems the same fellow-beings as I. The sun andmoon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine.Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English, betweenClassic and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. Whena thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,—when a truth thatfired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel thatwe two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with thesame hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measuredegrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?

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The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own age of chiv-alry, and the days of maritime adventure and circumnavigation byquite parallel miniature experiences of his own. To the sacred his-tory of the world he has the same key. When the voice of a prophetout of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment ofhis infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth throughall the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institutions.

Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose tous new facts in nature. I see that men of God have from time totime walked among men and made their commission felt in theheart and soul of the commonest hearer. Hence evidently the tri-pod, the priest, the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus.

Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unitehim to history, or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to re-vere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explainsevery fact, every word.

How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, of Menu,of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. I cannot find anyantiquity in them. They are mine as much as theirs.

I have seen the first monks and anchorets, without crossing seasor centuries. More than once some individual has appeared to mewith such negligence of labor and such commanding contempla-tion, a haughty beneficiary begging in the name of God, as madegood to the nineteenth century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais,and the first Capuchins.

The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brahmin,Druid, and Inca, is expounded in the individual’s private life. Thecramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child, in repress-ing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and thatwithout producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, andeven much sympathy with the tyranny,—is a familiar fact, explainedto the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the op-pressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those namesand words and forms of whose influence he was merely the organ tothe youth. The fact teaches him how Belus was worshipped andhow the Pyramids were built, better than the discovery byChampollion of the names of all the workmen and the cost of every

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tile. He finds Assyria and the Mounds of Cholula at his door, andhimself has laid the courses.

Again, in that protest which each considerate person makes againstthe superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of oldreformers, and in the search after truth finds, like them, new perilsto virtue. He learns again what moral vigor is needed to supply thegirdle of a superstition. A great licentiousness treads on the heels ofa reformation. How many times in the history of the world has theLuther of the day had to lament the decay of piety in his own house-hold! “Doctor,” said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, “how is itthat whilst subject to papacy we prayed so often and with such fer-vor, whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?”

The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in lit-erature,—in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poetwas no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations,but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for oneand true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonder-fully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One afteranother he comes up in his private adventures with every fable ofAesop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, andverifies them with his own head and hands.

The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of theimagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. What a rangeof meanings and what perpetual pertinence has the story ofPrometheus! Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the his-tory of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, theinvention of the mechanic arts and the migration of colonies,) itgives the history of religion, with some closeness to the faith of laterages. Prometheus is the Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friendof man; stands between the unjust “justice” of the Eternal Fatherand the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their ac-count. But where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity andexhibits him as the defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind whichreadily appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude,objective form, and which seems the self-defence of man againstthis untruth, namely a discontent with the believed fact that a Godexists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous. It

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would steal if it could the fire of the Creator, and live apart fromhim and independent of him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the ro-mance of skepticism. Not less true to all time are the details of thatstately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, said the poets.When the gods come among men, they are not known. Jesus wasnot; Socrates and Shakspeare were not. Antaeus was suffocated bythe gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his mother earthhis strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all hisweakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits ofconversation with nature. The power of music, the power of poetry,to unfix and as it were clap wings to solid nature, interprets theriddle of Orpheus. The philosophical perception of identity throughendless mutations of form makes him know the Proteus. What elseam I who laughed or wept yesterday, who slept last night like acorpse, and this morning stood and ran? And what see I on any sidebut the transmigrations of Proteus? I can symbolize my thought byusing the name of any creature, of any fact, because every creature isman agent or patient. Tantalus is but a name for you and me.Tantalus means the impossibility of drinking the waters of thoughtwhich are always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. Thetransmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; but men andwomen are only half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, thefield and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under theearth, has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of itsfeatures and form in some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing speakers. Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul, —ebbingdownward into the forms into whose habits thou hast now for manyyears slid. As near and proper to us is also that old fable of theSphinx, who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to everypassenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. Ifhe could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life butan endless flight of winged facts or events? In splendid variety thesechanges come, all putting questions to the human spirit. Those menwho cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions oftime, serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, andmake the men of routine, the men of sense, in whom a literal obedi-ence to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which

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man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts orsentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes ofa higher race; remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, thenthe facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know theirmaster, and the meanest of them glorifies him.

See in Goethe’s Helena the same desire that every word should bea thing. These figures, he would say, these Chirons, Griffins,Phorkyas, Helen and Leda, are somewhat, and do exert a specificinfluence on the mind. So far then are they eternal entities, as realto-day as in the first Olympiad. Much revolving them he writes outfreely his humor, and gives them body to his own imagination. Andalthough that poem be as vague and fantastic as a dream, yet is itmuch more attractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of thesame author, for the reason that it operates a wonderful relief to themind from the routine of customary images,—awakens the reader’sinvention and fancy by the wild freedom of the design, and by theunceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise.

The universal nature, too strong for the petty nature of the bard,sits on his neck and writes through his hand; so that when he seemsto vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an exact alle-gory. Hence Plato said that “poets utter great and wise things whichthey do not themselves understand.” All the fictions of the MiddleAge explain themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that whichin grave earnest the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magicand all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers ofscience. The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the powerof subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues of minerals, ofunderstanding the voices of birds, are the obscure efforts of the mindin a right direction. The preternatural prowess of the hero, the giftof perpetual youth, and the like, are alike the endeavour of the hu-man spirit “to bend the shows of things to the desires of the mind.”

In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul a garland and a rose bloom onthe head of her who is faithful, and fade on the brow of the incon-stant. In the story of the Boy and the Mantle even a mature readermay be surprised with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the triumph ofthe gentle Venelas; and indeed all the postulates of elfin annals,—that the fairies do not like to be named; that their gifts are capri-

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cious and not to be trusted; that who seeks a treasure must notspeak; and the like,—I find true in Concord, however they mightbe in Cornwall or Bretagne.

Is it otherwise in the newest romance? I read the Bride ofLammermoor. Sir William Ashton is a mask for a vulgar tempta-tion, Ravenswood Castle a fine name for proud poverty, and theforeign mission of state only a Bunyan disguise for honest industry.We may all shoot a wild bull that would toss the good and beauti-ful, by fighting down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton is an-other name for fidelity, which is always beautiful and always liableto calamity in this world.

But along with the civil and metaphysical history of man, anotherhistory goes daily forward,—that of the external world,—in whichhe is not less strictly implicated. He is the compend of time; he is alsothe correlative of nature. His power consists in the multitude of hisaffinities, in the fact that his life is intertwined with the whole chainof organic and inorganic being. In old Rome the public roads begin-ning at the Forum proceeded north, south, east, west, to the centre ofevery province of the empire, making each market-town of Persia,Spain and Britain pervious to the soldiers of the capital: so out of thehuman heart go as it were highways to the heart of every object innature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle ofrelations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. Hisfaculties refer to natures out of him and predict the world he is toinhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wingsof an eagle in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a world.Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his faculties find no men to acton, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and he would beat the air,and appear stupid. Transport him to large countries, dense popula-tion, complex interests and antagonist power, and you shall see thatthe man Napoleon, bounded that is by such a profile and outline, isnot the virtual Napoleon. This is but Talbot’s shadow;—

“His substance is not here. For what you see is but the smallestpart And least proportion of humanity; But were the whole framehere, It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, Your roof were not suffi-cient to contain it.” Henry VI.

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Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. Newton andLaplace need myriads of age and thick-strewn celestial areas. Onemay say a gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the na-ture of Newton’s mind. Not less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from childhood exploring the affinities and repulsions ofparticles, anticipate the laws of organization. Does not the eye ofthe human embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel predict thewitchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not the constructive fingers ofWatt, Fulton, Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, andtemperable texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, andwood? Do not the lovely attributes of the maiden child predict therefinements and decorations of civil society? Here also we are re-minded of the action of man on man. A mind might ponder itsthought for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the pas-sion of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself before he hasbeen thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an elo-quent tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a nationalexultation or alarm? No man can antedate his experience, or guesswhat faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than hecan draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow forthe first time.

I will not now go behind the general statement to explore thereason of this correspondency. Let it suffice that in the light of thesetwo facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its cor-relative, history is to be read and written.

Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its trea-sures for each pupil. He too shall pass through the whole cycle ofexperience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. Historyno longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every justand wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a cata-logue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel whatperiods you have lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. Heshall walk, as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe paintedall over with wonderful events and experiences;—his own form andfeatures by their exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. Ishall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the Age of Gold,the Apples of Knowledge, the Argonautic Expedition, the calling of

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Abraham, the building of the Temple, the Advent of Christ, DarkAges, the Revival of Letters, the Reformation, the discovery of newlands, the opening of new sciences and new regions in man. Heshall be the priest of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottagesthe blessing of the morning stars, and all the recorded benefits ofheaven and earth.

Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I reject all Ihave written, for what is the use of pretending to know what weknow not? But it is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot stronglystate one fact without seeming to belie some other. I hold our actualknowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard onthe fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on the log. What do Iknow sympathetically, morally, of either of these worlds of life? Asold as the Caucasian man,—perhaps older,—these creatures havekept their counsel beside him, and there is no record of any word orsign that has passed from one to the other. What connection do thebooks show between the fifty or sixty chemical elements and thehistorical eras? Nay, what does history yet record of the metaphysi-cal annals of man? What light does it shed on those mysteries whichwe hide under the names Death and Immortality? Yet every historyshould be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our af-finities and looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see what ashallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times wemust say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Romeknow of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates tothese neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experienceor succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanakain his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?

Broader and deeper we must write our annals,—from an ethicalreformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative con-science,—if we would trulier express our central and wide-relatednature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride towhich we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us,shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters isnot the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child and un-schooled farmer’s boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is tobe read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

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SELF-RELIANCESELF-RELIANCESELF-RELIANCESELF-RELIANCESELF-RELIANCE

“NNNNNe te quaesive te quaesive te quaesive te quaesive te quaesiveris extreris extreris extreris extreris extraaaaa.”

“Man is his own star; and the soul that canRender 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.”

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’sHonest Man’s Fortune.

Cast the bantling on the rocks,Suckle him with the she-wolf ’s teat,Wintered with the hawk and fox.Power and speed be hands and feet.

II. SELF-RELIANCEII. SELF-RELIANCEII. SELF-RELIANCEII. SELF-RELIANCEII. SELF-RELIANCE

I READ THE OTHER DAY some verses written by an emi-nent painterwhich were original and not conven-tional. The soul always hearsan admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. Thesentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they maycontain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is truefor you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; forthe inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thoughtis rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Famil-

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iar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribeto Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books andtraditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A manshould learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashesacross his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmamentof bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our ownrejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienatedmajesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for usthan this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impressionwith good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry ofvoices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say withmasterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all thetime, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinionfrom another.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at theconviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that hemust take himself for better for worse as his portion; that thoughthe wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn cancome to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of groundwhich is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is newin nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nordoes he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, onecharacter, one fact, makes much impression on him, and anothernone. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablishedharmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it mighttestify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and areashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may besafely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfullyimparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cow-ards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into hiswork and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwiseshall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. Inthe attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no inven-tion, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept theplace the divine providence has found for you, the society of your

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contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have alwaysdone so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of theirage, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy wasseated at their heart, working through their hands, predominatingin all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in thehighest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors andinvalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolu-tion, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almightyeffort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face andbehavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebelmind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has com-puted the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these havenot. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, andwhen we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conformsto nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makesfour or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God hasarmed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own pi-quancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claimsnot to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth hasno force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the nextroom his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knowshow to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he willknow how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and woulddisdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is thehealthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what thepit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out fromhis corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentencesthem on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good,bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himselfnever about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent,genuine verdict. You must court him; he does not court you. Butthe man is as it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soonas he has once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed person,watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affec-tions must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this.

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Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoidall pledges and, having observed, observe again from the same unaf-fected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence,—must alwaysbe formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, whichbeing seen to be not private but necessary, would sink like darts intothe ear of men and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they growfaint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere isin conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, forthe better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender theliberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is confor-mity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators,but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who wouldgather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of good-ness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacredbut the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, andyou shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answerwhich when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued ad-viser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines ofthe church. On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacrednessof 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, Iwill live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but thatof my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferableto that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; theonly wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the pres-ence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeralbut he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badgesand names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decentand 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? Ifan angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comesto me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to

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him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-naturedand modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, unchari-table ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thou-sand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.’ Rough and gracelesswould be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectationof love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none.The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction ofthe doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. I shun father andmother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I wouldwrite on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhatbetter than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explana-tion. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I excludecompany. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, ofmy obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they mypoor? 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 towhom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by allspiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prisonif need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the educationat college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end towhich many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold ReliefSocieties;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb andgive the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have themanhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than therule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a goodaction, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would paya fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their worksare done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are pen-ances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself andnot 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 andunsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet andbleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse thisappeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makesno difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reck-

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oned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I haveintrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, anddo not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellowsany 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, mayserve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. Itis the harder because you will always find those who think theyknow what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in theworld to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to liveafter our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of thecrowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead toyou is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs theimpression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, con-tribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for thegovernment or against it, spread your table like base housekeep-ers,—under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the preciseman you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from yourproper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work,and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what ablindman’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, Ianticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his textand topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new andspontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation ofexamining 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 oneside, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? Heis a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiestaffectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or an-other handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of thesecommunities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false ina 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 usand we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime na-

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ture is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party towhich we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, andacquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a morti-fying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itselfalso in the general history; I mean “the foolish face of praise,” theforced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel atease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. Themuscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurpingwilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the mostdisagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. Andtherefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’sparlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance likehis own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sourfaces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, butare put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet isthe discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of thesenate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knowsthe world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage isdecorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerablethemselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of thepeople is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, whenthe unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is madeto growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion totreat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; areverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have noother data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we areloath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Whydrag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict some-what you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you shouldcontradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom neverto 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

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personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soulcome, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe Godwith shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in thehand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored bylittle statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency agreat soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern him-self with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hardwords and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard wordsagain, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—’Ah, soyou shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to bemisunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, andJesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, andevery pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to bemisunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his willare rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andesand Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nordoes it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like anacrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across,it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life whichGod allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought with-out prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be foundsymmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book shouldsmell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallowover my window should interweave that thread or straw he carriesin his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Characterteaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate theirvirtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue orvice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so theybe each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actionswill be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties arelost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. Onetendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag lineof a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and itstraightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will

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explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your con-formity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have alreadydone singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. IfI can be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must havedone so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will,do right now. Always scorn appearances and you always may. Theforce of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue worktheir health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of thesenate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The conscious-ness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed anunited light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visibleescort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham’svoice, and dignity into Washington’s port, and America into Adams’seye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemera. It is alwaysancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. Welove it and pay it homage because it is not a trap for our love andhomage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an oldimmaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity andconsistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spar-tan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is com-ing to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that heshould wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and thoughI would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront andreprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of thetimes, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the factwhich is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsibleThinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true manbelongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Wherehe is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events.Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or ofsome other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else;it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much thathe must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is acause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbersand time fully to accomplish his design;—and posterity seem to

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follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and forages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions ofminds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded withvirtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthenedshadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; theReformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley;Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called “the height of Rome”;and all history Resolves itself very easily into the biography of a fewstout 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 acharity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists forhim. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself whichcorresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marblegod, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, ora costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gayequipage, and seem to say like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet they allare his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that theywill 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. Thatpopular 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’sbed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony likethe duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularityto the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in theworld a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reasonand finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagi-nation plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are agaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small houseand 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 Alfredand Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did theywear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day,as followed their public and renowned steps. When private menshall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from theactions of kings to those of gentlemen.

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The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magne-tized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbolthe mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loy-alty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble,or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own,make his own scale of men and things and reverse theirs, pay forbenefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law inhis person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signifiedtheir consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right ofevery man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained whenwe inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is theaboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded?What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, withoutparallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beautyeven into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of indepen-dence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the es-sence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity orInstinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst alllater teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behindwhich analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. Forthe sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, inthe soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, fromtime, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously fromthe same source whence their life and being also proceed. We firstshare the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as ap-pearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Hereis the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of thatinspiration which giveth man wisdom and which cannot be deniedwithout impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelli-gence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activ-ity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothingof ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence thiscomes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is atfault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every mandiscriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his invol-untary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a

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perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but heknows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be dis-puted. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving;—the idlestreverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and re-spect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of per-ceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they donot distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that Ichoose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical,but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and incourse of time all mankind,—although it may chance that no onehas seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as thesun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it isprofane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speakethhe should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fillthe world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time,souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date andnew create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives adivine wisdom, old things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, templesfall; 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 an-other. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and inthe universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. If there-fore a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you back-ward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in anothercountry, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better thanthe oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent betterthan the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whencethen this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators againstthe sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physi-ological 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 aninjury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable ofmy being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares notsay ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamedbefore the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my

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window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they arefor what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time tothem. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of itsexistence. 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. Itsnature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But manpostpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but withreverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surroundhim, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy andstrong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects darenot yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I knownot what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set sogreat a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children whorepeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as theygrow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, whenthey come into the point of view which those had who uttered thesesayings, they understand them and are willing to let the words go;for at any time they can use words as good when occasion comes. Ifwe live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to bestrong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new percep-tion, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasuresas old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be assweet 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 remember-ing of the intuition. That thought by what I can now nearest ap-proach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have lifein yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall notdiscern the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face ofman; you shall not hear any name;—the way, the thought, the goodshall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and expe-rience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons thatever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike be-neath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of visionthere is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The

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soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, per-ceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself withknowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the AtlanticOcean, the South Sea; long intervals of time, years, centuries, are ofno account. This which I think and feel underlay every former stateof life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and whatis called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instantof repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to anew state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. Thisone fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that for everdegrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame,confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equallyaside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soulis present there will be power not confident but agent. To talk ofreliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of thatwhich relies because it works and is. Who has more obedience thanI masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him Imust revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric whenwe 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 toprinciples, 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 onevery topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed one. Self-exist-ence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes themeasure 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, aresomewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence andimpure action. I see the same law working in nature for conserva-tion and growth. Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right.Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannothelp itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise andorbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, thevital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations ofthe self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul.

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Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with thecause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men andbooks and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact.Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is herewithin. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our ownlaw demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our na-tive riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor ishis genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communica-tion with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup ofwater of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silentchurch before the service begins, better than any preaching. Howfar off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one witha precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assumethe faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sitaround our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men havemy blood and I have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petu-lance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But yourisolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must beelevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy toimportune 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 confu-sion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weakcuriosity. No man can come near me but through my act. “Whatwe 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, letus at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war andwake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts.This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Checkthis lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expec-tation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we con-verse. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend,I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I amthe truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no lawless than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. Ishall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be

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the chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after anew and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must bemyself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you canlove me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I willstill seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aver-sions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do stronglybefore the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heartappoints. If you are noble, I will love you: if you are not, I will nothurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, butnot in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seekmy own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike yourinterest, 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 lovewhat is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow thetruth it will bring us out safe at last.’—But so may you give thesefriends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to savetheir sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason,when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will theyjustify me and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is arejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the boldsensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. Butthe law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in oneor the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil yourround of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflexway. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father,mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of thesecan upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard andabsolve 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 thepopular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keepits commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast offthe common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himselffor a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight,that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself,

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that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is toothers!

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by dis-tinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew andheart 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 andperfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate lifeand our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent,cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all propor-tion to their practical force and do lean and beg day and night con-tinually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations,our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has cho-sen 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 allheart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finestgenius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an officewithin one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston orNew York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right inbeing disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdylad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all theprofessions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches,edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth,in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth ahundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feelsno shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postponehis life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundredchances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men they arenot leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that withthe exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is theword made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations; that he shouldbe ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts fromhimself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out ofthe window, we pity him no more but thank and revere him;—andthat teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor and make hisname dear to all history.

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It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolutionin all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in theireducation; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association;in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they calla holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroadand asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreignvirtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural,and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular com-modity, any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the con-templation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It isthe soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of Godpronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a pri-vate end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unityin 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 ofthe farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rowerkneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard through-out nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, 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 thewant of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities if youcan thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work andalready the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base.We come to them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry forcompany, instead of imparting to them truth and health in roughelectric shocks, putting them once more in communication withtheir own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Wel-come evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For himall doors are flung wide; him all tongues greet, all honors crown, alleyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces himbecause he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caressand celebrate him because he held on his way and scorned our dis-

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approbation. The gods love him because men hated him. “To thepersevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.”

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds adisease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, ‘Letnot God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man withus, and we will obey.’ Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God inmy brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recitesfables merely of his brother’s, or his brother’s brother’s God. Everynew mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommonactivity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, aFourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a newsystem. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to thenumber of the objects it touches and brings within reach of thepupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds andchurches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind act-ing on the elemental thought of duty, and man’s relation to theHighest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pu-pil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the newterminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a newearth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that thepupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of hismaster’s mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classification is idol-ized, passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, sothat the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizonwith the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem tothem hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imaginehow you aliens have any right to see,—how you can see; ‘It must besomehow that you stole the light from us.’ They do not yet perceivethat light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, eveninto theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they arehonest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be toostrait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and theimmortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-col-ored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling,whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for alleducated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece ven-

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erable 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 ourplace. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, andwhen his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from hishouse, or into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make mensensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes, the mis-sionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sover-eign and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globefor the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man isfirst domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of findingsomewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, orto get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from him-self, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, inPalmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated asthey. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us theindifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, Ican 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, iden-tical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect tobe intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxi-cated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsound-ness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vaga-bond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our mindstravel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; andwhat is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses arebuilt with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign orna-ments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow thePast and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they haveflourished. 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 doneand the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doricor the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thoughtand quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the Ameri-

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can artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be doneby him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, thewants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he willcreate a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, andtaste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can presentevery moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultiva-tion; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extem-poraneous half possession. That which each can do best, none buthis Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, tillthat person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could havetaught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructedFranklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man isa unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he couldnot borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study ofShakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hopetoo much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you anutterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, ortrowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but differentfrom all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, withthousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hearwhat these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the samepitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of onenature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thyheart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so doesour spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvementof society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains onthe other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civi-lized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change isnot amelioration. For every thing that is given something is taken.Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrastbetween the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with awatch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the nakedNew Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat and an undi-vided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of

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the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost his aborigi-nal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broadaxe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struckthe blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to hisgrave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of hisfeet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support ofmuscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tellthe hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and sobeing sure of the information when he wants it, the man in thestreet does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not ob-serve; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendarof the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair hismemory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increasesthe number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machin-ery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinementsome energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments andforms some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but inChristendom where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in thestandard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were.A singular equality may be observed between the great men of thefirst and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, andphilosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater menthan Plutarch’s heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Notin time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras,Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really oftheir 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 ofeach period are only its costume and do not invigorate men. Theharm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudsonand Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats as to as-tonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resourcesof science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a moresplendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Colum-bus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to seethe periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery which

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were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries be-fore. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned theimprovements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, andyet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted offalling back on naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. TheEmperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Cases,“without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries and carriages,until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receivehis supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread him-self.”

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of whichit is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from thevalley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons whomake up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience withthem.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on govern-ments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have lookedaway from themselves and at things so long that they have come toesteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of prop-erty, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them tobe assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other bywhat each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man be-comes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature.Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental,—cameto him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is nothaving; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merelylies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But thatwhich a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the manacquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers,or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but per-petually renews itself wherever the man breathes. “Thy lot or por-tion of life,” said the Caliph Ali, “is seeking after thee; therefore beat rest from seeking after it.” Our dependence on these foreign goodsleads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political partiesmeet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse and witheach new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! TheDemocrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young

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patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyesand arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions andvote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the Goddeign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the re-verse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support and standsalone that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker byevery recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Asknothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm col-umn must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee.He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he haslooked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throwshimself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, standsin the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as aman who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands onhis head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, andgain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlaw-ful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellorsof God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained thewheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rota-tions. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick orthe return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raisesyour spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do notbelieve it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing canbring you peace but the triumph of principles.

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COMPCOMPCOMPCOMPCOMPENSAENSAENSAENSAENSATIONTIONTIONTIONTION

The wings of Time are black and white,Pied with morning and with night.Mountain tall and ocean deepTrembling balance duly keep.In changing moon, in tidal wave,Glows the feud of Want and Have.Gauge of more and less through spaceElectric star and pencil plays.The lonely Earth amid the ballsThat 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:Though 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 desertsAnd 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 seaAnd, like thy shadow, follow thee.

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III. COMPIII. COMPIII. COMPIII. COMPIII. COMPENSAENSAENSAENSAENSATIONTIONTIONTIONTION

EVER SINCE I WAS A BOY I have wished to write a discourse on Com-pensation; for it seemed to me when very young that on this subjectlife was ahead of theology and the people knew more than the preach-ers taught. The documents too from which the doctrine is to bedrawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay alwaysbefore me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, thebread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm and thedwelling-house; greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influenceof character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to mealso that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the presentaction 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 eter-nal love, conversing with that which he knows was always and al-ways must be, because it really is now. It appeared moreover that ifthis doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to thosebright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, itwould be a star in many dark hours and crooked passages in ourjourney, that would not suffer us to lose our way.

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon atchurch. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfoldedin the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He as-sumed that judgment is not executed in this world; that the wickedare successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged fromreason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both par-ties in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congre-gation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe when the meetingbroke up they separated without remark on the sermon.

Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preachermean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Wasit that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had

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by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; andthat a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by givingthem the like gratifications another day,—bank-stock and doubloons,venison and champagne? This must be the compensation intended;for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? tolove and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimateinference the disciple would draw was,—’We are to have such agood time as the sinners have now’;—or, to push it to its extremeimport,—’You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, ifwe could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.’

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are suc-cessful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacherconsisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of whatconstitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convictingthe world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; theomnipotence of the will; and so establishing the standard of goodand ill, of success and falsehood.

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the dayand the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasion-ally they treat the related topics. I think that our popular theologyhas gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitionsit has displaced. But men are better than their theology. Their dailylife gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves thedoctrine behind him in his own experience, and all men feel some-times the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men arewiser than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpitswithout afterthought, if said in conversation would probably bequestioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company onProvidence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence whichconveys 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 somefacts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy be-yond my expectation if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of thiscircle.

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature;in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of wa-

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ters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plantsand animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids ofthe animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in theundulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centrip-etal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Super-induce magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetismtakes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels.To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualismbisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests anotherthing 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. Theentire system of things gets represented in every particle. There issomewhat 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 inthe elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For example,in the animal kingdom the physiologist has observed that no crea-tures are favorites, but a certain compensation balances every giftand every defect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of areduction from another part of the same creature. If the head andneck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short.

The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. What wegain in power is lost in time, and the converse. The periodic orcompensating errors of the planets is another instance. The influ-ences of climate and soil in political history are another. The coldclimate invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, croco-diles, tigers or scorpions.

The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man.Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hathits sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of plea-sure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for itsmoderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain offolly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained somethingelse; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If richesincrease, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gatherstoo much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest;

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swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies andexceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a levelfrom their loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition tend toequalize themselves. There is always some levelling circumstancethat puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate,substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too strongand fierce for society and by temper and position a bad citizen,—amorose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him?—Nature sendshim a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting along inthe dame’s classes at the village school, and love and fear for themsmooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to inteneratethe granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in andkeeps her balance true.

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But thePresident has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly costhim all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preservefor a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, heis content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behindthe throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanentgrandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by forceof will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands, has the chargesof that eminence. With every influx of light comes new danger. Hashe light? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun thatsympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity tonew revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father andmother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and admiresand covets?—he must cast behind him their admiration, and afflictthem by faithfulness to his truth, and become a byword and a hiss-ing.

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to buildor plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long.Res nolunt diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new evilappear, 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 willyield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries willnot convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. Ifthe government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an

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over-charge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercerflame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the ut-most rigors or felicities of condition and to establish themselves withgreat indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under all gov-ernments the influence of character remains the same,—in Turkeyand in New England about alike. Under the primeval despots ofEgypt, history honestly confesses that man must have been as freeas culture could make him.

These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is representedin every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all thepowers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as thenaturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards ahorse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flyingman, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only themain character of the type, but part for part all the details, all theaims, furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of everyother. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of theworld and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblemof human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its courseand its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the wholeman and recite all his destiny.

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannotfind the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears,taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduc-tion that take hold on eternity,—all find room to consist in thesmall creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doc-trine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts inevery moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throwitself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affin-ity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul whichwithin us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspira-tion; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. “It is in theworld, and the world was made by it.” Justice is not postponed. Aperfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. Hoi kuboi Diosaei eupiptousi,—The dice of God are always loaded. The worldlooks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which,

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turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, itsexact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret istold, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrongredressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution is theuniversal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part ap-pears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or alimb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind.

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words integrates itself, in atwofold manner; first in the thing, or in real nature; and secondly inthe circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstancethe retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen bythe soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the under-standing; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over along time and so does not become distinct until after many years.The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they fol-low because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out ofone stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within theflower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, meansand ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect alreadyblooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in theseed.

Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be disparted,we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example,—togratify the senses we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needsof the character. The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated tothe solution of one problem,—how to detach the sensual sweet, thesensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, themoral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean offthis 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 onesoul;’ the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, ‘Have do-minion over all things to the ends of virtue;’ the body would havethe power over things to its own ends.

The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. It wouldbe the only fact. All things shall be added unto it,—power, pleasure,knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody; to set

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up for himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in par-ticulars, to ride that he may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; toeat that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek tobe great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. Theythink 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 thisday it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. Theparted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleas-ant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things,as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We can nomore halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we canget an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow.“Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.”

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwiseseek 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 condi-tions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part they attack himin another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and inthe appearance, it is because he has resisted his life and fled fromhimself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is the failureof 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 bemad,—but for the circumstance, that when the disease began in thewill, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, sothat the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able tosee 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 hecan cut off that which he would have from that which he would nothave. “How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens insilence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied provi-dence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled de-sires!”*

The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of fable, ofhistory, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. It finds a tongue in

*St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I.

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literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind;but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, theyinvoluntarily made amends to reason by tying up the hands of sobad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheusknows one secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another.He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of them:—

“Of all the gods, I only know the keys That ope the solid doors within whose vaults His thunders sleep.”

A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of its moralaim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it wouldseem impossible for any fable to be invented and get any currencywhich was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, andthough Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invul-nerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetisheld him. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for aleaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon’s blood, andthat spot which it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is acrack in every thing God has made. It would seem there is alwaysthis vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares even into thewild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to make bold holi-day and to shake itself free of the old laws, —this back-stroke, thiskick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal; that in nature noth-ing can be given, all things are sold.

This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in theuniverse and lets no offence go unchastised. The Furies they said areattendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress hispath they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls andiron swords and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with thewrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector draggedthe Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles,and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose pointAjax fell. They recorded that when the Thasians erected a statue toTheagenes, a victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it bynight and endeavored to throw it down by repeated blows, until at

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last he moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to death beneathits fall.

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from thoughtabove the will of the writer. That is the best part of each writerwhich has nothing private in it; that which he does not know; thatwhich flowed out of his constitution and not from his too activeinvention; that which in the study of a single artist you might noteasily find, but in the study of many you would abstract as the spiritof them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that earlyHellenic world that I would know. The name and circumstance ofPhidias, however convenient for history, embarrass when we cometo the highest criticism. We are to see that which man was tendingto do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modifiedin doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, ofShakspeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought.

Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs ofall nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the state-ments of an absolute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like thesacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will notallow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say inproverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws, which thepulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in allmarkets and workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is astrue and as omnipresent as that of birds and flies.

All things are double, one against another.—Tit for tat; an eye foran eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure;love for love.—Give and it shall be given you.—He that waterethshall be watered himself.—What will you have? quoth God; pay forit and take it.—Nothing venture, nothing have.—Thou shalt bepaid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less.—Who dothnot work shall not eat.—Harm watch, harm catch. —Curses al-ways recoil on the head of him who imprecates them.—If you put achain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself aroundyour own.—Bad counsel confounds the adviser. —The Devil is anass.

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is overmas-

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tered and characterized above our will by the law of nature. We aimat a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act arrangesitself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of the world.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or againsthis will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by everyword. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ballthrown 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 notwell thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain or to sinkthe boat.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. “No man hadever a point of pride that was not injurious to him,” said Burke. Theexclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himselffrom enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionistin religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself,in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins andyou shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shalllose your own. The senses would make things of all persons; ofwomen, of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, “I will get itfrom his purse or get it from his skin,” is sound philosophy.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speed-ily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simplerelations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him.We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, withperfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon asthere is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, orgood 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 nolonger seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him andfear in me.

All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, all unjust ac-cumulations 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 isa carrion crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, thereis death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our

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cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed andgibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is notthere for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised.

Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantlyfollows the suspension of our voluntary activity. The terror of cloud-less noon, the emerald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the in-stinct which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of anoble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the bal-ance of justice through the heart and mind of man.

Experienced men of the world know very well that it is best to payscot and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for asmall frugality. The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gainedany thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none?Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, hisneighbor’s wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed theinstant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part and of debt onthe other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The transaction re-mains in the memory of himself and his neighbor; and every newtransaction alters according to its nature their relation to each other.He may soon come to see that he had better have broken his ownbones than to have ridden in his neighbor’s coach, and that “the high-est 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 knowthat it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay everyjust demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay;for first or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and eventsmay stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a post-ponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise youwill dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. Benefit isthe end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax islevied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base,—andthat is the one base thing in the universe,—to receive favors and ren-der none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to thosefrom whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit wereceive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent forcent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. Itwill fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.

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Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say theprudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, awagon, a knife, is some application of good sense to a commonwant. It is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy goodsense applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied tonavigation; 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 throughoutyour estate. But because of the dual constitution of things, in laboras in life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself.The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is knowl-edge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs,like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that whichthey represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counter-feited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by realexertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat,the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of materialand moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the op-erative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have thePower; but they who do not the thing have not the power.

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a staketo the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustrationof the perfect compensation of the universe. The absolute balanceof Give and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price,—andif that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is ob-tained, and that it is impossible to get any thing without its price,—is not less sublime in the columns of a leger than in the budgets ofstates, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reactionof nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man seesimplicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the sternethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out byhis plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of theshop-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 as-sume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances ofthe world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are

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arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide worldto hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground,such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox andsquirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannotwipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as toleave no inlet or clew. Some damning circumstance always tran-spires. The laws and substances of nature,—water, snow, wind, gravi-tation,—become penalties to the thief.

On the other hand the law holds with equal sureness for all rightaction. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just,as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good manhas absolute good, which like fire turns every thing to its own na-ture, so that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armiessent against Napoleon, when he approached cast down their colorsand from enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as sick-ness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors:—

“Winds blow and waters roll Strength to the brave, and power and deity, Yet in themselves are nothing.”

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no manhad ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no manhad ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. Thestag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, but whenthe hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in thethicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs tothank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth until hehas contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintancewith the hindrances or talents of men until he has suffered from theone and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of thesame. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society?Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone and acquire habitsof self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shellwith pearl.

Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which

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arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are prickedand stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to belittle. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep.When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learnsomething; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he hasgained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit;has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself onthe side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs tofind his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from himlike a dead skin and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed oninvulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in anewspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel acertain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praiseare spoken for me I feel as one that lies unprotected before his en-emies. In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a bene-factor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valorof the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength ofthe temptation we resist.

The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and en-mity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts andbars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade amark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long under the foolishsuperstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for aman to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be andnot to be at the same time. There is a third silent party to all ourbargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guarantyof the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannotcome to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more.Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer Thepayment is withholden, the better for you; for compound intereston compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat na-ture, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes nodifference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. Amob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of rea-son and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descendingto the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions

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are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; itwould whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflictingfire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who havethese. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines toput out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spiritturns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dis-honored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison, amore illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens theworld; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through theearth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are al-ways arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth isseen and the martyrs are justified.

Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. Theman is all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Everyadvantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine ofcompensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtlesssay, 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 forit; 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, itsown nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul is.Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb andflow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being.Essence, or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being isthe vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallow-ing up all relations, parts and times within itself. Nature, truth, vir-tue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of thesame. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night orshade 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 cannotwork any good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it isworse not to be than to be.

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because thecriminal adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to acrisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunningconfutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he there-fore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and

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the lie with him he so far deceases from nature. In some mannerthere will be a demonstration of the wrong to the understandingalso; but, should we not see it, this deadly deduction makes squarethe eternal account.

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of recti-tude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; nopenalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuousaction I properly am; in a virtuous act I add to the world; I plantinto deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see the dark-ness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess tolove, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes areconsidered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and alwaysaffirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.

His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust. Ourinstinct uses “more” and “less” in application to man, of the pres-ence of the soul, and not of its absence, the brave man is greaterthan the coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a manand not less, than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the goodof virtue, for that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute exist-ence, without any comparative. Material good has its tax, and if itcame without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next windwill blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul’s, and may behad if paid for in nature’s lawful coin, that is, by labor which theheart and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do notearn, for example to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it bringswith it new burdens. I do not wish more external goods,—neitherpossessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is ap-parent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge thatthe compensation exists and that it is not desirable to dig up trea-sure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract theboundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard,—”Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sus-tain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by myown fault.”

In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalitiesof condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinc-tion of More and Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel

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indignation or malevolence towards More? Look at those who haveless 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. Whatshould they do? It seems a great injustice. But see the facts nearlyand these mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them asthe sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all menbeing one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I ammy brother and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and out-done by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and hethat loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I makethe discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me withthe friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied is myown. It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus andShakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer andincorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,—is notthat mine? His wit,—if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

Such also is the natural history of calamity. The changes whichbreak up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisementsof a nature whose law is growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic neces-sity quitting its whole system of things, its friends and home andlaws and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stonycase, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms anew house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual these revo-lutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessantand all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming asit were a transparent fluid membrane through which the living formis seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabricof many dates and of no settled character, in which the man is im-prisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the man of to-dayscarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should be theoutward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circum-stances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us,in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperat-ing with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks.

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. Wedo not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. Weare idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul,

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in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there isany force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. Welinger in the ruins of the old tent where once we had bread andshelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, andnerve us again. We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, sograceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almightysaith, ‘Up and onward for evermore!’ We cannot stay amid the ru-ins. Neither will we rely on the new; and so we walk ever with re-verted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards.

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to theunderstanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutila-tion, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seemsat the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years revealthe deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dearfriend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation,somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it com-monly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epochof infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up awonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allowsthe formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances andthe reception of new influences that prove of the first importance tothe next years; and the man or woman who would have remained asunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sun-shine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of thegardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruitto wide neighborhoods of men.

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SPSPSPSPSPIRITUIRITUIRITUIRITUIRITUAL LAL LAL LAL LAL LAAAAAWSWSWSWSWS

The living Heaven thy prayers respect,House at once and architect,Quarrying man’s rejected hours,Builds therewith eternal towers;Sole and self-commanded works,Fears not undermining days,Grows by decays,And, by the famous might that lurksIn reaction and recoil,Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil;Forging, through swart arms of Offence,The silver seat of Innocence.

IVIVIVIVIV. SP. SP. SP. SP. SPIRITUIRITUIRITUIRITUIRITUAL LAL LAL LAL LAL LAAAAAWSWSWSWSWS

WHEN THE ACT of reflection takes place in the mind, when we lookat ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life isembosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleas-ing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale,but even the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place inthe pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side,the old house, the foolish person, however neglected in the passing,have a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the cham-bers has added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will notknow either deformity or pain. If in the hours of clear reason weshould speak the severest truth, we should say that we had nevermade a sacrifice. In these hours the mind seems so great that noth-ing can be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain, is

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particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. Neither vexa-tions nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever stated his griefs aslightly as he might. Allow for exaggeration in the most patient andsorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite thathas wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful if man willlive the life of nature and not import into his mind difficulties whichare none of his. No man need be perplexed in his speculations. Lethim do and say what strictly belongs to him, and though very igno-rant of books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual ob-structions and doubts. Our young people are diseased with the theo-logical problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination andthe like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road who did not go out of his wayto seek them. These are the soul’s mumps and measles and whoop-ing-coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describetheir health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not knowthese enemies. It is quite another thing that he should be able togive account of his faith and expound to another the theory of hisself-union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet without thisself-knowledge there may be a sylvan strength and integrity in thatwhich he is. “A few strong instincts and a few plain rules” suffice us.

My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they nowtake. The regular course of studies, the years of academical and pro-fessional education have not yielded me better facts than some idlebooks under the bench at the Latin School. What we do not calleducation is more precious than that which we call so. We form noguess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value.And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balkthis natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.

In like manner our moral nature is vitiated by any interference ofour will. People represent virtue as a struggle, and take to them-selves great airs upon their attainments, and the question is every-where vexed when a noble nature is commended, whether the manis not better who strives with temptation. But there is no merit inthe matter. Either God is there or he is not there. We love charactersin proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a

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man thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him.Timoleon’s victories are the best victories, which ran and flowedlike Homer’s verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose actsare all regal, graceful and pleasant as roses, we must thank God thatsuch things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel and say‘Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his nativedevils.’

Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will inall practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe toit. We impute deep-laid far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon;but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. Men of anextraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung,‘Not unto us, not unto us.’ According to the faith of their timesthey have built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian.Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, whichfound in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of whichthey were the visible conductors seemed to the eye their deed. Didthe wires generate the galvanism? It is even true that there was lessin them on which they could reflect than in another; as the virtue ofa pipe is to be smooth and hollow. That which externally seemedwill and immovableness was willingness and self-annihilation. CouldShakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare? Could ever a man of prodi-gious mathematical genius convey to others any insight into hismethods? If he could communicate that secret it would instantlylose its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and the vitalenergy the power to stand and to go.

The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our lifemight be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the worldmight be a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles,convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and thegnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. We interferewith the optimism of nature; for whenever we get this vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able todiscern that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves.

The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature willnot have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or ourlearning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we

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come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention,or the Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into thefields and woods, she says to us, ‘So hot? my little Sir.’

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddleand have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues ofsociety are odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence isunhappy. Our Sunday-schools and churches and pauper-societiesare yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. There arenatural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but donot arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way?Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us countryfolk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have notdollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn;poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the chil-dren will bring flowers. And why drag this dead weight of a Sun-day-school over the whole Christendom? It is natural and beautifulthat childhood should inquire and maturity should teach; but it istime enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shutup the young people against their will in a pew and force the chil-dren to ask them questions for an hour against their will.

If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds andmodes of living seem a travesty of truth. Our society is encumberedby ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts whichthe Romans built over hill and dale and which are superseded by thediscovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It is aChinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standingarmy, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly appointedempire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answerjust as well.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by shortways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched,the leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walkingof man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual laborand works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and soforth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth,moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever.

The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity

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of a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out and thor-oughly knows how knowledge is acquired and character formed, isa pedant. The simplicity of nature is not that which may easily beread, but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.We judge of a man’s wisdom by his hope, knowing that the percep-tion of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. Thewild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names andreputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the world forsects and schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the timejejune babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Everyman sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may beaffirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he isvery wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you sayof the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no permanent wiseman except in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, aswe read or paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have beenourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again,—not in the lowcircumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to thesoul.

A little consideration of what takes place around us every daywould show us that a higher law than that of our will regulatesevents; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; thatonly in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and bycontenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief andlove,—a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O mybrothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature and overthe will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. Ithas so infused its strong enchantment into nature that we prosperwhen we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its crea-tures our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts.The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need onlyobey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening weshall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully yourplace and occupation and associates and modes of action and ofentertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that pre-cludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is areality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle

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of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom itfloats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and aperfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Thenyou are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If wewill not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work,the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on farbetter than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning ofthe world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, wouldorganize itself, as do now the rose and the air and the sun.

I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by which Iwould distinguish what is commonly called choice among men, andwhich is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of theappetites, and not a whole act of the man. But that which I callright or goodness, is the choice of my constitution; and that whichI call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstancedesirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my yearstend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must hold a man ame-nable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It isnot an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom ofhis trade. What business has he with an evil trade? Has he not acalling in his character?

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There isone direction in which all space is open to him. He has facultiessilently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship ina river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one, on thatside all obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over adeepening channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call de-pend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soulincarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easyto him and good when it is done, but which no other man can do.He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, themore difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other.His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height ofthe pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every manhas this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man hasany other call. The pretence that he has another call, a summons byname and personal election and outward “signs that mark him ex-

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traordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanaticism, andbetrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the indi-viduals, and no respect of persons therein.

By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply,and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own workhe unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it hasnot abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every manshould let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make afrank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him.The common experience is that the man fits himself as well as hecan to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, andtends it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine hemoves; the man is lost. Until he can manage to communicate him-self to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet findhis vocation. He must find in that an outlet for his character, so thathe may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him byhis thinking and character make it liberal. Whatever he knows andthinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let himcommunicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. Fool-ish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thingyou do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of yourcharacter and aims.

We like only such actions as have already long had the praise ofmen, and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be di-vinely done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some placesor duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganinican extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp,and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors,and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habita-tion and company in which he was hidden. What we call obscurecondition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose po-etry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as envi-able and renowned as any. In our estimates let us take a lesson fromkings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the im-pressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makesits own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make habitually a newestimate,—that is elevation.

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What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope orfear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid butthat which is in his nature and which must grow out of him as longas he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summerleaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signsof his infinite productiveness.

He may have his own. A man’s genius, the quality that differenceshim from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences,the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit,determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method,a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his liketo him wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multi-plicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of thosebooms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts,words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being ableto say why, remain because they have a relation to him not less realfor being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to himas they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainlyseek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds.What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man whoknocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons as worthy go by it, towhom I give no regard. It is enough that these particulars speak tome. A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a fewincidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportionto their apparent significance if you measure them by the ordinarystandards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, anddo not reject them and cast about for illustration and facts moreusual in literature. What your heart thinks great is great. The soul’semphasis is always right.

Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius theman has the highest right. Everywhere he may take what belongs tohis spiritual estate, nor can he take any thing else though all doorswere open, nor can all the force of men hinder him from taking somuch. It is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has a rightto know it. It will tell itself. That mood into which a friend canbring us is his dominion over us. To the thoughts of that state of

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mind he has a right. All the secrets of that state of mind he cancompel. This is a law which statesmen use in practice. All the terrorsof the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable tocommand her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. deNarbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners andname of that interest, saying that it was indispensable to send to theold aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, infact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne in less thana fortnight penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.

Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet aman may come to find that the strongest of defences and of ties,—that he has been understood; and he who has received an opinionmay come to find it the most inconvenient of bonds.

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupilswill become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which hepublishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and angles,it is vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that;—it will find itslevel in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your doctrine with-out being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of the curve,and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We arealways reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect in-telligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A man can-not bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and like-mindedmen will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secretcan he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? There-fore, Aristotle said of his works, “They are published and not pub-lished.”

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, how-ever near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most pre-cious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser,—thesecrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens usevermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we can-not see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives whenthe mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when wesaw them not is like a dream.

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. Theworld is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for

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all its pride. “Earth fills her lap with splendors” not her own. Thevale of Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky.There are as good earth and water in a thousand places, yet howunaffecting!

People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon andthe trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries orthe valets of painters have any elevation of thought, or that librar-ians are wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanor ofa polished and noble person which are lost upon the eye of a churl.These are like the stars whose light has not yet reached us.

He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of ourwaking knowledge. The visions of the night bear some proportionto the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are exaggerations of thesins of the day. We see our evil affections embodied in bad physiog-nomies. On the Alps the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadowmagnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific.“My children,” said an old man to his boys scared by a figure in thedark entry, “my children, you will never see any thing worse thanyourselves.” As in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of theworld every man sees himself in colossal, without knowing that it ishimself. The good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his owngood to his own evil. Every quality of his mind is magnified in someone acquaintance, and every emotion of his heart in some one. Heis like a quincunx of trees, which counts five,—east, west, north, orsouth; or an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And why not? Hecleaves to one person and avoids another, according to their likenessor unlikeness to himself, truly seeking himself in his associates andmoreover in his trade and habits and gestures and meats and drinks,and comes at last to be faithfully represented by every view you takeof his circumstances.

He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire but whatwe are? You have observed a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, thatauthor is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the bookinto your two hands and read your eyes out, you will never findwhat I find. If any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of thewisdom or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished,as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews’ tongue. It is with a good book

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as it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gentle-men, it is all to no purpose; he is not their fellow. Every societyprotects itself. The company is perfectly safe, and he is not one ofthem, though his body is in the room.

What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which adjustthe relation of all persons to each other by the mathematical mea-sure of their havings and beings? Gertrude is enamored of Guy;how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners! tolive with him were life indeed, and no purchase is too great; andheaven and earth are moved to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy;but what now avails how high, how aristocratic, how Roman hismien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, in thetheatre and in the billiard-room, and she has no aims, no conversa-tion that can enchant her graceful lord?

He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but nature.The most wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions reallyavail very little with us; but nearness or likeness of nature,—howbeautiful is the ease of its victory! Persons approach us, famous fortheir beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder fortheir charms and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the hourand the company,—with very imperfect result. To be sure it wouldbe ungrateful in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all isdone, a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comesto us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were theblood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone,instead of another having come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed;it is a sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sinthat we must court friends by compliance to the customs of society,to its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can bemy friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, thatsoul to which I do not decline and which does not decline to me,but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all myexperience. The scholar forgets himself and apes the customs andcostumes of the man of the world to deserve the smile of beauty,and follows some giddy girl, not yet taught by religious passion toknow the noble woman with all that is serene, oracular and beauti-ful in her soul. Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing

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is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by whichalone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosingassociates by others’ eyes.

He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptationthat a man may have that allowance he takes. Take the place andattitude which belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The worldmust be just. It leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to sethis own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It willcertainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, whetheryou sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you see yourwork produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with therevolution of the stars.

The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach bydoing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate himself he canteach, but not by words. He teaches who gives, and he learns whoreceives. There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into thesame state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place;he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by no unfriendlychance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. But yourpropositions run out of one ear as they ran in at the other. We see itadvertised that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the Fourth ofJuly, and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics’ Association, and we donot go thither, because we know that these gentlemen will not com-municate their own character and experience to the company. If wehad reason to expect such a confidence we should go through allinconvenience and opposition. The sick would be carried in litters.But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, agag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.

A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We have yet tolearn that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. Itmust affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evi-dence. The sentence must also contain its own apology for beingspoken.

The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematicallymeasurable by its depth of thought. How much water does it draw?If it awaken you to think, if it lift you from your feet with the greatvoice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent,

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over the minds of men; if the pages instruct you not, they will dielike flies in the hour. The way to speak and write what shall not goout of fashion is to speak and write sincerely. The argument whichhas not power to reach my own practice, I may well doubt will failto reach yours. But take Sidney’s maxim:—”Look in thy heart, andwrite.” He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. Thatstatement only is fit to be made public which you have come at inattempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The writer who takes hissubject from his ear and not from his heart, should know that hehas lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the emptybook has gathered all its praise, and half the people say, ‘What po-etry! what genius!’ it still needs fuel to make fire. That only profitswhich is profitable. Life alone can impart life; and though we shouldburst we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There isno luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdictupon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hourwhen it appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed,not to be entreated and not to be overawed, decides upon everyman’s title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve tolast. Gilt edges, vellum and morocco, and presentation-copies to allthe libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its in-trinsic date. It must go with all Walpole’s Noble and Royal Authorsto its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure for a night,but Moses and Homer stand for ever. There are not in the world atany one time more than a dozen persons who read and understandPlato,—never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet toevery generation these come duly down, for the sake of those fewpersons, as if God brought them in his hand. “No book,” saidBentley, “was ever written down by any but itself.” The permanenceof all books is fixed by no effort, friendly or hostile, but by theirown specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents tothe constant mind of man. “Do not trouble yourself too much aboutthe light on your statue,” said Michael Angelo to the young sculp-tor; “the light of the public square will test its value.”

In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depthof the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew notthat he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear.

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What he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thingin the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment.But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting of his finger or theeating of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called an institution.

These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius ofnature; they show the direction of the stream. But the stream isblood; every drop is alive. Truth has not single victories; all thingsare its organs,—not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. Thelaws of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health.Our philosophy is affirmative and readily accepts the testimony ofnegative facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a divine neces-sity every fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deedand word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose,expresses character. If you act you show character; if you sit still, ifyou sleep, you show it. You think because you have spoken nothingwhen others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on thechurch, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, onthe college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expectedwith curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence an-swers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-menhave learned that you cannot help them; for oracles speak. Doth notWisdom cry and Understanding put forth her voice?

Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation.Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. Facesnever lie, it is said. No man need be deceived who will study thechanges of expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit oftruth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends andspeaks falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes asquint.

I have heard an experienced counsellor say that he never fearedthe effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heartthat his client ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe it hisunbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his protestations, andwill become their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, ofwhatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artistwas when he made it. That which we do not believe we cannotadequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often. It

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was this conviction which Swedenborg expressed when he describeda group of persons in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain toarticulate a proposition which they did not believe; but they couldnot, though they twisted and folded their lips even to indignation.

A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity con-cerning other people’s estimate of us, and all fear of remaining un-known is not less so. If a man know that he can do any thing,—thathe can do it better than any one else,—he has a pledge of the ac-knowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of judg-ment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every ac-tion he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. In every troop of boysthat whoop and run in each yard and square, a new-comer is as welland accurately weighed in the course of a few days and stampedwith his right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of hisstrength, speed and temper. A stranger comes from a distant school,with better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and preten-sions; an older boy says to himself, ‘It’s of no use; we shall find himout to-morrow.’ ‘What has he done?’ is the divine question whichsearches men and transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sitin any chair of the world nor be distinguished for his hour fromHomer and Washington; but there need never be any doubt con-cerning the respective ability of human beings. Pretension may sitstill, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real great-ness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, norchristianized the world, nor abolished slavery.

As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness asthere is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils respect vir-tue. The high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will always in-struct and command mankind. Never was a sincere word utterlylost. Never a magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is someheart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for that he isworth. What he is engraves itself on his face, on his form, on hisfortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails him nothing, boast-ing nothing. There is confession in the glances of our eyes, in oursmiles, in salutations, and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him,mars all his good impression. Men know not why they do not trusthim, but they do not trust him. His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of

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mean expression in his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of thebeast on the back of the head, and writes O fool! fool! on the fore-head of a king.

If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. A manmay play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sandshall seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep hisfoolish counsel. A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerousacts and the want of due knowledge,—all blab. Can a cook, aChiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confuciusexclaimed,—”How can a man be concealed? How can a man beconcealed?”

On the other hand, the hero fears not that if he withhold theavowal of a just and brave act it will go unwitnessed and unloved.One knows it,—himself, —and is pledged by it to sweetness ofpeace and to nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a betterproclamation of it than the relating of the incident. Virtue is theadherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of thingsmakes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of beingfor seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described as saying,I am.

The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem.Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the pathof the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let uslie low in the Lord’s power and learn that truth alone makes rich andgreat.

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not havingvisited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit himnow. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in theeits lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend bysecret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimentedhim with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benedic-tion. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed reflection ofgifts. Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, ex-cuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearancesbecause the substance is not.

We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magni-tude. We call the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a mer-

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chant, or a porter. We adore an institution, and do not see that it isfounded on a thought which we have. But real action is in silentmoments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of ourchoice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, andthe like, but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in athought which revises our entire manner of life and says,—’Thushast thou done, but it were better thus.’ And all our after years, likemenials, serve and wait on this, and according to their ability ex-ecute its will. This revisal or correction is a constant force, which, asa tendency, reaches through our lifetime. The object of the man,the aim of these moments, is to make daylight shine through him,to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without obstruction, sothat on what point soever of his doing your eye falls it shall reporttruly of his character, whether it be his diet, his house, his religiousforms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now he is nothomogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse;there are no thorough lights, but the eye of the beholder is puzzled,detecting many unlike tendencies and a life not yet at one.

Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to dispar-age that man we are and that form of being assigned to us? A goodman is contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do notwish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world ofthis hour than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true,excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, ‘He acted and thou sitteststill.’ I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to bealso good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, wouldhave sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven islarge, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Whyshould we be busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inactionare alike to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercockand one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is appar-ent in both.

I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainlyshows me that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not as-sume the post? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unsea-sonable apologies and vain modesty and imagine my being hereimpertinent? less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being there?

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and that the soul did not know its own needs? Besides, without anyreasoning on the matter, I have no discontent. The good soul nour-ishes me and unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment tome every day. I will not meanly decline the immensity of good,because I have heard that it has come to others in another shape.

Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? ’Tis atrick of the senses,—no more. We know that the ancestor of everyaction is a thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to be anything unless it have an outside badge,—some Gentoo diet, or Quakercoat, or Calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or agreat donation, or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrastingaction to testify that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sunand sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act.

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All actionis of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated withthe celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek onepeace by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gaddinginto the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history before Ihave justified myself to my benefactors? How dare I readWashington’s campaigns when I have not answered the letters ofmy own correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of ourreading? It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after ourneighbors. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting,—

“He knew not what to say, and so he swore.”

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,—He knew notwhat to do, and so he read. I can think of nothing to fill my timewith, and I find the Life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compli-ment to pay to Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General Wash-ington. My time should be as good as their time,—my facts, my netof relations, as good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather let me domy work so well that other idlers if they choose may compare mytexture with the texture of these and find it identical with the best.

This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, thisunder-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the fact of anidentical nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in

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one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, thegood poet, the good player. The poet uses the names of Caesar, ofTamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius; the painter uses the conven-tional story of the Virgin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not there-fore defer to the nature of these accidental men, of these stock he-roes. If the poet write a true drama, then he is Caesar, and not theplayer of Caesar; then the selfsame strain of thought, emotion aspure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, and aheart as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, which on the waves of itslove and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid and precious inthe world,—palaces, gardens, money, navies, kingdoms,—markingits own incomparable worth by the slight it casts on these gauds ofmen;—these all are his, and by the power of these he rouses thenations. Let a man believe in God, and not in names and places andpersons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman’s form, poorand sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, andsweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams can-not be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appearsupreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life,and all people will get mops and brooms; until, lo! suddenly thegreat soul has enshrined itself in some other form and done someother deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature.

We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil thatmeasure the accumulations of the subtle element. We know the au-thentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million dis-guises.

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LoLoLoLoLovvvvveeeee

“I was as a gem concealed;Me my burning ray revealed.”

Koran .

VVVVV. Lo. Lo. Lo. Lo. Lovvvvveeeee

EVERY PROMISE OF THE SOUL has innumerable fulfilments; each of itsjoys ripens into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing,forelooking, in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already abenevolence which shall lose all particular regards in its general light.The introduction to this felicity is in a private and tender relation ofone to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like acertain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period andworks a revolution in his mind and body; unites him to his race,pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him withnew sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the senses, opensthe imagination, adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes,establishes marriage, and gives permanence to human society.

The natural association of the sentiment of love with the heydayof the blood seems to require that in order to portray it in vividtints, which every youth and maid should confess to be true to theirthrobbing experience, one must not be too old. The delicious fan-cies of youth reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chill-ing with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore I knowI incur the imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism fromthose who compose the Court and Parliament of Love. But fromthese formidable censors I shall appeal to my seniors. For it is to be

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considered that this passion of which we speak, though it beginwith the young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather suffers no onewho is truly its servant to grow old, but makes the aged participa-tors of it not less than the tender maiden, though in a different andnobler sort. For it is a fire that kindling its first embers in the nar-row nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out ofanother private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beamsupon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart ofall, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generousflames. It matters not therefore whether we attempt to describe thepassion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He who paints it atthe first period will lose some of its later, he who paints it at the last,some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be hoped that by patience andthe Muses’ aid we may attain to that inward view of the law whichshall describe a truth ever young and beautiful, so central that itshall commend itself to the eye, at whatever angle beholden.

And the first condition is, that we must leave a too close andlingering adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as it appearedin hope and not in history. For each man sees his own life defacedand disfigured, as the life of man is not, to his imagination. Eachman sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, whilst thatof other men looks fair and ideal. Let any man go back to thosedelicious relations which make the beauty of his life, which havegiven him sincerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink andmoan. Alas! I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter inmature life the remembrances of budding joy and cover every belovedname. Every thing is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, oras truth. But all is sour, if seen as experience. Details are melancholy;the plan is seemly and noble. In the actual world—the painful king-dom of time and place—dwell care, and canker, and fear. Withthought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round itall the Muses sing. But grief cleaves to names, and persons, and thepartial interests of to-day and yesterday.

The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which thistopic of personal relations usurps in the conversation of society. Whatdo we wish to know of any worthy person so much, as how he hassped in the history of this sentiment? What books in the circulating

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libraries circulate? How we glow over these novels of passion, whenthe story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fas-tens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betrayingaffection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before,and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance,or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We un-derstand them, and take the warmest interest in the development ofthe romance. All mankind love a lover. The earliest demonstrationsof complacency and kindness are nature’s most winning pictures. Itis the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. The rudevillage boy teases the girls about the school-house door;—but to-day he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child dis-posing her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and instantly itseems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and wasa sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough,but one alone distances him; and these two little neighbors, thatwere so close just now, have learned to respect each other’s personal-ity. Or who can avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who go into the country shops to buy askein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour about nothingwith the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the village theyare on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and without anycoquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out in thispretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, yet plainly do theyestablish between them and the good boy the most agreeable, con-fiding relations, what with their fun and their earnest, about Edgarand Jonas and Almira, and who was invited to the party, and whodanced at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school wouldbegin, and other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. Byand by that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will heknow where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk suchas Milton deplores as incident to scholars and great men.

I have been told that in some public discourses of mine my rever-ence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personalrelations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such dis-paraging words. For persons are love’s world, and the coldest phi-losopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here

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in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, astreasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. Forthough the celestial rapture falling out of heaven seizes only uponthose of tender age, and although a beauty overpowering all analysisor comparison and putting us quite beside ourselves we can seldomsee after thirty years, yet the remembrance of these visions outlastsall other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the oldestbrows. But here is a strange fact; it may seem to many men, inrevising their experience, that they have no fairer page in their life’sbook than the delicious memory of some passages wherein affec-tion contrived to give a witchcraft, surpassing the deep attraction ofits own truth, to a parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. Inlooking backward they may find that several things which were notthe charm have more reality to this groping memory than the charmitself which embalmed them. But be our experience in particularswhat it may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that power to hisheart and brain, which created all things anew; which was the dawnin him of music, poetry, and art; which made the face of natureradiant with purple light, the morning and the night varied en-chantments; when a single tone of one voice could make the heartbound, and the most trivial circumstance associated with one formis put in the amber of memory; when he became all eye when onewas present, and all memory when one was gone; when the youthbecomes a watcher of windows and studious of a glove, a veil, aribbon, or the wheels of a carriage; when no place is too solitary andnone too silent, for him who has richer company and sweeter con-versation in his new thoughts than any old friends, though best andpurest, can give him; for the figures, the motions, the words of thebeloved object are not like other images written in water, but, asPlutarch said, “enamelled in fire,” and make the study of midnight:—

“Thou art not gone being gone, where’er thou art, Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.”

In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollec-tion of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must bedrugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of

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the matter who said of love,—

“All other pleasures are not worth its pains:”

and when the day was not long enough, but the night too must beconsumed in keen recollections; when the head boiled all night onthe pillow with the generous deed it resolved on; when the moon-light was a pleasing fever and the stars were letters and the flowersciphers and the air was coined into song; when all business seemedan impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro inthe streets, mere pictures.

The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all thingsalive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on theboughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The notes arealmost articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks on them. Thetrees of the forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers havegrown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with the secretwhich they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. Inthe green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men:—

“Fountain-heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves, Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are safely housed, save bats and owls, A midnight bell, a passing groan,— These are the sounds we feed upon.”

Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace ofsweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks witharms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; hefeels the blood of the violet, the clover and the lily in his veins; andhe talks with the brook that wets his foot.

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty havemade him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that menhave written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who can-not write well under any other circumstances.

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the

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sentiment; it makes the clown gentle and gives the coward heart.Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage todefy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved ob-ject. In giving him to another it still more gives him to himself. Heis a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, anda religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer ap-pertain to his family and society; he is somewhat; he is a person; heis a soul.

And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influencewhich is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revela-tion to man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleasesto shine, which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seemssufficient to itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancypoor and solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, in-forming loveliness is society for itself; and she teaches his eye whyBeauty was pictured with Loves and Graces attending her steps.Her existence makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all otherpersons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifieshim by carrying out her own being into somewhat impersonal, large,mundane, so that the maiden stands to him for a representative ofall select things and virtues. For that reason the lover never seespersonal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others.His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or topersons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except tosummer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the songof birds.

The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who can ana-lyze the nameless charm which glances from one and another faceand form? We are touched with emotions of tenderness and com-placency, but we cannot find whereat this dainty emotion, this wan-dering gleam, points. It is destroyed for the imagination by anyattempt to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to any relationsof friendship or love known and described in society, but, as it seemsto me, to a quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of tran-scendent delicacy and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint andforeshow. We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opalinedoves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles

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the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defy-ing all attempts at appropriation and use. What else did Jean PaulRichter signify, when he said to music, “Away! away! thou speakest tome of things which in all my endless life I have not found, and shallnot find.” The same fluency may be observed in every work of theplastic arts. The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incom-prehensible, when it is passing out of criticism and can no longer bedefined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an activeimagination to go with it and to say what it is in the act of doing. Thegod or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition fromthat which is representable to the senses, to that which is not. Thenfirst it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And ofpoetry the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but whenit astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after the unattainable.Concerning it Landor inquires “whether it is not to be referred tosome purer state of sensation and existence.”

In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and itselfwhen it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story with-out an end; when it suggests gleams and visions and not earthlysatisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; whenhe cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feelmore right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sun-set.

Hence arose the saying, “If I love you, what is that to you?” Wesay so because we feel that what we love is not in your will, butabove it. It is not you, but your radiance. It is that which you knownot in yourself and can never know.

This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty which theancient writers delighted in; for they said that the soul of man, em-bodied here on earth, went roaming up and down in quest of thatother world of its own out of which it came into this, but was soonstupefied by the light of the natural sun, and unable to see any otherobjects than those of this world, which are but shadows of real things.Therefore the Deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, that itmay avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of thecelestial good and fair; and the man beholding such a person in thefemale sex runs to her and finds the highest joy in contemplating

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the form, movement, and intelligence of this person, because it sug-gests to him the presence of that which indeed is within the beauty,and the cause of the beauty.

If however, from too much conversing with material objects, thesoul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reapednothing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise whichbeauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions andsuggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes throughthe body and falls to admire strokes of character, and the loverscontemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, thenthey pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame theirlove of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as thesun puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pureand hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself excellent,magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love ofthese nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passesfrom loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the onebeautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the societyof all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate heattains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty hascontracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this withmutual joy that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blem-ishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all help andcomfort in curing the same. And beholding in many souls the traitsof the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is di-vine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the loverascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of theDivinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls.

Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages.The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleiustaught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truerunfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudencewhich presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upperworld, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravestdiscourse has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, whenthis sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, andwithers the hope and affection of human nature by teaching that

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marriage signifies nothing but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’slife has no other aim.

But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in ourplay. In the procession of the soul from within outward, it enlargesits circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the lightproceeding from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on thingsnearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, on thehouse and yard and passengers, on the circle of household acquain-tance, on politics and geography and history. But things are evergrouping themselves according to higher or more interior laws.Neighborhood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees theirpower over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for har-mony between the soul and the circumstance, the progressive, ide-alizing instinct, predominate later, and the step backward from thehigher to the lower relations is impossible. Thus even love, which isthe deification of persons, must become more impersonal every day.Of this at first it gives no hint. Little think the youth and maiden whoare glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full ofmutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceedfrom this new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation beginsfirst in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchangingglances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fierypassion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object asa perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the body is whollyensouled:—

“Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say her body thought.”

Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make theheavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,—than Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms,religion, are all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul whichis all form. The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, incomparisons of their regards. When alone, they solace themselveswith the remembered image of the other. Does that other see the

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same star, the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel thesame emotion, that now delight me? They try and weigh their affec-tion, and adding up costly advantages, friends, opportunities, prop-erties, exult in discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would giveall as a ransom for the beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair ofwhich shall be harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these chil-dren. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to them, as to all. Love prays.It makes covenants with Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate.The union which is thus effected and which adds a new value toevery atom in nature—for it transmutes every thread throughoutthe whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in anew and sweeter element—is yet a temporary state. Not always canflowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart,content the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself at last fromthese endearments, as toys, and puts on the harness and aspires to vastand universal aims. The soul which is in the soul of each, craving aperfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects and disproportion inthe behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation andpain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness,signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. Theyappear and reappear and continue to attract; but the regard changes,quits the sign and attaches to the substance. This repairs the woundedaffection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutationand combination of all possible positions of the parties, to employ allthe resources of each and acquaint each with the strength and weak-ness of the other. For it is the nature and end of this relation, that theyshould represent the human race to each other. All that is in the world,which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the textureof man, of woman:—

“The person love does to us fit, Like manna, has the taste of all in it.”

The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. The angelsthat inhabit this temple of the body appear at the windows, and thegnomes and vices also. By all the virtues they are united. If there bevirtue, all the vices are known as such; they confess and flee. Their

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once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losingin violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough goodunderstanding. They resign each other without complaint to thegood offices which man and woman are severally appointed to dis-charge in time, and exchange the passion which once could not losesight of its object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whetherpresent or absent, of each other’s designs. At last they discover thatall which at first drew them together,—those once sacred features,that magical play of charms,—was deciduous, had a prospectiveend, like the scaffolding by which the house was built; and the pu-rification of the intellect and the heart from year to year is the realmarriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly abovetheir consciousness. Looking at these aims with which two persons,a man and a woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are shutup in one house to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, Ido not wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies thiscrisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the in-stincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and intellect and artemulate each other in the gifts and the melody they bring to theepithalamium.

Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, norperson, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom every-where, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are by na-ture observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.But we are often made to feel that our affections are but tents of anight. Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affectionschange, as the objects of thought do. There are moments when theaffections rule and absorb the man and make his happiness depen-dent on a person or persons. But in health the mind is presentlyseen again,—its overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immu-table lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as cloudsmust lose their finite character and blend with God, to attain theirown perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose any thing bythe progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. Thatwhich is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be suc-ceeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so onfor ever.

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FRIENDSHIPFRIENDSHIPFRIENDSHIPFRIENDSHIPFRIENDSHIP

A ruddy drop of manly bloodThe surging sea outweighs;The world uncertain comes and goes,The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled,And, after many a year,Glowed unexhausted kindlinessLike daily sunrise there.My careful heart was free again,—O friend, my bosom said,Through thee alone the sky is arched,Through thee the rose is red,All things through thee take nobler formAnd look beyond the earth,The mill-round of our fate appearsA sun-path in thy worth.Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.

VI. FRIENDSHIPVI. FRIENDSHIPVI. FRIENDSHIPVI. FRIENDSHIPVI. FRIENDSHIP

WE HAVE A GREAT DEAL more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugreall the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the wholehuman 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 thestreet, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly re-

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joice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams.The heart knoweth.

The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certaincordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common speech, the emo-tions of benevolence and complacency which are felt towards oth-ers are likened to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much moreswift, more active, more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations.From the highest degree of passionate love to the lowest degree ofgood-will, they make the sweetness of life.

Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. Thescholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnishhim with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary towrite a letter to a friend,—and forthwith troops of gentle thoughtsinvest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. See, in any housewhere virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approachof a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and announced,and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of ahousehold. His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that wouldwelcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into their places, theold coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if theycan. 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. Heis what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we ask how weshould stand related in conversation and action with such a man, andare uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation with him. Wetalk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richermemory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For longhours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communica-tions, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they who sitby, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise atour unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude hispartialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is allover. He has heard the first, the last and best he will ever hear from us.He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension are oldacquaintances. Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dressand the dinner,—but the throbbing of the heart and the communica-tions of the soul, no more.

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What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a youngworld for me again? What so delicious as a just and firm encounterof two, in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their approachto 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,—allduties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms allradiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewherein the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be contentand cheerful alone for a thousand years.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends,the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who dailyshoweth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embracesolitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, thelovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass mygate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,—a pos-session for all time. Nor is Nature so poor but she gives me this joyseveral times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a newweb of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiatethemselves, we shall by and by stand in a new world of our owncreation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe.My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them tome. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I findthem, or rather not I but the Deity in me and in them derides andcancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, cir-cumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one.High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world forme to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all mythoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard,—poetry withoutstop,—hymn, ode and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Museschanting still. Will these too separate themselves from me again, orsome of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them isso pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my lifebeing thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomso-ever is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be.

I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It isalmost dangerous to me to “crush the sweet poison of misused wine”

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of the affections. A new person is to me a great event and hindersme from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons whichhave given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yieldsno 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 weremine, and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he ispraised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seemsbetter than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Ev-ery thing that is his,—his name, his form, his dress, books and in-struments,—fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new andlarger from his mouth.

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their anal-ogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality ofthe 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 thegolden hour of friendship we are surprised with shades of suspicionand unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues inwhich he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we haveascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does notrespect men as it respects itself. In strict science all persons underliethe same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to coolour love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysiantemple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall notfear to know them for what they are. Their essence is not less beau-tiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its ap-prehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly to science, thoughfor chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazardthe production of the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, thoughit should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who standsunited with his thought conceives magnificently of himself. He isconscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniformparticular failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold or force, canbe any match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own povertymore than on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tanta-mount 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

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of the party you praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks Ishall not like him, unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I cannotdeny it, O friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includesthee also in its pied and painted immensity,—thee also, comparedwith whom all else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, asJustice 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 hatand cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth friends as the tree putsforth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, ex-trudes the old leaf? The law of nature is alternation for evermore.Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environsitself with friends that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintanceor solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its con-versation or society. This method betrays itself along the whole his-tory of our personal relations. The instinct of affection revives thehope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of insulationrecalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in the searchafter friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he mightwrite 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 moodwith thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to thycomings and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attain-able, and I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yetdare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thouart to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, or never.

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity and notfor life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, andnot cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, be-cause we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of thetough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austereand eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But wehave 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

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many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend notsacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate himto ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms,which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry intostale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association mustbe a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma ofthe flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approacheach other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even ofthe virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed withlong foresight we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, bysudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animalspirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do notplay us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.

I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference howmany friends I have and what content I can find in conversing witheach, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunkunequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomesmean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my otherfriends my asylum:—

“The valiant warrior famoused for fight, After a hundred victories, once foiled, Is from the book of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.”

Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathyare a tough husk in which a delicate organization is protected frompremature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any ofthe best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it. Respect thenaturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, andworks in duration in which Alps and Andes come and go as rain-bows. The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price ofrashness. Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but forthe total worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in ourregards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with anaudacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossibleto be overturned, of his foundations.

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The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I leave,for the time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak ofthat select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and whicheven leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so muchis this purer, and nothing is so much divine.

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest cour-age. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, butthe solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experi-ence, what do we know of nature or of ourselves? Not one step hasman taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In onecondemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But thesweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliancewith my brother’s soul is the nut itself whereof all nature and allthought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters afriend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertainhim a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relationand honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for that cov-enant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games where thefirst-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes himself forcontests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he alone isvictor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the deli-cacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts offortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that contestdepends on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles. Thereare two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each sosovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason whyeither should be first named. One is truth. A friend is a person withwhom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrivedat last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may dropeven those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and sec-ond thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him withthe simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meetsanother. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority,only to the highest rank; that being permitted to speak truth, ashaving none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone issincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. Weparry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by

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gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought fromhim under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certainreligious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all complimentand commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he en-countered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he wasresisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting—as indeedhe could not help doing—for some time in this course, he attainedto the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance intotrue relations with him. No man would think of speaking falselywith him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or read-ing-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity tothe like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, whatsymbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most ofus society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. Tostand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insan-ity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meetrequires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame,some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head thatis 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 stipulationon my part. A friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I whoalone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirmwith equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of mybeing, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreignform; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of na-ture.

The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden tomen by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, bylucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance andbadge and trifle, —but we can scarce believe that so much charactercan subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be soblessed and we so pure that we can offer him tenderness? When aman becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune. I findvery little written directly to the heart of this matter in books. Andyet I have one text which I cannot choose but remember. My au-thor says, —“I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I

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effectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom I am themost devoted.” I wish that friendship should have feet, as well aseyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before itvaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it isquite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love a com-modity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neigh-borhood; 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 histhread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the mu-nicipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate theprostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldlyalliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-ped-dlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days ofencounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners atthe best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the moststrict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of whichwe have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the rela-tions and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days andgraceful gifts and country rambles, but also for rough roads andhard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps companywith the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We are todignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man’s life, andembellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. It should never fall intosomething usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive andadd rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.

Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, eachso well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so circum-stanced (for even in that particular, a poet says, love demands thatthe parties be altogether paired), that its satisfaction can very sel-dom be assured. It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of thosewho are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more thantwo. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I havenever known so high a fellowship as others. I please my imaginationmore with a circle of godlike men and women variously related toeach other and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I

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find this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, which isthe practice and consummation of friendship. Do not mix waterstoo much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have veryuseful and cheering discourse at several times with two several men,but let all three of you come together and you shall not have onenew and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but threecannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searchingsort. In good company there is never such discourse between two,across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In goodcompany the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul ex-actly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present. Nopartialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, ofwife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only hemay then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party,and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, whichgood sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversa-tion, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

No two men but being left alone with each other enter into sim-pler relations. Yet it is affinity that determines which two shall con-verse. Unrelated men give little joy to each other, will never suspectthe latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent forconversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individu-als. Conversation is an evanescent relation,—no more. A man isreputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, saya word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with asmuch reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in theshade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy histhought he will regain his tongue.

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlike-ness that piques each with the presence of power and of consent inthe other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather thanthat my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympa-thy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Lethim not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in hisbeing mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked fora manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush ofconcession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his

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echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to dowithout it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. Theremust be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an allianceof two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared,before yet they recognize the deep identity which, beneath thesedisparities, unites them.

He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is surethat greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift tointermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this.Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate thebirths of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. Wetalk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverenceis a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he hasmerits that are not yours, and that you cannot honor if you mustneeds hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those meritsroom; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend’sbuttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a strangerin a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiestground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, andto suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblestbenefit.

Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Whyshould we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them?Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go tohis house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why bevisited by him at your own? Are these things material to our cov-enant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. Amessage, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but notnews, nor pottage. I can get politics and chat and neighborly conve-niences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of myfriend be to me poetic, pure, universal and great as nature itself?Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonderbar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of wavinggrass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to thatstandard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mienand action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortifyand enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a

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thought, but hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart.Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable,devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrownand cast aside. The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, arenot to be seen if the eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter andfrom 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. Itprofanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as itwill not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier exist-ence than all the annals of heroism have yet made good.

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudiceits perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must beour own before we can be another’s. There is at least this satisfactionin crime, according to the Latin proverb;—you can speak to youraccomplice on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, aequat. To thosewhom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect ofself-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. Therecan never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect,until in their dialogue each stands for the whole world.

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur ofspirit we can. Let us be silent,—so we may hear the whisper of thegods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what youshould say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? Nomatter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There areinnumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aughtis to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until thenecessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night availthemselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the onlyway to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer a manby getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flees the fasterfrom you, and you shall never catch a true glance of his eye. We seethe noble afar off and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late,—very late,—we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, noconsuetudes or habits of society would be of any avail to establish usin such relations with them as we desire,—but solely the uprise ofnature in us to the same degree it is in them; then shall we meet aswater with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall

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not want them, for we are already they. In the last analysis, love isonly the reflection of a man’s own worthiness from other men. Menhave sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they wouldsignify that in their friend each loved his own soul.

The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the lesseasy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in theworld. Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sub-lime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in otherregions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, anddaring, which can love us and which we can love. We may con-gratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blundersand of shame, is passed in solitude, and when we are finished menwe shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonishedby what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship withcheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betraysus into rash and foolish alliances which no god attends. By persist-ing in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain the great.You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach offalse relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world,—those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature atonce, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shad-ows merely.

It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so wecould lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popularviews 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 thatwe have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we readbooks, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal usto ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the Europe, anold faded garment of dead persons; the books, their ghosts. Let usdrop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bidour dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, ‘Who are you?Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.’ Ah! seest thou not, Obrother, 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? Afriend is Janus-faced; he looks to the past and the future. He is the

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child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, andthe harbinger of a greater friend.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would havethem where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must havesociety on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightestcause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend. If he is greathe makes me so great that I cannot descend to converse. In the greatdays, presentiments hover before me in the firmament. I ought thento dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go outthat I may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding intothe 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 andstudy their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me acertain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual as-tronomy or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathieswith you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishingof 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 Ishall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were bymy side again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind onlywith new visions; not with yourself but with your lustres, and I shallnot be able any more than now to converse with you. So I will oweto my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from themnot what they have but what they are. They shall give me that whichproperly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But theyshall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We willmeet as though we met not, and part as though we parted not.

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry afriendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on theother. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver isnot capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wideand vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflectingplanet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. Ifhe is unequal he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thyown shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soarand burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace tolove unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unre-

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quited. True love transcends the unworthy object and dwells andbroods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles,it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth and feels its independencythe surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treach-ery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a totalmagnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity.It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.

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PRPRPRPRPRUDENCEUDENCEUDENCEUDENCEUDENCE

Theme no poet gladly sung,Fair to old and foul to young;Scorn not thou the love of parts,And the articles of arts.Grandeur of the perfect sphereThanks the atoms that cohere.

VII. PRVII. PRVII. PRVII. PRVII. PRUDENCEUDENCEUDENCEUDENCEUDENCE

WHAT RIGHT HAVE I to write on Prudence, whereof I have Little, andthat of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding andgoing without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not inadroit steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make moneyspend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my gardendiscovers that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, andhate lubricity and people without perception. Then I have the sametitle to write on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness.We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experi-ence. We paint those qualities which we do not possess. The poetadmires the man of energy and tactics; the merchant breeds his sonfor the church or the bar; and where a man is not vain and egotisticyou shall find what he has not by his praise. Moreover it would behardly honest in me not to balance these fine lyric words of Loveand Friendship with words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt tomy senses is real and constant, not to own it in passing.

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appear-ances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God takingthought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It is

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content to seek health of body by complying with physical condi-tions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect.

The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist foritself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law ofshows recognizes the co-presence of other laws and knows that itsown office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre whereit works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it isthe Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beautyof laws within the narrow scope of the senses.

There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It issufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class live tothe utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good.Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as thepoet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A third class liveabove 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 mantraverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly, thenalso has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst he pitches his tenton this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build housesand barns thereon,—reverencing the splendor of the God which hesees bursting through each chink and cranny.

The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of abase prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed noother faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear;a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes,which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one questionof any project,—Will it bake bread? This is a disease like a thicken-ing of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed. But culture,revealing the high origin of the apparent world and aiming at theperfection of the man as the end, degrades every thing else, as healthand bodily life, into means. It sees prudence not to be a severalfaculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue conversing with the bodyand its wants. Cultivated men always feel and speak so, as if a greatfortune, the achievement of a civil or social measure, great personalinfluence, a graceful and commanding address, had their value asproofs of the energy of the spirit. If a man lose his balance and

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immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, hemay be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.

The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sotsand cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature’s joke, andtherefore literature’s. The true prudence limits this sensualism byadmitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. This recog-nition once made, the order of the world and the distribution ofaffairs and times, being studied with the co-perception of their sub-ordinate place, will reward any degree of attention. For our exist-ence, thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and the return-ing moon and the periods which they mark,—so susceptible to cli-mate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond ofsplendor and so tender to hunger and cold and debt,—reads all itsprimary lessons out of these books.

Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is. It takesthe laws of the world whereby man’s being is conditioned, as theyare, and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their proper good. Itrespects space and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity,growth and death. There revolve, to give bound and period to hisbeing on all sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky:here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its chemicalroutine. Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with naturallaws and fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions andproperties which impose new restraints on the young inhabitant.

We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We live by the airwhich blows around us and we are poisoned by the air that is toocold or too hot, too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so vacant,indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into triflesand tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I wantwood 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 withoutheart or brains, and the stinging recollection of an injurious or veryawkward word,—these eat up the hours. Do what we can, summerwill have its flies; if we walk in the woods we must feed mosquitos;if we go a-fishing we must expect a wet coat. Then climate is a greatimpediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care ofthe weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.

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We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hoursand years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhab-itant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellowwho enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may rambleall day at will. At night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, andwherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even,spread a table for his morning meal. The northerner is perforce ahouseholder. He must brew, bake, salt and preserve his food, andpile wood and coal. But as it happens that not one stroke can laborlay to without some new acquaintance with nature, and as nature isinexhaustibly significant, the inhabitants of these climates have al-ways excelled the southerner in force. Such is the value of thesematters that a man who knows other things can never know toomuch of these. Let him have accurate perceptions. Let him, if hehave hands, handle; if eyes, measure and discriminate; let him ac-cept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural history and econom-ics; the more he has, the less is he willing to spare any one. Time isalways bringing the occasions that disclose their value. Some wis-dom comes out of every natural and innocent action. The domesticman, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock and the airswhich the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaceswhich others never dream of. The application of means to endsinsures victory and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shopthan in the tactics of party or of war. The good husband finds methodas efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed or in the harvestingof fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of theDepartment of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, orgets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and storedwith nails, gimlet, pincers, screwdriver and chisel. Herein he tastesan old joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, pressesand corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping.His garden or his poultry-yard tells him many pleasant anecdotes.One might find argument for optimism in the abundant flow ofthis saccharine element of pleasure in every suburb and extremity ofthe good world. Let a man keep the law,—any law,—and his waywill be strown with satisfactions. There is more difference in thequality of our pleasures than in the amount.

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On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of prudence. Ifyou 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 treeof cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of looseand imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, —”If the child says he looked out of this window, when he looked outof that,—whip him.” Our American character is marked by a morethan average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by thecurrency of the byword, “No mistake.” But the discomfort ofunpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of inattentionto the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The beautiful laws oftime and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes anddens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead ofhoney it will yield us bees. Our words and actions to be fair must betimely. A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the scythe in themornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the soundof a whetstone or mower’s rifle when it is too late in the season tomake hay? Scatter-brained and “afternoon” men spoil much morethan their own affair in spoiling the temper of those who deal withthem. I have seen a criticism on some paintings, of which I amreminded when I see the shiftless and unhappy men who are nottrue to their senses. The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man ofsuperior understanding, said,—”I have sometimes remarked in thepresence of great works of art, and just now especially in Dresden,how much a certain property contributes to the effect which giveslife to the figures, and to the life an irresistible truth. This propertyis the hitting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. Imean the placing the figures firm upon their feet, making the handsgrasp, and fastening the eyes on the spot where they should look.Even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools—let them be drawn everso correctly—lose all effect so soon as they lack the resting upontheir centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and oscillatingappearance. The Raphael in the Dresden gallery (the only greatlyaffecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most pas-sionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship theVirgin and Child. Nevertheless, it awakens a deeper impression thanthe contortions of ten crucified martyrs. For beside all the resistless

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beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree the property of theperpendicularity of all the figures.” This perpendicularity we demandof 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 themdiscriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed,call a spade a spade, give us facts, and honor their own senses withtrust.

But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence? Who isprudent? The men we call greatest are least in this kingdom. Thereis a certain fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, distorting ourmodes of living and making every law our enemy, which seems atlast to have aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to ponder thequestion of Reform. We must call the highest prudence to counsel,and ask why health and beauty and genius should now be the ex-ception rather than the rule of human nature? We do not know theproperties of plants and animals and the laws of nature, throughour 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, butshould announce and lead the civil code and the day’s work. But nowthe two things seem irreconcilably parted. We have violated law uponlaw until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a coin-cidence between reason and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beautyshould be the dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as sensa-tion; but it is rare. Health or sound organization should be universal.Genius should be the child of genius and every child should be in-spired; but now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere isit pure. We call partial half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent whichconverts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day that it may dineand sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered by men of parts, asthey are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their giftsto 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 findbeauty in rites and bounds that resist it.

We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality withal, butno gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call histransgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them

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nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art never taughthim lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where hehad not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from his holiness,and less for every defect of common sense. On him who scornedthe world as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He thatdespiseth small things will perish by little and little. Goethe’s Tassois very likely to be a pretty fair historical portrait, and that is truetragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine grief when some tyran-nous Richard the Third oppresses and slays a score of innocent per-sons, as when Antonio and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong eachother. One living after the maxims of this world and consistent andtrue to them, the other fired with all divine sentiments, yet graspingalso at the pleasures of sense, without submitting to their law. Thatis a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso’s is no infrequentcase in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent tempera-ment, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presentlyunfortunate, querulous, a “discomfortable cousin,” a thorn to him-self and to others.

The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higherthan prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense iswanted, he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Caesar was not so great;to-day, the felon at the gallows’ foot is not more miserable. Yester-day, radiant with the light of an ideal world in which he lives, thefirst of men; and now oppressed by wants and by sickness, for whichhe must thank himself. He resembles the pitiful drivellers whomtravellers describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, whoskulk about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; and atevening, when the bazaars are open, slink to the opium-shop, swal-low their morsel and become tranquil and glorified seers. And whohas not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for yearswith paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhaustedand fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins?

Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and morti-fications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, ashints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of hisown labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social position,have their importance, and he will give them their due. Let him

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esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections the exactmeasure of our deviations. Let him make the night night, and theday day. Let him control the habit of expense. Let him see that asmuch wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on anempire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. The laws ofthe world are written out for him on every piece of money in hishand. There is nothing he will not be the better for knowing, wereit only the wisdom of Poor Richard, or the State-Street prudence ofbuying by the acre to sell by the foot; or the thrift of the agricultur-ist, to stick a tree between whiles, because it will grow whilst hesleeps; or the prudence which consists in husbanding little strokesof 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 rentand is liable to loss; if invested, is liable to depreciation of the par-ticular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the iron is white; keepthe rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and thecart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very muchon the extreme of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, good, bad,clean, ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which it passes themoff. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes goout of fashion, nor money stocks depreciate, in the few swift mo-ments in which the Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in hispossession. In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn thatevery thing in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and notby luck, and that what he sows he reaps. By diligence and self-com-mand let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, that he maynot stand in bitter and false relations to other men; for the bestgood of wealth is freedom. Let him practise the minor virtues. Howmuch of human life is lost in waiting! let him not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many words and promises are promises of con-versation! Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded and sealedscrap of paper float round the globe in a pine ship and come safe tothe eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let

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him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across allthese distracting forces, and keep a slender human word among thestorms, distances and accidents that drive us hither and thither, and,by persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to re-deem its pledge after months and years in the most distant climates.

We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking atthat only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetri-cal. The prudence which secures an outward well-being is not to bestudied by one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studiedby another, but they are reconcilable. Prudence concerns the presenttime, persons, property and existing forms. But as every fact hath itsroots in the soul, and if the soul were changed, would cease to be, orwould become some other thing,—the proper administration ofoutward things will always rest on a just apprehension of their causeand origin; that is, the good man will be the wise man, and thesingle-hearted the politic man. Every violation of truth is not only asort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human soci-ety. On the most profitable lie the course of events presently lays adestructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the partieson a convenient footing and makes their business a friendship. Trustmen and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they willshow themselves great, though they make an exception in your fa-vor to all their rules of trade.

So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence doesnot consist in evasion or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes towalk in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screwhimself up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst ap-prehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fear ground-less. The Latin proverb says, “In battles the eye is first overcome.”Entire self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerousto life than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited bysoldiers of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire givento it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. Theterrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin.The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itselfat as vigorous a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of June.

In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear

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comes readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the otherparty; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak andapparently strong. To himself he seems weak; to others, formidable.You are afraid of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solici-tous of the good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will.But the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, ifyou rip up his claims, is as thin and timid as any, and the peace ofsociety is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid, and theother dares not. Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring themhand to hand, and they are a feeble folk.

It is a proverb that ‘courtesy costs nothing’; but calculation mightcome to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, butkindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize thedividing lines, but meet on what common ground remains,—if onlythat the sun shines and the rain rains for both; the area will widenvery fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on whichthe eye had fastened have melted into air. If they set out to contend,Saint Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, paltry,hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pureand chosen souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feignto confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and nota thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery,modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false po-sition with your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility andbitterness. Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs,assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying pre-cisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll outyour paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.So at least shall you get an adequate deliverance. The natural mo-tions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones thatyou will never do yourself justice in dispute. The thought is notthen taken hold of by the right handle, does not show itself propor-tioned and in its true bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and halfwitness. But assume a consent and it shall presently be granted,since really and underneath their external diversities, all men are ofone heart and mind.

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Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an un-friendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, asif we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. Butwhence and when? To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itselfwhilst we are preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers dieoff from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women,approaching us. We are too old to regard fashion, too old to expectpatronage of any greater or more powerful. Let us suck the sweet-ness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. Theseold shoes are easy to the feet. Undoubtedly we can easily pick faultsin our company, can easily whisper names prouder, and that ticklethe fancy more. Every man’s imagination hath its friends; and lifewould be dearer with such companions. But if you cannot havethem on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the De-ity but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their virtueescapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds.

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility and all the virtuesrange themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing apresent well-being. I do not know if all matter will be found to bemade of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the worldof manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and begin where wewill we are pretty sure in a short space to be mumbling our tencommandments.

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HERHERHERHERHEROISMOISMOISMOISMOISM

“Paradise is under the shadow of swords.”MMMMMahometahometahometahometahomet.

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves,Sugar spends to fatten slaves,Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;Thunderclouds are Jove’s festoons,Drooping oft in wreaths of dreadLightning-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.

VIII. HERVIII. HERVIII. HERVIII. HERVIII. HEROISMOISMOISMOISMOISM

IN THE ELDER ENGLISH DRAMATISTS, and mainly in the plays Of Beau-mont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as ifa noble behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age ascolor is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro orValerio enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor ex-claims, ‘This is a gentleman,—and proffers civilities without end;but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight inpersonal advantages there is in their plays a certain heroic cast ofcharacter and dialogue, —as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover,the Double Marriage,—wherein the speaker is so earnest and cor-dial and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, onthe slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into po-

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etry. Among many texts take the following. The Roman Martiushas conquered Athens,—all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles,the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latterinflames Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but Sophocleswill not ask his life, although assured that a word will save him, andthe execution of both proceeds:—

Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell.Soph_. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, Yonder, above, ‘bout

Ariadne’s crown, My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste.Dor. Stay, Sophocles,—with this tie up my sight; Let not soft

nature so transformed be, And lose her gentler sexed humanity, Tomake me see my lord bleed. So, ’tis well; Never one object under-neath the sun Will I behold before my Sophocles: Farewell; nowteach the Romans how to die.

Mar. Dost know what ‘t is 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 knavesfor the society Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part Atlast from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, And prove thy forti-tude what then ‘t will 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 thelast duty This trunk can do the gods.

Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, Or Martius’ heart will leap out at hismouth. This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord, And live with all thefreedom you were wont. O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me Withvirtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, My hand shall cast theequick into my urn, Ere thou transgress this knot of piety.

Val. What ails my brother?Soph. Martius, O Martius, Thou now hast found a way to con-

quer me.Dor. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak Fit words to fol-

low such a deed as this?Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, With his disdain of fortune

and of death, Captived himself, has captivated me, And though my

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arm hath ta’en his body here, His soul hath subjugated Martius’soul. By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; He hath no flesh, and spiritcannot be gyved; Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, AndMartius walks now in captivity.”

I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or ora-tion that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to thesame tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not oftenthe sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth’s “Laodamia,” and the odeof “Dion,” and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scottwill sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale givenby Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste forwhat is manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic traitin his favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pic-tures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In theHarleian Miscellanies there is an account of the battle of Lutzenwhich deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley’s History of theSaracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor, with admirationall the more evident on the part of the narrator that he seems tothink that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some properprotestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the literature of Hero-ism we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and histo-rian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, theScipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to himthan to all the ancient writers. Each of his “Lives” is a refutation tothe despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theo-rists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools but of the blood,shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame.

We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more than books ofpolitical science or of private economy. Life is a festival only to thewise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears aragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature byour predecessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also.The disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of natu-ral, intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation tobreed such compound misery. A lock-jaw that bends a man’s headback to his heels; hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife andbabes; insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, fam-

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ine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet byhuman crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappilyno man exists who has not in his own person become to some amounta stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in theexpiation.

Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of the man. Lethim hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that thecommonwealth and his own well-being require that he should notgo dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected andneither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputa-tion and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity dare the gibbetand the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude ofhis behavior.

Towards all this external evil the man within the breast assumes awarlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed withthe infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul wegive the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safetyand ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trustwhich slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its en-ergy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mindof such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleas-antly and as it were merrily he advances to his own music, alike infrightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhatnot holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are of onetexture with it; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual nature.Nevertheless we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat ingreat actions which does not allow us to go behind them. Heroismfeels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and althougha different breeding, different religion and greater intellectual activ-ity would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yetfor the hero that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not opento the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of theunschooled man that he finds a quality in him that is negligent ofexpense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, andknows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual andall possible antagonists.

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Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and incontradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Hero-ism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character.Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, forevery man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own properpath than any one else. Therefore just and wise men take umbrageat his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be inunison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is cleancontrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itselfby its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own successat last, and then the prudent also extol.

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 speaksthe truth and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful ofpetty calculations and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of anundaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jestis the littleness of common life. That false prudence which dotes onhealth and wealth is the butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism,like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say then tothe sugar-plums and cats’-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quar-rels, cards and custard, which rack the wit of all society? What joyshas kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be nointerval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not mas-ter of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the greathoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red,and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, layingtraps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or arifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the greatsoul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. “Indeed, thesehumble considerations make me out of love with greatness. What adisgrace is it to me to take note how many pairs of silk stockings thouhast, namely, these and those that were the peach-colored ones; or tobear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, and one otherfor use!”

Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the in-convenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly

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the loss of time and the unusual display; the soul of a better qualitythrusts back the unseasonable economy into the vaults of life, andsays, I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will pro-vide. Ibn Hankal, the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic ex-treme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. “When I was in SogdI saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were openand fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, andwas told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a hun-dred years. Strangers may present themselves at any hour and inwhatever number; the master has amply provided for the receptionof the men and their animals, and is never happier than when theytarry for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any othercountry.” The magnanimous know very well that they who givetime, or money, or shelter, to the stranger,—so it be done for loveand not for ostentation,—do, as it were, put God under obligationto them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. In someway the time they seem to lose is redeemed and the pains they seemto take remunerate themselves. These men fan the flame of humanlove and raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But hos-pitality must be for service and not for show, or it pulls down thehost. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splen-dor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath,but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fairwater than belong to city feasts.

The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to dono dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its el-egancy, not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be sol-emn and denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking,the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great manscarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing orprecision his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot, the IndianApostle, drank water, and said of wine,—”It is a noble, generousliquor and we should be humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember,water was made before it.” Better still is the temperance of KingDavid, who poured out on the ground unto the Lord the waterwhich three of his warriors had brought him to drink, at the peril oftheir lives.

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It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword after the battleof Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides,—”O Virtue! I have fol-lowed thee through life, and I find thee at last but a shade.” I doubtnot the hero is slandered by this report. The heroic soul does notsell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and tosleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue isenough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and canvery well abide its loss.

But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic class, is thegood-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which com-mon 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 ratethat they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show ofsorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio, charged withpeculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to wait forjustification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands,but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates’s condemnation ofhimself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during hislife, and Sir Thomas More’s playfulness at the scaffold, are of thesame strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Sea Voyage,” Juletta tellsthe stout captain and his company,—

JJJJJul.ul.ul.ul.ul. Why, slaves, ’tis in our power to hang ye. MMMMMasterasterasterasteraster..... Very likely, ’Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye.

These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and glowof a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take any thingseriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it werethe building of cities or the eradication of old and foolish churchesand nations which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world behindthem, and play their own game in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the world; and such would appear, could we see the humanrace assembled in vision, like little children frolicking together,though to the eyes of mankind at large they wear a stately and sol-emn garb of works and influences.

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The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romanceover the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench atschool, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. Allthese great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in be-holding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are alreadydomesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this greatguest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be todisabuse 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 themuses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame.Massachusetts, Connecticut River and Boston Bay you think paltryplaces, 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 learnthat here is best. See to it only that thyself is here, and art andnature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the Supreme Being shallnot be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas,brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus to dieupon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. TheJerseys were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, andLondon streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes his climategenial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved element ofall delicate spirits. That country is the fairest which is inhabited bythe noblest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in readingthe actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney,Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by thedepth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or nationalsplendor, and act on principles that should interest man and nature inthe length of our days.

We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men whonever ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraor-dinary. When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speakof society, of books, of religion, we admire their superiority; theyseem to throw contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirsis the tone of a youthful giant who is sent to work revolutions. Butthey enter an active profession and the forming Colossus shrinks tothe common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal ten-

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dencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the toughworld had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sunto plough in its furrow. They found no example and no companion,and their heart fainted. What then? The lesson they gave in theirfirst aspirations is yet true; and a better valor and a purer truth shallone day organize their belief. Or why should a woman liken herselfto any historical woman, and think, because Sappho, or Sevigne, orDe Stael, or the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultiva-tion do not satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis, nonecan,—certainly not she? Why not? She has a new and unattemptedproblem to solve, perchance that of the happiest nature that everbloomed. Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way,accept the hint of each new experience, search in turn all the objectsthat solicit her eye, that she may learn the power and the charm ofher new-born being, which is the kindling of a new dawn in therecesses of space. The fair girl who repels interference by a decidedand proud choice of influences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful andlofty, 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 youlive, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.

The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have wan-dering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have cho-sen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourselfwith the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the commonthe heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of peoplein those actions whose excellence is that they outrun sympathy andappeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother, because it isfit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you findthat prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own act,and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange andextravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was ahigh counsel that I once heard given to a young person,—“Always dowhat you are afraid to do.” A simple manly character need never makean apology, but should regard its past action with the calmness ofPhocion, when he admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yetdid not regret his dissuasion from the battle.

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There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find con-solation in the thought—this is a part of my constitution, part ofmy relation and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenantedwith me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make aridiculous figure? Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of ourmoney. Greatness once and for ever has done with opinion. We tellour charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not be-cause we think they have great merit, but for our justification. It is acapital blunder; as you discover when another man recites his chari-ties.

To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with somerigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be anasceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those whoare at ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood withthe great multitude of suffering men. And not only need we breatheand exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, ofdebt, of solitude, of unpopularity,—but it behooves the wise manto look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimesinvade men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms of dis-ease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of violent death.

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day nevershines in which this element may not work. The circumstances ofman, we say, are historically somewhat better in this country and atthis hour than perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture.It will not now run against an axe at the first step out of the beatentrack of opinion. But whoso is heroic will always find crises to tryhis edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, andthe trial of persecution always proceeds. It is but the other day thatthe brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for therights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better notto live.

I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, butafter the counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much associa-tion, let him go home much, and stablish himself in those courseshe approves. The unremitting retention of simple and high senti-ments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that temperwhich will work with honor, if need be in the tumult, or on the

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scaffold. Whatever outrages have happened to men may befall aman again; and very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs ofa decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers and thegibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his mind and with whatsweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast he can fix hissense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may please thenext newspaper and a sufficient number of his neighbors to pro-nounce his opinions incendiary.

It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptibleheart to see how quick a bound Nature has set to the utmost inflic-tion of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemycan follow us:—

“Let them rave:Thou art quiet in thy grave.”

In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour whenwe are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy those who haveseen safely to an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees themeanness of our politics but inly congratulates Washington that heis long already wrapped in his shroud, and for ever safe; that he waslaid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated inhim? Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave who are nomore to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and awaitwith curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversationwith finite nature? And yet the love that will be annihilated soonerthan treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirmsitself no mortal but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextin-guishable being.

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THE OTHE OTHE OTHE OTHE OVER-SOULVER-SOULVER-SOULVER-SOULVER-SOUL

“But souls that of his own good life partake,He loves as his own self; dear as his eyeThey are to Him: He’ll never them forsake:When they shall die, then God himself shall die:They live, they live in blest eternity.”

HHHHHenrenrenrenrenry My My My My Mororororore.e.e.e.e.

Space is ample, east and west,But two cannot go abreast,Cannot travel in it two:Yonder masterful cuckooCrowds every egg out of the nest,Quick or dead, except its own;A spell is laid on sod and stone,Night and Day ‘ve been tampered with,Every quality and pithSurcharged and sultry with a powerThat works its will on age and hour.

IX. IX. IX. IX. IX. THE OTHE OTHE OTHE OTHE OVER-SOULVER-SOULVER-SOULVER-SOULVER-SOUL

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE between one and another hour of life in theirauthority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; ourvice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments whichconstrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other expe-riences. For this reason the argument which is always forthcomingto silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namelythe appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and vain. We give up the

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past to the objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope.We grant that human life is mean, but how did we find out that itwas mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this olddiscontent? What is the universal sense of want and ignorance, butthe fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim?Why do men feel that the natural history of man has never beenwritten, but he is always leaving behind what you have said of him,and it becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless? The phi-losophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers andmagazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained,in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a streamwhose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from weknow not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience thatsomewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I amconstrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for eventsthan the will I call mine.

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowingriver, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streamsinto me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprisedspectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and putmyself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy thevisions come.

The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, andthe only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in whichwe rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; thatUnity, that Over-soul, within which every man’s particular being iscontained and made one with all other; that common heart of whichall sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action issubmission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks andtalents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speakfrom his character and not from his tongue, and which evermoretends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom andvirtue and power and beauty. We live in succession, in division, inparts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole;the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and par-ticle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power inwhich we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not

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only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeingand the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and theobject, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, themoon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are theshining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom canthe horoscope of the ages be read, and by falling back on our betterthoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate inevery man, we can know what it saith. Every man’s words who speaksfrom that life must sound vain to those who do not dwell in thesame thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My wordsdo not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itselfcan inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical,and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, evenby profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven ofthis deity and to report what hints I have collected of the transcen-dent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.

If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in re-morse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams,wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade,—the droll disguisesonly magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it on ourdistinct notice,—we shall catch many hints that will broaden andlighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes to show thatthe soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all theorgans; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation,of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, buta light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellectand the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,—animmensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From withinor from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes usaware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade ofa temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we com-monly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, doesnot, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself.Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would helet it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. Whenit breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes throughhis will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love.

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And the blindness of the intellect begins when it would be some-thing of itself. The weakness of the will begins when the individualwould be something of himself. All reform aims in some one par-ticular to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, toengage us to obey.

Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. Languagecannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtile. It is undefinable,unmeasurable; but we know that it pervades and contains us. Weknow that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says,“God comes to see us without bell;” that is, as there is no screen orceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there nobar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, thecause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side tothe deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we seeand know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever gotabove, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when ourinterests tempt us to wound them.

The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is made knownby its independency of those limitations which circumscribe us onevery hand. The soul circumscribes all things. As I have said, it con-tradicts all experience. In like manner it abolishes time and space.The influence of the senses has in most men overpowered the mindto that degree that the walls of time and space have come to lookreal and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is,in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inversemeasures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time,—

“Can crowd eternity into an hour, Or stretch an hour to eternity.”

We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age thanthat which is measured from the year of our natural birth. Somethoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought isthe love of the universal and eternal beauty. Every man parts fromthat contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs to agesthan to mortal life. The least activity of the intellectual powers re-deems us in a degree from the conditions of time. In sickness, in

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languor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound sentence, and weare refreshed; or produce a volume of Plato or Shakspeare, or re-mind us of their names, and instantly we come into a feeling oflongevity. See how the deep divine thought reduces centuries andmillenniums and makes itself present through all ages. Is the teach-ing of Christ less effective now than it was when first his mouth wasopened? The emphasis of facts and persons in my thought has noth-ing to do with time. And so always the soul’s scale is one, the scale ofthe senses and the understanding is another. Before the revelationsof the soul, Time, Space and Nature shrink away. In common speechwe refer all things to time, as we habitually refer the immenselysundered stars to one concave sphere. And so we say that the Judg-ment is distant or near, that the Millennium approaches, that a dayof certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the like,when we mean that in the nature of things one of the facts we con-template is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent andconnate with the soul. The things we now esteem fixed shall, one byone, detach themselves like ripe fruit from our experience, and fall.The wind shall blow them none knows whither. The landscape, thefigures, Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past,or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world.The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leav-ing worlds behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, norspecialties nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of eventsis the flowing robe in which she is clothed.

After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its progressto be computed. The soul’s advances are not made by gradation,such as can be represented by motion in a straight line, but ratherby ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorpho-sis,—from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly. Thegrowths of genius are of a certain total character, that does not ad-vance the elect individual first over John, then Adam, then Richard,and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority,—but by everythroe of growth the man expands there where he works, passing, ateach pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With each divine im-pulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, andcomes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses

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with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and be-comes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian thanwith persons in the house.

This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as byspecific levity not into a particular virtue, but into the region of allthe virtues. They are in the spirit which contains them all. The soulrequires purity, but purity is not it; requires justice, but justice is notthat; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better; so that there is akind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking ofmoral nature to urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the well-bornchild all the virtues are natural, and not painfully acquired. Speak tohis heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous.

Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, whichobeys the same law. Those who are capable of humility, of justice, oflove, of aspiration, stand already on a platform that commands thesciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whosodwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special powerswhich men prize so highly. The lover has no talent, no skill, whichpasses for quite nothing with his enamoured maiden, however littleshe may possess of related faculty; and the heart which abandonsitself to the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works, and willtravel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. In ascendingto this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from ourremote station on the circumference instantaneously to the centre ofthe world, where, as in the closet of God, we see causes, and antici-pate the universe, which is but a slow effect.

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit ina form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons whoanswer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedienceto the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I amcertified of a common nature; and these other souls, these separatedselves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emo-tions we call passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thencecome conversation, competition, persuasion, cities and war. Per-sons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youthwe are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world inthem. But the larger experience of man discovers the identical na-

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ture appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint uswith the impersonal. In all conversation between two persons tacitreference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. Thatthird party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.And so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially on highquestions, the company become aware that the thought rises to anequal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual property in whatwas said, as well as the sayer. They all become wiser than they were.It arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought in whichevery heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and thinksand acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious of attaining to ahigher self-possession. It shines for all. There is a certain wisdom ofhumanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest,and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and ob-struct. The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for itsown sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it thank-fully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man’s name,for it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned andthe studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their vio-lence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. Weowe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute orprofound, and who say the thing without effort which we want andhave long been hunting in vain. The action of the soul is oftener inthat which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in anyconversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciouslyseek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yetpossess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are muchmore. I feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation withmy neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.

Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to theworld, for which they forsake their native nobleness, they resemblethose Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean houses and affect an exter-nal poverty, to escape the rapacity of the Pacha, and reserve all theirdisplay of wealth for their interior and guarded retirements.

As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. It isadult already in the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my

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Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead menothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets hiswill against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degra-dation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I re-nounce my will and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire be-tween us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveresand loves with me.

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truthwhen we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolishpeople ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish tohear, ‘How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?’We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when weare awake that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of EmanuelSwedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of that man’sperception,—”It is no proof of a man’s understanding to be able toconfirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what istrue is true, and that what is false is false,—this is the mark andcharacter of intelligence.” In the book I read, the good thoughtreturns to me, as every truth will, the image of the whole soul. Tothe bad thought which I find in it, the same soul becomes a discern-ing, separating sword, and lops it away. We are wiser than we know.If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or seehow the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, andevery thing, and every man. For the Maker of all things and allpersons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience throughus over things.

But beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages of theindividual’s experience, it also reveals truth. And here we should seekto reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a wor-thier, loftier strain of that advent. For the soul’s communication oftruth is the highest event in nature, since it then does not give some-what from itself, but it gives itself, or passes into and becomes thatman whom it enlightens; or, in proportion to that truth he receives, ittakes him to itself.

We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestationsof its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attendedby the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx

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of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individualrivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinctapprehension of this central commandment agitates men with aweand delight. A thrill passes through all men at the reception of newtruth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out ofthe heart of nature. In these communications the power to see is notseparated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedi-ence, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. Everymoment when the individual feels himself invaded by it is memo-rable. By the necessity of our constitution a certain enthusiasm at-tends the individual’s consciousness of that divine presence. Thecharacter and duration of this enthusiasm varies with the state ofthe individual, from an ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspira-tion,—which is its rarer appearance,—to the faintest glow of virtu-ous emotion, in which form it warms, like our household fires, allthe families and associations of men, and makes society possible. Acertain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of thereligious sense in men, as if they had been “blasted with excess oflight.” The trances of Socrates, the “union” of Plotinus, the visionof Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, the aurora of Behmen, the con-vulsions of George Fox and his Quakers, the illumination ofSwedenborg, are of this kind. What was in the case of these remark-able persons a ravishment, has, in innumerable instances in com-mon life, been exhibited in less striking manner. Everywhere thehistory of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture ofthe Moravian and Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of theWord, in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; the revival ofthe Calvinistic churches; the experiences of the Methodists, are vary-ing forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which the indi-vidual soul always mingles with the universal soul.

The nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptionsof the absolute law. They are solutions of the soul’s own questions.They do not answer the questions which the understanding asks.The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that isinquired after.

Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a rev-elation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul the

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understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and under-takes to tell from God how long men shall exist, what their hands shalldo and who shall be their company, adding names and dates and places.But we must pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An an-swer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask.Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail.The description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow youarrive there and know them by inhabiting them. Men ask concerningthe immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of thesinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left replies to pre-cisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spiritspeak in their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul,the idea of immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, living in thesemoral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the mani-festations of these, never made the separation of the idea of durationfrom the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerningthe duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples to sever durationfrom the moral elements, and to teach the immortality of the soul as adoctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment the doctrine ofthe immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flow-ing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question of con-tinuance. No inspired man ever asks this question or condescends tothese evidences. For the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it isshed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, to afuture which would be finite.

These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a con-fession of sin. God has no answer for them. No answer in words canreply to a question of things. It is not in an arbitrary “decree ofGod,” but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the factsof to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read any other cipherthan that of cause and effect. By this veil which curtains events itinstructs the children of men to live in to-day. The only mode ofobtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego alllow curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being which floats us intothe secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawaresthe advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition,and the question and the answer are one.

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By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until itshall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean oflight, we see and know each other, and what spirit each is of. Whocan tell the grounds of his knowledge of the character of the severalindividuals in his circle of friends? No man. Yet their acts and wordsdo not disappoint him. In that man, though he knew no ill of him,he put no trust. In that other, though they had seldom met, authen-tic signs had yet passed, to signify that he might be trusted as onewho had an interest in his own character. We know each other verywell, —which of us has been just to himself and whether that whichwe teach or behold is only an aspiration or is our honest effort also.

We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies aloft in our lifeor unconscious power. The intercourse of society, its trade, its reli-gion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one wide, judicial investigationof character. In full court, or in small committee, or confronted faceto face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves to be judged.Against their will they exhibit those decisive trifles by which charac-ter is read. But who judges? and what? Not our understanding. Wedo not read them by learning or craft. No; the wisdom of the wiseman consists herein, that he does not judge them; he lets them judgethemselves and merely reads and records their own verdict.

By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and,maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak fromyou, and mine from me. That which we are, we shall teach, not vol-untarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenueswhich we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds throughavenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches overour head. The infallible index of true progress is found in the tone theman takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor books,nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from beingdeferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he have not found hishome in God, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of his sen-tences, the build, shall I say, of all his opinions will involuntarily con-fess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he have found his centre,the Deity will shine through him, through all the disguises of igno-rance, of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. Thetone of seeking is one, and the tone of having is another.

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The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary,—betweenpoets like Herbert, and poets like Pope,—between philosophers likeSpinoza, Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley,Mackintosh and Stewart,—between men of the world who are reck-oned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic,prophesying half insane under the infinitude of his thought,—isthat one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties andpossessors of the fact; and the other class from without, as specta-tors merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidenceof third persons. It is of no use to preach to me from without. I cando that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within, and in adegree that transcends all others. In that is the miracle. I believebeforehand that it ought so to be. All men stand continually in theexpectation of the appearance of such a teacher. But if a man donot speak from within the veil, where the word is one with that ittells of, let him lowly confess it.

The same Omniscience flows into the intellect, and makes whatwe call genius. Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom,and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior toliterary fame, and are not writers. Among the multitude of scholarsand authors, we feel no hallowing presence; we are sensible of aknack and skill rather than of inspiration; they have a light andknow not whence it comes and call it their own; their talent is someexaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strengthis a disease. In these instances the intellectual gifts do not make theimpression of virtue, but almost of vice; and we feel that a man’stalents stand in the way of his advancement in truth. But genius isreligious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart. It is not anoma-lous, but more like and not less like other men. There is in all greatpoets a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents theyexercise. The author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, doesnot take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer,in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Milton. They are content with truth.They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and phlegmatic tothose who have been spiced with the frantic passion and violentcoloring of inferior but popular writers. For they are poets by thefree course which they allow to the informing soul, which through

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their eyes beholds again and blesses the things which it hath made.The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of its works.The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think lessof his compositions. His best communication to our mind is toteach us to despise all he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such alofty strain of intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth which beg-gars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he hascreated, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existentpoetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of apassing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself inHamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day forever. Why then should I make account of Hamlet and Lear, as if wehad not the soul from which they fell as syllables from the tongue?

This energy does not descend into individual life on any othercondition than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simple;it comes to whomsoever will put off what is foreign and proud; itcomes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur. When we seethose whom it inhabits, we are apprised of new degrees of greatness.From that inspiration the man comes back with a changed tone. Hedoes not talk with men with an eye to their opinion. He tries them.It requires of us to be plain and true. The vain traveller attempts toembellish his life by quoting my lord and the prince and the count-ess, who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar show youtheir spoons and brooches and rings, and preserve their cards andcompliments. The more cultivated, in their account of their ownexperience, cull out the pleasing, poetic circumstance,—the visit toRome, the man of genius they saw, the brilliant friend They know;still further on perhaps the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights,the mountain thoughts they enjoyed yesterday,—and so seek to throwa romantic color over their life. But the soul that ascends to worshipthe great God is plain and true; has no rose-color, no fine friends, nochivalry, no adventures; does not want admiration; dwells in the hourthat now is, in the earnest experience of the common day,—by reasonof the present moment and the mere trifle having become porous tothought and bibulous of the sea of light.

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature lookslike word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be writ-

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ten, yet are they so cheap and so things of course, that in the infiniteriches of the soul it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, orbottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the wholeatmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make you one ofthe circle, but the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man toman in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation.

Souls such as these treat you as gods would, walk as gods in theearth, accepting without any admiration your wit, your bounty, yourvirtue even,—say rather your act of duty, for your virtue they ownas their proper blood, royal as themselves, and over-royal, and thefather of the gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearingcasts on the mutual flattery with which authors solace each otherand wound themselves! These flatter not. I do not wonder that thesemen go to see Cromwell and Christina and Charles the Second andJames the First and the Grand Turk. For they are, in their own el-evation, the fellows of kings, and must feel the servile tone of con-versation in the world. They must always be a godsend to princes,for they confront them, a king to a king, without ducking or con-cession, and give a high nature the refreshment and satisfaction ofresistance, of plain humanity, of even companionship and of newideas. They leave them wiser and superior men. Souls like thesemake us feel that sincerity is more excellent than flattery. Deal soplainly with man and woman as to constrain the utmost sincerityand destroy all hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compli-ment you can pay. Their “highest praising,” said Milton, “is notflattery, and their plainest advice is a kind of praising.”

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul.The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomesGod; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal selfis new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. Howdear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling thelonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments!When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from ourgod of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It isthe doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of theheart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. Itinspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but

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the sight, that the best is the true, and may in that thought easilydismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to thesure revelation of time the solution of his private riddles. He is surethat his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In the presence of lawto his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so universal that itsweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects ofmortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escapefrom his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee.You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but yourmind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce thatit is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as itis in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring youtogether, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness togo and render a service to which your talent and your taste inviteyou, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred toyou that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing tobe prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every soundthat is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear,will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every bywordthat belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come homethrough open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fan-tastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lockthee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heartof all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywherein nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circula-tion through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and,truly seen, its tide is one.

Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought tohis heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that thesources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty isthere. But if he would know what the great God speaketh, he must‘go into his closet and shut the door,’ as Jesus said. God will notmake himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to him-self, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men’s devo-tion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made hisown. Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. When-ever the appeal is made,—no matter how indirectly,—to numbers,

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proclamation is then and there made that religion is not. He thatfinds God a sweet enveloping thought to him never counts his com-pany. When I sit in that presence, who shall dare to come in? WhenI rest in perfect humility, when I burn with pure love, what canCalvin or Swedenborg say?

It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or toone. The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance onauthority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of thesoul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuriesof history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. Itcannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is noflatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It believes initself. Before the immense possibilities of man all mere experience,all past biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. Be-fore that heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannoteasily praise any form of life we have seen or read of. We not onlyaffirm that we have few great men, but, absolutely speaking, that wehave none; that we have no history, no record of any character ormode of living that entirely contents us. The saints and demigodswhom history worships we are constrained to accept with a grain ofallowance. Though in our lonely hours we draw a new strength outof their memory, yet, pressed on our attention, as they are by thethoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade. The soul givesitself, alone, original and pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure,who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads and speaks throughit. Then is it glad, young and nimble. It is not wise, but it seesthrough all things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. Itcalls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stonefalls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, itsaith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect,adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul,and thereby I do Overlook the sun and the stars and feel them to bethe fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More and morethe surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become publicand human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in thoughtsand act with energies which are immortal. Thus revering the soul,and learning, as the ancient said, that “its beauty is immense,” man

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will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which thesoul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he willlearn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; thatthe universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. Hewill weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he willlive with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivo-lous in his life and be content with all places and with any service hecan render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency ofthat trust which carries God with it and so hath already the wholefuture in the bottom of the heart.

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CIRCIRCIRCIRCIRCLESCLESCLESCLESCLES

Nature centres into balls,And her proud ephemerals,Fast to surface and outside,Scan the profile of the sphere;Knew they what that signified,A new genesis were here.

X. CIRX. CIRX. CIRX. CIRX. CIRCLESCLESCLESCLESCLES

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second;and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustinedescribed the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhereand its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading thecopious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already de-duced, in considering the circular or compensatory character of ev-ery human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that everyaction admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to thetruth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is noend in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is alwaysanother dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lowerdeep opens.

This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattain-able, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can nevermeet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, mayconveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human powerin every department.

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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 atransparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact andholds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which drawsafter it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into anotheridea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as ifit had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or fragmentremaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells andmountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it createsnow somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are al-ready passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevi-table pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old.The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; thenew races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New artsdestroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made use-less by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, byrailways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity.

You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so manyages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that whichbuilds is better than that which is built. The hand that built cantopple it down much faster. Better than the hand and nimbler wasthe invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, be-hind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, isitself the effect of a finer cause. Every thing looks permanent untilits secret is known. A rich estate appears to women a firm and last-ing fact; to a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, andeasily 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, notmuch more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature looks provok-ingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the rest; and whenonce I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide,these leaves hang so individually considerable? Permanence is a wordof degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds tospiritual power than bat-balls.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying thoughhe look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after whichall his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him

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a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes onall 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 isthe inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circularwave of circumstance,—as for instance an empire, rules of an art, alocal usage, a religious rite,—to heap itself on that ridge and tosolidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong itbursts over that boundary on all sides and expands another orbit onthe great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attemptagain to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; inits first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vastforce and to immense and innumerable expansions.

Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every generallaw only a particular fact of some more general law presently todisclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumfer-ence to us. The man finishes his story,—how good! how final! howit puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other siderises also a man and draws a circle around the circle we had justpronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speakernot man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith todraw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by them-selves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot beescaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principlethat seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one exampleof a bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is apower to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures ofthe nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream hasyet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world ashe is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies ofthe next age.

Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions;the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened andjudged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradictedby the new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement isalways hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes

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like an abyss of scepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, forthe eye and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and ben-efit appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindlesbefore the revelation of the new hour.

Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass andmaterial, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; itgoes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much.

There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Everyman supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is anytruth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how itcan be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel wasnever 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 ofthoughts and can write what I please. I see no reason why I shouldnot have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-mor-row. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing inthe world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction inwhich now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shallwonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas forthis 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, to work a pitchabove his last height, betrays itself in a man’s relations. We thirst forapprobation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature islove; yet, if I have a friend I am tormented by my imperfections. Thelove of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to slightme, then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. Aman’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For everyfriend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I thought as I walkedin the woods and mused on my friends, why should I play with themthis game of idolatry? I know and see too well, when not voluntarilyblind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. Rich, nobleand great they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. Oblessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not thou! Everypersonal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sellthe thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.

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How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest uswhen we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon asyou once come up with a man’s limitations, it is all over with him.Has he talents? has he enterprise? 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 seeminglydiscordant facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato arereckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will seethat Aristotle platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought,discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremesof one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude astill 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 brokenout in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it willend. 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 eter-nal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. Thevery hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of na-tions, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of anew generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the di-vinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannothave his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him whereyou will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to hispast apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from what-ever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations tosociety, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be supersededand decease.

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it aca-demically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heydayof youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams andfragments. Then its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we seethat it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. Welearn that God is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of

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him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the ide-alism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact that allnature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing it-self. Much more obviously is history and the state of the world atany one time directly dependent on the intellectual classificationthen existing in the minds of men. The things which are dear tomen at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emergedon their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things,as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantlyrevolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up thetermini which bound the common of silence on every side. Theparties are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and evenexpress under this Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded fromthis high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping un-der the old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst itglows on our walls. When each new speaker strikes a new light,emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker, to oppressus with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, thenyields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, tobecome men. O, what truths profound and executable only in agesand orbs, are supposed in the announcement of every truth! In com-mon hours, society sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting,empty,—knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded bymighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivialtoys. 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 chairand clock and tester, is manifest. The facts which loomed so large inthe fogs of yesterday,—property, climate, breeding, personal beautyand the like, have strangely changed their proportions. All that wereckoned settled shakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates,religions, leave their foundations and dance before our eyes. Andyet here again see the swift circumspection! Good as is discourse,silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicatesthe distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If theywere at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be

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necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle through which

a new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us aplatform whence we may command a view of our present life, apurchase by which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancientlearning, install ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, inRoman houses, only that we may wiselier see French, English andAmerican houses and modes of living. In like manner we see litera-ture best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, orfrom a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within thefield. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth’s orbit asa base to find the parallax of any star.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdomis not in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or theBody of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work Iincline to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force,in the power of change and reform. But some Petrarch or Ariosto,filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or abrisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites andarouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of hab-its, and I open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings tothe sides of all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capableonce more of choosing a straight path in theory and practice.

We have the same need to command a view of the religion of theworld. We can never see Christianity from the catechism:—from thepastures, 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 maychance to cast a right glance back upon biography. Christianity isrightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young phi-losopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church by whomthat brave text of Paul’s was not specially prized:—”Then shall alsothe Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, that Godmay be all in all.” Let the claims and virtues of persons be never sogreat and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to theimpersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogma-tism of bigots with this generous word out of the book itself.

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The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentriccircles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations whichapprise us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, butsliding. These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and veg-etation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for theirown sake, are means and methods only,—are words of God, and asfugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft,who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, whohas not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a partial orapproximate statement, namely that like draws to like, and that thegoods which belong to you gravitate to you and need not be pursuedwith pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate also, and notfinal. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle subterra-nean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart,but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the eternal genera-tion of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the vir-tues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great manwill not be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be somuch deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see,when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to easeand pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he canwell spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead.Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feetmay be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such aperil. In many years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet itseems to me that with every precaution you take against such an evilyou put yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose that the high-est prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushingfrom the centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many times weshall fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest inthe 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 ofphilosophy as well as you. “Blessed be nothing” and “The worsethings are, the better they are” are proverbs which express the tran-scendentalism of common life.

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One man’s justice is another’s injustice; one man’s beauty another’sugliness; one man’s wisdom another’s folly; as one beholds the sameobjects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in pay-ing debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who isvery remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. Butthat second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himselfWhich debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to thepoor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, ofgenius to nature? For you, O broker, there is no other principle butarithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truthof character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I de-tach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate myforces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live on-ward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my charac-ter will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims.If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, wouldnot this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are allclaims 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 ofsociety are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discoverythat we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemedsuch, 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.”

It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish ourcontritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness dayby day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longerreckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achieve-ment by what remains to me of the month or the year; for thesemoments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence whichasks nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind iscommensurate 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, at an equivalence andindifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that if we are

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true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shallconstruct the temple of the true God!

I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened by seeingthe predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetablenature, and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inun-dation of the principle of good into every chink and hole that self-ishness has left open, yea into selfishness and sin itself; so that noevil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme satisfactions. But lestI 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 notset the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I donot, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle allthings. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experi-ment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.

Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things par-take could never become sensible to us but by contrast to someprinciple of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal gen-eration of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That cen-tral life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledgeand thought, and contains all its circles. For ever it labors to createa life and thought as Large and excellent as itself, but in vain, forthat which is made instructs how to make a better.

Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all thingsrenew, germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relicsinto the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems theonly disease; all others run into this one. We call it by many names,—fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime; they are all formsof old age; they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia; notnewness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need ofit. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old,but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religiouseye looking upward, counts itself nothing and abandons itself tothe instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and woman ofseventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, theyrenounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary and talkdown to the young. Let them, then, become organs of the HolyGhost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are

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uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again withhope and power. This old age ought not to creep on a human mind.In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed andforgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life,transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath orcovenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime butit may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. Peoplewish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hopefor them.

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, thepleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up ourbeing. Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell some-what; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can knowthat truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can haveno guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. The new posi-tion of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet hasthem all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yetis itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new mo-ment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, forthe 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 keepthe old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a newroad to new and better goals. Character makes an overpoweringpresent; a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the com-pany by making them see that much is possible and excellent thatwas not thought of. Character dulls the impression of particularevents. When we see the conqueror we do not think much of anyone battle or success. We see that we had exaggerated the difficulty.It was easy to him. The great man is not convulsible or tormentable;events pass over him without much impression. People say some-times, ‘See what I have overcome; see how cheerful I am; see howcompletely I have triumphed over these black events.’ Not if theystill remind me of the black event. True conquest is the causing thecalamity to fade and disappear as an early cloud of insignificantresult in a history so large and advancing.

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The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forgetourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternalmemory and to do something without knowing how or why; inshort to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved withoutenthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.The great moments of history are the facilities of performancethrough the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion.“A man” said Oliver Cromwell “never rises so high as when he knowsnot whither he is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opiumand alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular ge-nius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the likereason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, toape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.

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INTELLECTINTELLECTINTELLECTINTELLECTINTELLECT

Go, speed the stars of ThoughtOn to their shining goals;—The sower scatters broad his seed,The wheat thou strew’st be souls.

XI. INTELLECTXI. INTELLECTXI. INTELLECTXI. INTELLECTXI. INTELLECT

EVERY SUBSTANCE is negatively electric to that which stands above itin the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Waterdissolves wood and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric firedissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method,and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its resistless menstr-uum. Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive.Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or construction.Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intel-lect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and bound-aries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always to beasked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of achild. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divi-sions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, sinceit melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes theother. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision of the eye, but isunion with the things known.

Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear considerationof abstract truth. The considerations of time and place, of you andme, of profit and hurt tyrannize over most men’s minds. Intellectseparates the fact considered, from you, from all local and personalreference, and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus

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looked upon the affections as dense and colored mists. In the fog ofgood and evil affections it is hard for man to walk forward in astraight line. Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as itstands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellectgoes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and re-gards it as a fact, and not as I and mine. He who is immersed inwhat concerns person or place cannot see the problem of existence.This the intellect always ponders. Nature shows all things formedand bound. The intellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, de-tects intrinsic likeness between remote things and reduces all thingsinto a few principles.

The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All that mass ofmental and moral phenomena which we do not make objects of vol-untary thought, come within the power of fortune; they constitutethe circumstance of daily life; they are subject to change, to fear, andhope. Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of mel-ancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, impris-oned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But atruth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. Webehold it as a god upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in ourlife, or any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from theweb of our unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and im-mortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. A better art than that ofEgypt has taken fear and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care.It is offered for science. What is addressed to us for contemplationdoes not threaten us but makes us intellectual beings.

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion.The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, themode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into everyindividual. Long prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of themind. Out of darkness it came insensibly into the marvellous lightof to-day. In the period of infancy it accepted and disposed of allimpressions from the surrounding creation after its own way. What-ever any mind doth or saith is after a law; and this native law re-mains over it after it has come to reflection or conscious thought. Inthe most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormenter’s life, the great-est part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and must

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be, until he can take himself up by his own ears. What am I? Whathas my will done to make me that I am? Nothing. I have beenfloated into this thought, this hour, this connection of events, bysecret currents of might and mind, and my ingenuity and wilfulnesshave not thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree.

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with yourbest deliberation and heed come so close to any question as yourspontaneous glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed,or walk abroad in the morning after meditating the matter beforesleep on the previous night. Our thinking is a pious reception. Ourtruth of thought is therefore vitiated as much by too violent direc-tion given by our will, as by too great negligence. We do not deter-mine what we will think. We only open our senses, clear away as wecan all obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. Wehave little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas.They catch us up for moments into their heaven and so fully engageus that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, with-out an effort to make them our own. By and by we fall out of thatrapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have seen, andrepeat as truly as we can what we have beheld. As far as we can recallthese ecstasies we carry away in the ineffaceable memory the result,and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But themoment we cease to report and attempt to correct and contrive, it isnot truth.

If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us, weshall perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principleover the arithmetical or logical. The first contains the second, butvirtual and latent. We want in every man a long logic; we cannotpardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is theprocession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtueis as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions andhave a separate value it is worthless.

In every man’s mind, some images, words and facts remain, with-out effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and after-wards these illustrate to him important laws. All our progress is anunfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then anopinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust

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the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain tohurry it. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth and youshall know why you believe.

Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires aftercollege rules. What you have aggregated in a natural manner surprisesand delights when it is produced. For we cannot oversee each other’ssecret. And hence the differences between men in natural endow-ment are insignificant in comparison with their common wealth. Doyou think the porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences,no wonders for you? Every body knows as much as the savant. Thewalls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts.They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Everyman, in the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosityinflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of other men,and especially of those classes whose minds have not been subdued bythe drill of school education.

This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but be-comes richer and more frequent in its informations through all statesof culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when we not onlyobserve, but take pains to observe; when we of set purpose sit downto consider an abstract truth; when we keep the mind’s eye openwhilst we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to learn thesecret law of some class of facts.

What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put my-self in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot.I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to knowwhat he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.For example, a man explores the basis of civil government. Let himintend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. Hisbest heed long time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are flittingbefore him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. Wesay I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness tome. We go forth, but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed onlythe stillness and composed attitude of the library to seize the thought.But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment,and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain wandering lightappears, and is the distinction, the principle, we wanted. But the

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oracle comes because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. Itseems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature bywhich we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the heartnow draws in, then hurls out the blood,—the law of undulation. Sonow you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbearyour activity and see what the great Soul showeth.

The immortality of man is as legitimately preached from the in-tellections as from the moral volitions. Every intellection is mainlyprospective. Its present value is its least. Inspect what delights youin Plutarch, in Shakspeare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writeracquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughtslay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish whichhad littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his pri-vate biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revis-its the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm.Men say, Where did he get this? and think there was somethingdivine in his life. But no; they have myriads of facts just as good,would they only get a lamp to ransack their attics withal.

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdombut in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always de-ferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that myexperiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experi-ences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make thesame use of them. He held the old; he holds the new; I had thehabit of tacking together the old and the new which he did not useto exercise. This may hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we shouldmeet Shakspeare we should not be conscious of any steep inferior-ity; no, but of a great equality,—only that he possessed a strangeskill of using, of classifying, his facts, which we lacked. For notwith-standing our utter incapacity to produce anything like Hamlet andOthello, see the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledgeof life and liquid eloquence find in us all.

If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe corn,and then retire within doors and shut your eyes and press themwith your hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the bright lightwith boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, and this for five or six hours afterwards. There lie the impres-

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sions on the retentive organ, though you knew it not. So lies thewhole series of natural images with which your life has made youacquainted, in your memory, though you know it not; and a thrillof passion flashes light on their dark chamber, and the active powerseizes instantly the fit image, as the word of its momentary thought.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure,is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But ourwiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood,and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond;until by and by we begin to suspect that the biography of the onefoolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniatureparaphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

In the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by theword Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements as inintellect receptive. The constructive intellect produces thoughts,sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of themind, the marriage of thought with nature. To genius must alwaysgo two gifts, the thought and the publication. The first is revela-tion, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or inces-sant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave theinquirer stupid with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world,a form of thought now for the first time bursting into the universe,a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurablegreatness. It seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet existedand to dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought of man andgoes to fashion every institution. But to make it available it needs avehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. To be communicableit must become picture or sensible object. We must learn the lan-guage of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their sub-ject if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray of lightpasses invisible through space and only when it falls on an object isit seen. When the spiritual energy is directed on something out-ward, then it is a thought. The relation between it and you firstmakes you, the value of you, apparent to me. The rich inventivegenius of the painter must be smothered and lost for want of thepower of drawing, and in our happy hours we should be inexhaust-ible poets if once we could break through the silence into adequate

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rhyme. As all men have some access to primary truth, so all havesome art or power of communication in their head, but only in theartist does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality, whoselaws we do not yet know, between two men and between two mo-ments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common hourswe have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they donot sit for their portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a web.The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of picture orexpression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, implies a mix-ture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, withoutwhich no production is possible. It is a conversion of all nature intothe rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenu-ous exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems tobe spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or mainly,but from a richer source. Not by any conscious imitation of par-ticular forms are the grand strokes of the painter executed, but byrepairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is thefirst drawing-master? Without instruction we know very well theideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg be dis-torted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or grand or mean;though he has never received any instruction in drawing or heardany conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correct-ness a single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, longbefore they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face setstwenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the me-chanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe to dreamssome light on the fountain of this skill; for as soon as we let our willgo and let the unconscious states ensue, see what cunningdraughtsmen we are! We entertain ourselves with wonderful formsof men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of woods and of mon-sters, and the mystic pencil wherewith we then draw has no awk-wardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; it can designwell and group well; its composition is full of art, its colors are welllaid on and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike and apt totouch us with terror, with tenderness, with desire and with grief.Neither are the artist’s copies from experience ever mere copies, butalways touched and softened by tints from this ideal domain.

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The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear tobe so often combined but that a good sentence or verse remainsfresh and memorable for a long time. Yet when we write with easeand come out into the free air of thought, we seem to be assuredthat nothing is easier than to continue this communication at plea-sure. Up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no inclosures,but the Muse makes us free of her city. Well, the world has a millionwriters. One would think then that good thought would be as fa-miliar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would ex-clude the last. Yet we can count all our good books; nay, I rememberany beautiful verse for twenty years. It is true that the discerningintellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, sothat there are many competent judges of the best book, and fewwriters of the best books. But some of the conditions of intellectualconstruction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a whole anddemands integrity in every work. This is resisted equally by a man’sdevotion to a single thought and by his ambition to combine toomany.

Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on asingle aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a longtime, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; hereinresembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath ofour nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body fora time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome thegrammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, orindeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggera-tion of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is aprison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by astrong wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of thehoop of your horizon.

Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, and to liberal-ize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or science,or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that fall withinhis vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and sub-traction. When we are young we spend much time and pains infilling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry,Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall

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have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theo-ries at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tablesget no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a pa-rabola, whose arcs will never meet.

Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity ofthe intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which bringsthe intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment.It must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although nodiligence can rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumula-tion or disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in minia-ture in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in thesmallest fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its ap-prehension and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury ofintellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk withaccomplished persons who appear to be strangers in nature. Thecloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing ofthem; the world is only their lodging and table. But the poet, whoseverses are to be spheral and complete, is one whom Nature cannotdeceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. He feels astrict consanguinity, and detects more likeness than variety in allher changes. We are stung by the desire for new thought; but whenwe receive a new thought it is only the old thought with a new face,and though we make it our own we instantly crave another; we arenot really enriched. For the truth was in us before it was reflected tous from natural objects; and the profound genius will cast the like-ness of all creatures into every product of his wit.

But if the constructive powers are rare and it is given to few mento be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost,and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is thewhole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial no less austere than the saint’s is demanded of the scholar. Hemust worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose de-feat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.Take which you please,—you can never have both. Between these,as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose pre-dominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first

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political party he meets,—most likely his father’s. He gets rest, com-modity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whomthe love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moor-ings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize allthe opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung.He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opin-ion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respectsthe highest law of his being.

The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes tofind the man who can yield him truth. He shall then know thatthere is somewhat more blessed and great in hearing than in speak-ing. Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man. As longas I hear truth I am bathed by a beautiful element and am not con-scious of any limits to my nature. The suggestions are thousandfoldthat I hear and see. The waters of the great deep have ingress andegress to the soul. But if I speak, I define, I confine and am less.When Socrates speaks, Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shamethat they do not speak. They also are good. He likewise defers tothem, loves them, whilst he speaks. Because a true and natural mancontains and is the same truth which an eloquent man articulates;but in the eloquent man, because he can articulate it, it seems some-thing the less to reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful withthe more inclination and respect. The ancient sentence said, Let usbe silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent that destroys per-sonality, and gives us leave to be great and universal. Every man’sprogress is through a succession of teachers, each of whom seems atthe time to have a superlative influence, but it at last gives place to anew. Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, Leave father, mother,house and lands, and follow me. Who leaves all, receives more. Thisis as true intellectually as morally. Each new mind we approachseems to require an abdication of all our past and present posses-sions. A new doctrine seems at first a subversion of all our opinions,tastes, and manner of living. Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant,such has Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter Cousin seemedto many young men in this country. Take thankfully and heartily allthey can give. Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not gountil their blessing be won, and after a short season the dismay will

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be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be nolonger an alarming meteor, but one more bright star shining se-renely in your heaven and blending its light with all your day.

But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which drawshim, because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to that whichdraws him not, whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, be-cause it is not his own. Entire self-reliance belongs to the intellect.One soul is a counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary column ofwater is a balance for the sea. It must treat things and books andsovereign genius as itself also a sovereign. If Aeschylus be that manhe is taken for, he has not yet done his office when he has educatedthe learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now to approvehimself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot do that, all hisfame shall avail him nothing with me. I were a fool not to sacrificea thousand Aeschyluses to my intellectual integrity. Especially takethe same ground in regard to abstract truth, the science of the mind.The Bacon, the Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant, or whosoeverpropounds to you a philosophy of the mind, is only a more or lessawkward translator of things in your consciousness which you havealso your way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say then, insteadof too timidly poring into his obscure sense, that he has not suc-ceeded in rendering back to you your consciousness. He has notsucceeded; now let another try. If Plato cannot, perhaps Spinozawill. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps Kant. Anyhow, when at last itis done, you will find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, com-mon state which the writer restores to you.

But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the subject mightprovoke it, speak to the open question between Truth and Love. Ishall not presume to interfere in the old politics of the skies;—”Thecherubim know most; the seraphim love most.” The gods shall settletheir own quarrels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of theintellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class ofmen who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood ofthe pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles ofthought from age to age. When at long intervals we turn over theirabstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of thesefew, these great spiritual lords who have walked in the world,—

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these of the old religion,—dwelling in a worship which makes thesanctities of Christianity look parvenues and popular; for “persua-sion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.” This band of grandees,Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus,Proclus, Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic,so primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all theordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once po-etry and music and dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I ampresent at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry ofsunbeams the soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth and gran-deur of their thought is proved by its scope and applicability, for itcommands the entire schedule and inventory of things for its illustra-tion. But what marks its elevation and has even a comic look to us, isthe innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in theirclouds, and from age to age prattle to each other and to no contempo-rary. Well assured that their speech is intelligible and the most naturalthing in the world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment’s heedof the universal astonishment of the human race below, who do notcomprehend their plainest argument; nor do they ever relent so muchas to insert a popular or explaining sentence, nor testify the least dis-pleasure or petulance at the dulness of their amazed auditory. Theangels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven thatthey will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects ofmen, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it ornot.

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ARARARARARTTTTT

Give to barrows trays and pansGrace and glimmer of romance,Bring the moonlight into noonHid in gleaming piles of stone;On the city’s paved streetPlant gardens lined with lilac sweet,Let spouting fountains cool the air,Singing in the sun-baked square.Let statue, picture, park and hall,Ballad, flag and festival,The past restore, the day adornAnd make each morrow a new mornSo shall the drudge in dusty frockSpy behind the city clockRetinues of airy kings,Skirts of angels, starry wings,His fathers shining in bright fables,His children fed at heavenly tables.’Tis the privilege of ArtThus to play its cheerful part,Man in Earth to acclimateAnd bend the exile to his fate,And, moulded of one elementWith the days and firmament,Teach him on these as stairs to climbAnd live on even terms with Time;Whilst upper life the slender rillOf human sense doth overfill.

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XII. ARXII. ARXII. ARXII. ARXII. ARTTTTT

BECAUSE THE SOUL is progressive, it never quite re-peats itself, but inevery act attempts the pro-duction of a new and fairer whole. Thisappears in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employthe popular distinction of works according to their aim either at useor beauty. Thus in our fine arts, not imitation but creation is theaim. In landscapes the painter should give the suggestion of a fairercreation than we know. The details, the prose of nature he shouldomit and give us only the spirit and splendor. He should know thatthe landscape has beauty for his eye because it expresses a thoughtwhich is to him good; and this because the same power which seesthrough his eyes is seen in that spectacle; and he will come to valuethe expression of nature and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copythe features that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and thesunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he must inscribe the character andnot the features, and must esteem the man who sits to him as himselfonly an imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring original within.

What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritualactivity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of thathigher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by sim-pler symbols. What is a man but nature’s finer success in self-expli-cation? What is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than thehorizon figures,—nature’s eclecticism? and what is his speech, hislove of painting, love of nature, but a still finer success, —all theweary miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit ormoral of it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunningstroke of the pencil?

But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day andnation to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus thenew in art is always formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hoursets his ineffaceable seal on the work and gives it an inexpressible

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charm for the imagination. As far as the spiritual character of theperiod overpowers the artist and finds expression in his work, so farit will retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future behold-ers the Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quiteexclude this element of Necessity from his labor. No man can quiteemancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a modelin which the education, the religion, the politics, usages and arts ofhis times shall have no share. Though he were never so original,never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work everytrace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoidance be-trays the usage he avoids. Above his will and out of his sight he isnecessitated by the air he breathes and the idea on which he and hiscontemporaries live and toil, to share the manner of his times,without knowing what that manner is. Now that which is inevi-table in the work has a higher charm than individual talent canever give, inasmuch as the artist’s pen or chisel seems to have beenheld and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the historyof the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the Egyp-tian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese and Mexican idols, how-ever gross and shapeless. They denote the height of the humansoul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but sprung from a neces-sity as deep as the world. Shall I now add that the whole extantproduct of the plastic arts has herein its highest value, as history;as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful,according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their beati-tude?

Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to educatethe perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but our eyeshave no clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, toassist and lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we beholdwhat is carved and painted, as students of the mystery of Form. Thevirtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from theembarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from the connec-tion of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but nothought. Our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. Theinfant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individual character and hispractical power depend on his daily progress in the separation of

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things, and dealing with one at a time. Love and all the passionsconcentrate all existence around a single form. It is the habit ofcertain minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the object, thethought, the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the timethe deputy of the world. These are the artists, the orators, the lead-ers of society. The power to detach and to magnify by detaching isthe essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. Thisrhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of an object,—so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle,—the painter and sculp-tor exhibit in color and in stone. The power depends on the depthof the artist’s insight of that object he contemplates. For every ob-ject has its roots in central nature, and may of course be so exhibitedto us as to represent the world. Therefore each work of genius is thetyrant of the hour And concentrates attention on itself. For the time,it is the only thing worth naming to do that,—be it a sonnet, anopera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of acampaign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently we pass to someother object, which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; forexample a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but thelaying out of gardens. I should think fire the best thing in the world,if I were not acquainted with air, and water, and earth. For it is theright and property of all natural objects, of all genuine talents, of allnative properties whatsoever, to be for their moment the top of theworld. A squirrel leaping from bough to bough and making theWood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than alion,—is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for na-ture. A good ballad draws my ear and heart whilst I listen, as muchas an epic has done before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter ofpigs, satisfies and is a reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo.From this succession of excellent objects we learn at last the immen-sity of the world, the opulence of human nature, which can run outto infinitude in any direction. But I also learn that what astonishedand fascinated me in the first work astonished me in the secondwork also; that excellence of all things is one.

The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial.The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best picturesare rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes

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which make up the ever-changing “landscape with figures” amidstwhich we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is tothe limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, tonimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better for-gotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expres-sion of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in theart, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency inwhich the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If hecan draw every thing, why draw any thing? and then is my eye openedto the eternal picture which nature paints in the street, with movingmen and children, beggars and fine ladies, draped in red and greenand blue and gray; long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced,wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish,—capped and based byheaven, earth and sea.

A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. Aspicture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. WhenI have seen fine statues and afterwards enter a public assembly, Iunderstand well what he meant who said, “When I have been read-ing Homer, all men look like giants.” I too see that painting andsculpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties andcuriosities of its function. There is no statue like this living man,with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual va-riety. What a gallery of art have I here! No mannerist made thesevaried groups and diverse original single figures. Here is the artisthimself improvising, grim and glad, at his block. Now one thoughtstrikes him, now another, and with each moment he alters the wholeair, attitude and expression of his clay. Away with your nonsense ofoil and easels, of marble and chisels; except to open your eyes to themasteries of eternal art, they are hypocritical rubbish.

The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal Power ex-plains the traits common to all works of the highest art,—that theyare universally intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest statesof mind, and are religious. Since what skill is therein shown is thereappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should pro-duce a similar impression to that made by natural objects. In happyhours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected, —the workof genius. And the individual, in whom simple tastes and suscepti-

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bility to all the great human influences overpower the accidents of alocal and special culture, is the best critic of art. Though we travelthe world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or wefind it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces,in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely a radiation fromthe work of art of human character,—a wonderful expression throughstone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest at-tributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to thosesouls which have these attributes. In the sculptures of the Greeks,in the masonry of the Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscanand Venetian masters, the highest charm is the universal languagethey speak. A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope,breathes from them all. That which we carry to them, the same webring back more fairly illustrated in the memory. The traveller whovisits the Vatican, and passes from chamber to chamber throughgalleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi and candelabra, through allforms of beauty cut in the richest materials, is in danger of forget-ting the simplicity of the principles out of which they all sprung,and that they had their origin from thoughts and laws in his ownbreast. He studies the technical rules on these wonderful remains,but forgets that these works were not always thus constellated; thatthey are the contributions of many ages and many countries; thateach came out of the solitary workshop of one artist, who toiledperhaps in ignorance of the existence of other sculpture, created hiswork without other model save life, household life, and the sweetand smart of personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes;of poverty and necessity and hope and fear. These were his inspira-tions, and these are the effects he carries home to your heart andmind. In proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work anoutlet for his proper character. He must not be in any mannerpinched or hindered by his material, but through his necessity ofimparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, and willallow an adequate communication of himself, in his full stature andproportion. He need not cumber himself with a conventional na-ture and culture, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris, butthat house and weather and manner of living which poverty and thefate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray

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unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, orin the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where hehas endured the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serveas well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought whichpours itself indifferently through all.

I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wondersof Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strang-ers; some surprising combination of color and form; a foreign won-der, barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of themilitia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations ofschool-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew not what. When Icame at last to Rome and saw with eyes the pictures, I found thatgenius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, anditself pierced directly to the simple and true; that it was familiar andsincere; that it was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so manyforms,—unto which I lived; that it was the plain you and me I knewso well,—had left at home in so many conversations. I had the sameexperience already in a church at Naples. There I saw that nothingwas changed with me but the place, and said to myself—’Thou fool-ish child, hast thou come out hither, over four thousand miles of saltwater, to find that which was perfect to thee there at home?’ That factI saw again in the Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculp-ture, and yet again when I came to Rome and to the paintings ofRaphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. “What, oldmole! workest thou in the earth so fast?” It had travelled by my side;that which I fancied I had left in Boston was here in the Vatican, andagain at Milan and at Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as atreadmill. I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me,not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Noth-ing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. Allgreat actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.

The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example of thispeculiar merit. A calm benignant beauty shines over all this picture,and goes directly to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name.The sweet and sublime face of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how itdisappoints all florid expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speak-ing countenance is as if one should meet a friend. The knowledge of

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picture-dealers has its value, but listen not to their criticism whenyour heart is touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it waspainted for you; for such as had eyes capable of being touched bysimplicity and lofty emotions.

Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we mustend with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know them, are butinitial. Our best praise is given to what they aimed and promised,not to the actual result. He has conceived meanly of the resources ofman, who believes that the best age of production is past. The realvalue of the Iliad or the Transfiguration is as signs of power; billowsor ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlast-ing effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays.Art has not yet come to its maturity if it do not put itself abreastwith the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practicaland moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if itdo not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses themwith a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than thearts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct.Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal,it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of makingcripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothingless than the creation of man and nature is its end. A man shouldfind in it an outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and carveonly as long as he can do that. Art should exhilarate, and throwdown the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in thebeholder the same sense of universal relation and power which thework evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make newartists.

Already History is old enough to witness the old age and disap-pearance of particular arts. The art of sculpture is long ago perishedto any real effect. It was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, asavage’s record of gratitude or devotion, and among a people pos-sessed of a wonderful perception of form this childish carving wasrefined to the utmost splendor of effect. But it is the game of a rudeand youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritualnation. Under an oak-tree loaded with leaves and nuts, under a skyfull of eternal eyes, I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of

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our plastic arts and especially of sculpture, creation is driven into acorner. I cannot hide from myself that there is a certain appearanceof paltriness, as of toys and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture.Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret we donot yet find. But the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods, andthere is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do not wonder thatNewton, with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of plan-ets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl of Pembrokefound to admire in “stone dolls.” Sculpture may serve to teach thepupil how deep is the secret of form, how purely the spirit can trans-late its meanings into that eloquent dialect. But the statue will lookcold and false before that new activity which needs to roll throughall things, and is impatient of counterfeits and things not alive. Pic-ture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. Buttrue art is never fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music is notin the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from itsinstant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio hasalready lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth,but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of artshould not be detached, but extempore performances. A great manis a new statue in every attitude and action. A beautiful woman is apicture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric orepic, as well as a poem or a romance.

A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were foundworthy to declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom of nature,and destroy its separate and contrasted existence. The fountains ofinvention and beauty in modern society are all but dried up. A popu-lar novel, a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are allpaupers in the alms-house of this world, without dignity, withoutskill or industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity,which lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and the Cupids ofthe antique, and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of suchanomalous figures into nature,—namely, that they were inevitable;that the artist was drunk with a passion for form which he couldnot resist, and which vented itself in these fine extravagances,—nolonger dignifies the chisel or the pencil. But the artist and the con-noisseur now seek in art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum

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from the evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the figure theymake in their own imaginations, and they flee to art, and conveytheir better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes thesame effort which a sensual prosperity makes; namely to detach thebeautiful from the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and,hating it, pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and compensations,this division of beauty from use, the laws of nature do not permit.As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love but for plea-sure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable byhim in canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; aneffeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all thatcan be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higherthan the character can inspire.

The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not bea superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now mendo not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statuewhich shall be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvert-ible, and console themselves with color-bags and blocks of marble.They reject life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic.They despatch the day’s weary chores, and fly to voluptuous rever-ies. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal.Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary andbad senses; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary tonature, and struck with death from the first. Would it not be betterto begin higher up,—to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; toserve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and inthe functions of life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, andthe distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. Ifhistory were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longereasy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, allis useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful because it is alive,moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful because it is symmetricaland fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will itrepeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, asalways, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave andearnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate itsmiracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness

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in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shopand mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divineuse the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company; ourlaw, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery,the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist’s retort; in which we seeknow only an economical use. Is not the selfish and even cruel aspectwhich belongs to our great mechanical works, to mills, railways,and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses which theseworks obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboatbridging the Atlantic between Old and New England and arrivingat its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man intoharmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies alongthe Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When sci-ence is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they willappear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.

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THE POETTHE POETTHE POETTHE POETTHE POET

A moody child and wildly wisePursued the game with joyful eyes,Which chose, like meteors, their way,And rived the dark with private ray:They overleapt the horizon’s edge,Searched with Apollo’s privilege;Through man, and woman, and sea, and starSaw the dance of nature forward far;Through worlds, and races, and terms, and timesSaw musical order, and pairing rhymes.

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below,

Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

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XIII. XIII. XIII. XIII. XIII. THE POETTHE POETTHE POETTHE POETTHE POET

THOSE WHO ARE ESTEEMED umpires of taste are often persons whohave acquired some knowledge of ad-mired pictures or sculptures,and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquirewhether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are likefair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their culti-vation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot toproduce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of thefine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judg-ment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement or forshow. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty as itlies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost theperception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. There isno doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our bod-ies, as fire is put into a pan to be carried about; but there is noaccurate adjustment between the spirit and the organ, much less isthe latter the germination of the former. So in regard to other forms,the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence ofthe material world on thought and volition. Theologians think it apretty air-castle to talk of the Spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud,of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solidground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented witha civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems fromthe fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highestminds of the world have never ceased to explore the double mean-ing, or shall I say the quadruple or the centuple or much more mani-fold meaning, of every sensuous fact; Orpheus, Empedocles,Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters ofsculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, noreven porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire,made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted and at two or

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three removes, when we know least about it. And this hidden truth,that the fountains whence all this river of Time and its creaturesfloweth are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consid-eration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty;to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of theart in the present time.

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative.He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprisesus not of his wealth, but of the common wealth. The young manreveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himselfthan he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but theymore. Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, fromtheir belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time.He is isolated among his contemporaries by truth and by his art,but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all mensooner or later. For all men live by truth and stand in need of ex-pression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, westudy to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, theother half is his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expres-sion is rare. I know not how it is that we need an interpreter, but thegreat majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come intopossession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversa-tion they have had with nature. There is no man who does not antici-pate a supersensual utility in the sun and stars, earth and water. Thesestand and wait to render him a peculiar service. But there is someobstruction or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which doesnot suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the impressionsof nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Everyman should be so much an artist that he could report in conversationwhat had befallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or appulseshave sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reachthe quick and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. Thepoet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the manwithout impediment, who sees and handles that which others dreamof, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative ofman, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.

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For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which re-appear under different names in every system of thought, whetherthey be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove,Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son;but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good,and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that whichhe is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, andeach of these three has the power of the others latent in him, and hisown, patent.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is asovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted oradorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not madesome beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe.Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperorin his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism,which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of allmen, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the factthat some men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into the worldto the end of expression, and confounds them with those whoseprovince is action but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer’swords are as costly and admirable to Homer as Agamemnon’s victo-ries are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or thesage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarilywhat will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though prima-ries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sittersor models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring build-ing materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we areso finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where theair is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to writethem down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substi-tute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The menof more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, andthese transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the na-tions. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reason-able, and must as much appear as it must be done, or be known.

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Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy.Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces thatwhich no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knowsand tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privyto the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas andan utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now ofmen of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of thetrue poet. I took part in a conversation the other day concerning arecent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appearedto be a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skilland command of language, we could not sufficiently praise. Butwhen the question arose whether he was not only a lyrist but a poet,we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contemporary, not aneternal man. He does not stand out of our low limitations, like aChimborazo under the line, running up from the torrid Base throughall the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every lati-tude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, withwell-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks andterraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the ground-tone ofconventional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing, and notthe children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of theverses is primary.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes apoem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of aplant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adornsnature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in theorder of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to theform. The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experienceto unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will bethe richer in his fortune. For the experience of each new age re-quires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for itspoet. I remember when I was young how much I was moved onemorning by tidings that genius had appeared in a youth who satnear me at table. He had left his work and gone rambling noneknew whither, and had written hundreds of lines, but could not tell

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whether that which was in him was therein told; he could tell noth-ing but that all was changed,—man, beast, heaven, earth and sea.How gladly we listened! how credulous! Society seemed to be com-promised. We sat in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out allthe stars. Boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had the nightbefore, or was much farther than that. Rome,—what was Rome?Plutarch and Shakspeare were in the yellow leaf, and Homer nomore should be heard of. It is much to know that poetry has beenwritten this very day, under this very roof, by your side. What! thatwonderful spirit has not expired! These stony moments are still spar-kling and animated! I had fancied that the oracles were all silent,and nature had spent her fires; and behold! all night, from everypore, these fine auroras have been streaming. Every one has someinterest in the advent of the poet, and no one knows how much itmay concern him. We know that the secret of the world is pro-found, but who or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. Amountain ramble, a new style of face, a new person, may put thekey into our hands. Of course the value of genius to us is in theveracity of its report. Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizesand adds. Mankind in good earnest have availed so far in under-standing themselves and their work, that the foremost watchmanon the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken,and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and the unerringvoice of the world for that time.

All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is theprincipal event in chronology. Man, never so often deceived, stillwatches for the arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to atruth until he has made it his own. With what joy I begin to read apoem which I confide in as an inspiration! And now my chains areto be broken; I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs inwhich I live,—opaque, though they seem transparent, —and fromthe heaven of truth I shall see and comprehend my relations. Thatwill reconcile me to life and renovate nature, to see trifles animatedby a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will no more bea noise; now I shall see men and women, and know the signs bywhich they may be discerned from fools and satans. This day shallbe better than my birthday: then I became an animal; now I am

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invited into the science of the real. Such is the hope, but the frui-tion is postponed. Oftener it falls that this winged man, who willcarry me into the heaven, whirls me into mists, then leaps and frisksabout with me as it were from cloud to cloud, still affirming that heis bound heavenward; and I, being myself a novice, am slow in per-ceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, and ismerely bent that I should admire his skill to rise like a fowl or aflying fish, a little way from the ground or the water; but the all-piercing, all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven that man shall neverinhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old nooks, and lead thelife of exaggerations as before, and have lost my faith in the possibil-ity of any guide who can lead me thither where I would be.

But, leaving these victims of vanity, let us, with new hope, ob-serve how nature, by worthier impulses, has ensured the poet’s fi-delity to his office of announcement and affirming, namely by thebeauty of things, which becomes a new and higher beauty whenexpressed. Nature offers all her creatures to him as a picture-lan-guage. Being used as a type, a second wonderful value appears inthe object, far better than its old value; as the carpenter’s stretchedcord, if you hold your ear close enough, is musical in the breeze.“Things more excellent than every image,” says Jamblichus, “areexpressed through images.” Things admit of being used as symbolsbecause nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every part. Everyline we can draw in the sand has expression; and there is no bodywithout its spirit or genius. All form is an effect of character; allcondition, of the quality of the life; all harmony, of health; and forthis reason a perception of beauty should be sympathetic, or properonly to the good. The beautiful rests on the foundations of the nec-essary. The soul makes the body, as the wise Spenser teaches:—

“So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight, With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For, of the soul, the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make.”

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Here we find ourselves suddenly not in a critical speculation but in aholy place, and should go very warily and reverently. We stand beforethe secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance andUnity into Variety.

The Universe is the externization of the soul. Wherever the life is,that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, andtherefore superficial. The earth and the heavenly bodies, physics,and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; butthese are the retinue of that Being we have. “The mighty heaven,”said Proclus, “exhibits, in its transfigurations, clear images of thesplendor of intellectual perceptions; being moved in conjunctionwith the unapparent periods of intellectual natures.” Therefore sci-ence always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keepingstep with religion and metaphysics; or the state of science is an in-dex of our self-knowledge. Since everything in nature answers to amoral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark it is thatthe corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.

No wonder then, if these waters be so deep, that we hover overthem with a religious regard. The beauty of the fable proves theimportance of the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if youplease, every man is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these en-chantments of nature; for all men have the thoughts whereof theuniverse is the celebration. I find that the fascination resides in thesymbol. Who loves nature? Who does not? Is it only poets, and menof leisure and cultivation, who live with her? No; but also hunters,farmers, grooms, and butchers, though they express their affectionin their choice of life and not in their choice of words. The writerwonders what the coachman or the hunter values in riding, in horsesand dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When you talk with him heholds these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is sympathetic; hehas no definitions, but he is commanded in nature, by the livingpower which he feels to be there present. No imitation or playing ofthese things would content him; he loves the earnest of the northwind, of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. A beauty not explicableis dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It is naturethe symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed by

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life which he worships with coarse but sincere rites.The inwardness and mystery of this attachment drives men of

every class to the use of emblems. The schools of poets and philoso-phers are not more intoxicated with their symbols than the popu-lace with theirs. In our political parties, compute the power of badgesand emblems. See the great ball which they roll from Baltimore toBunker hill! In the political processions, Lowell goes in a loom, andLynn in a shoe, and Salem in a ship. Witness the cider-barrel, thelog-cabin, the hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizancesof party. See the power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leop-ards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure which came intocredit God knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in thewind on a fort at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingleunder the rudest or the most conventional exterior. The people fancythey hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics!

Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprisedof the divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world isa temple whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and com-mandments of the Deity,—in this, that there is no fact in naturewhich does not carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinctionswhich we make in events and in affairs, of low and high, honest andbase, disappear when nature is used as a symbol. Thought makeseverything fit for use. The vocabulary of an omniscient man wouldembrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. Whatwould be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious,spoken in a new connexion of thought. The piety of the Hebrewprophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example ofthe power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. Small and meanthings serve as well as great symbols. The meaner the type by whicha law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting inthe memories of men: just as we choose the smallest box or case inwhich any needful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words arefound suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind; as it is relatedof Lord Chatham that he was accustomed to read in Bailey’s Dictio-nary when he was preparing to speak in Parliament. The poorest ex-perience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought.Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and gar-

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den, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades andall spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance ofthe few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terriblesimplicity. It does not need that a poem should be long. Every wordwas once a poem. Every new relation is a new word. Also we usedefects and deformities to a sacred purpose, so expressing our sensethat the evils of the world are such only to the evil eye. In the oldmythology, mythologists observe, defects are ascribed to divine na-tures, as lameness to Vulcan, blindness to Cupid, and the like, —tosignify exuberances.

For as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God thatmakes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and theWhole,—re-attaching even artificial things and violations of nature,to nature, by a deeper insight,—disposes very easily of the most dis-agreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the factory-village and the rail-way, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these;for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading; but thepoet sees them fall within the great Order not less than the beehive orthe spider’s geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast into hervital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves like her own. Be-sides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing how many mechanicalinventions you exhibit. Though you add millions, and never so sur-prising, the fact of mechanics has not gained a grain’s weight. Thespiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; asno mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of thesphere. A shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first time, andthe complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. It is notthat he does not see all the fine houses and know that he never sawsuch before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet finds placefor the railway. The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the greatand constant fact of Life, which can dwarf any and every circum-stance, and to which the belt of wampum and the commerce ofAmerica are alike.

The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, thepoet is he who can articulate it. For though life is great, and fasci-nates, and absorbs; and though all men are intelligent of the sym-bols through which it is named; yet they cannot originally use them.

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We are symbols and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and tools,words and things, birth and death, all are emblems; but we sympa-thize with the symbols, and being infatuated with the economicaluses of things, we do not know that they are thoughts. The poet, byan ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makestheir old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue into every dumband inanimate object. He perceives the independence of the thoughton the symbol, the stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacityof the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through theearth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things intheir right series and procession. For through that better perceptionhe stands one step nearer to things, and sees the flowing or meta-morphosis; perceives that thought is multiform; that within the formof every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher form;and following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which expressthat life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature. All thefacts of the animal economy, sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth,are symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of man, tosuffer there a change and reappear a new and higher fact. He usesforms according to the life, and not according to the form. This istrue science. The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegeta-tion and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employsthem as signs. He knows why the plain or meadow of space wasstrewn with these flowers we call suns and moons and stars; why thegreat deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for in ev-ery word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer or Language-maker,naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes aftertheir essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another’s,thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment orboundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore language isthe archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of themuses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten,each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currencybecause for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speakerand to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to havebeen once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the lime-

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stone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells ofanimalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now,in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poeticorigin. But the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comesone step nearer to it than any other. This expression or naming isnot art, but a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of atree. What we call nature is a certain self-regulated motion or change;and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leaveanother to baptize her but baptizes herself; and this through themetamorphosis again. I remember that a certain poet described it tome thus:

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whetherwholly or partly of a material and finite kind. Nature, through allher kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poorfungus; so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countlessspores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions ofspores to-morrow or next day. The new agaric of this hour has achance which the old one had not. This atom of seed is thrown intoa new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parenttwo rods off. She makes a man; and having brought him to ripe age,she will no longer run the risk of losing this wonder at a blow, butshe detaches from him a new self, that the kind may be safe fromaccidents to which the individual is exposed. So when the soul ofthe poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sendsaway from it its poems or songs,—a fearless, sleepless, deathless prog-eny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary kingdom oftime; a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was thevirtue of the soul out of which they came) which carry them fastand far, and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men. Thesewings are the beauty of the poet’s soul. The songs, thus flying im-mortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by clamorous flightsof censures, which swarm in far greater numbers and threaten todevour them; but these last are not winged. At the end of a veryshort leap they fall plump down and rot, having received from thesouls out of which they came no beautiful wings. But the melodiesof the poet ascend and leap and pierce into the deeps of infinitetime.

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So far the bard taught me, using his freer speech. But nature has ahigher end, in the production of New individuals, than security,namely ascension, or the passage of the soul into higher forms. Iknew in my younger days the sculptor who made the statue of theyouth which stands in the public garden. He was, as I remember,unable to tell directly, what made him happy or unhappy, but bywonderful indirections he could tell. He rose one day, according tohis habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as theeternity out of which it came, and for many days after, he strove toexpress this tranquillity, and lo! his chisel had fashioned out of marblethe form of a beautiful youth, Phosphorus, whose aspect is suchthat it is said all persons who look on it become silent. The poet alsoresigns himself to his mood, and that thought which agitated him isexpressed, but alter idem, in a manner totally new. The expression isorganic, or the new type which things themselves take when liber-ated. As, in the sun, objects paint their images on the retina of theeye, so they, sharing the aspiration of the whole universe, tend topaint a far more delicate copy of their essence in his mind. Like themetamorphosis of things into higher organic forms is their changeinto melodies. Over everything stands its daemon or soul, and, asthe form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thingis reflected by a melody. The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, andevery flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-cantations, whichsail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with an earsufficiently fine, he overhears them and endeavors to write downthe notes without diluting or depraving them. And herein is thelegitimation of criticism, in the mind’s faith that the poems are acorrupt version of some text in nature with which they ought to bemade to tally. A rhyme in one of our sonnets should not be lesspleasing than the iterated nodes of a sea-shell, or the resembling dif-ference of a group of flowers. The pairing of the birds is an idyl, nottedious as our idyls are; a tempest is a rough ode, without falsehoodor rant; a summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is anepic song, subordinating how many admirably executed parts. Whyshould not the symmetry and truth that modulate these, glide intoour spirits, and we participate the invention of nature?

This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination,

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is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but bythe intellect being where and what it sees; by sharing the path orcircuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid toothers. The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to gowith them? A spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcen-dency of their own nature,—him they will suffer. The condition oftrue naming, on the poet’s part, is his resigning himself to the di-vine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that.

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that,beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he iscapable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself ), byabandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy ofpower as an individual man, there is a great public power on whichhe can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffer-ing the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he iscaught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, histhought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plantsand animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately then onlywhen he speaks somewhat wildly, or, “with the flower of the mind;”not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect re-leased from all service and suffered to take its direction from itscelestial life; or as the ancients were wont to express themselves, notwith intellect alone but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. Asthe traveller who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse’sneck and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, somust we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world.For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passagesare opened for us into nature; the mind flows into and throughthings hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.

This is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee,tea, opium, the fumes of sandal -wood and tobacco, or whateverother procurers of animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves ofsuch means as they can, to add this extraordinary power to theirnormal powers; and to this end they prize conversation, music, pic-tures, sculpture, dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gam-ing, politics, or love, or science, or animal intoxication,—which areseveral coarser or finer quasi-mechanical substitutes for the true

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nectar, which is the ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer tothe fact. These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal tendency of a man,to his passage out into free space, and they help him to escape thecustody of that body in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard ofindividual relations in which he is enclosed. Hence a great numberof such as were professionally expressers of Beauty, as painters, po-ets, musicians, and actors, have been more than others wont to leada life of pleasure and indulgence; all but the few who received thetrue nectar; and, as it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, asit was an emancipation not into the heavens but into the freedom ofbaser places, they were punished for that advantage they won, by adissipation and deterioration. But never can any advantage be takenof nature by a trick. The spirit of the world, the great calm presenceof the Creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine.The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a cleanand chaste body. That is not an inspiration, which we owe to nar-cotics, but some counterfeit excitement and fury. Milton says thatthe lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet,he who shall sing of the gods and their descent unto men, mustdrink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not ‘Devil’s wine,’but God’s wine. It is with this as it is with toys. We fill the handsand nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums, andhorses; withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and sufficingobjects of nature, the sun, and moon, the animals, the water, andstones, which should be their toys. So the poet’s habit of living shouldbe set on a key so low that the common influences should delighthim. His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the airshould suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water.That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forthto such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stumpand half-imbedded stone on which the dull March sun shines, comesforth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple taste. Ifthou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion andcovetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine andFrench coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonelywaste of the pinewoods.

If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not inactive in other

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men. The metamorphosis excites in the beholder an emotion of joy.The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhila-ration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand which makesus dance and run about happily, like children. We are like personswho come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effecton us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thusliberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found withintheir world another world, or nest of worlds; for, the metamorpho-sis once seen, we divine that it does not stop. I will not now con-sider how much this makes the charm of algebra and the math-ematics, which also have their tropes, but it is felt in every defini-tion; as when Aristotle defines space to be an immovable vessel inwhich things are contained; —or when Plato defines a line to be aflowing point; or figure to be a bound of solid; and many the like.What a joyful sense of freedom we have when Vitruvius announcesthe old opinion of artists that no architect can build any house wellwho does not know something of anatomy. When Socrates, inCharmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certainincantations, and that these incantations are beautiful reasons, fromwhich temperance is generated in souls; when Plato calls the worldan animal; and Timaeus affirms that the plants also are animals; oraffirms a man to be a heavenly tree, growing with his root, which ishis head, upward; and, as George Chapman, following him, writes,—

“So in our tree of man, whose nervie root Springs in his top;” —

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as “that white flower which marksextreme old age;” when Proclus calls the universe the statue of theintellect; when Chaucer, in his praise of ‘Gentilesse,’ compares goodblood in mean condition to fire, which, though carried to the dark-est house betwixt this and the mount of Caucasus, will yet hold itsnatural office and burn as bright as if twenty thousand men did itbehold; when John saw, in the Apocalypse, the ruin of the worldthrough evil, and the stars fall from heaven as the figtree casteth heruntimely fruit; when Aesop reports the whole catalogue of com-mon daily relations through the masquerade of birds and beasts;—

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we take the cheerful hint of the immortality of our essence and itsversatile habit and escapes, as when the gypsies say “it is in vain tohang them, they cannot die.”

The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British bards hadfor the title of their order, “Those Who are free throughout the world.”They are free, and they make free. An imaginative book renders usmuch more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, thanafterward when we arrive at the precise sense of the author. I thinknothing is of any value in books excepting the transcendental andextraordinary. If a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought,to that degree that he forgets the authors and the public and heedsonly this one dream which holds him like an insanity, let me read hispaper, and you may have all the arguments and histories and criti-cism. All the value which attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus, CorneliusAgrippa, Cardan, Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any otherwho introduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as angels, dev-ils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmerism, and so on, is the certifi-cate we have of departure from routine, and that here is a new wit-ness. That also is the best success in conversation, the magic of liberty,which puts the world like a ball in our hands. How cheap even theliberty then seems; how mean to study, when an emotion communi-cates to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature; how greatthe perspective! nations, times, systems, enter and disappear like threadsin tapestry of large figure and many colors; dream delivers us to dream,and while the drunkenness lasts we will sell our bed, our philosophy,our religion, in our opulence.

There is good reason why we should prize this liberation. The fateof the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm,perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblemof the state of man. On the brink of the waters of life and truth, weare miserably dying. The inaccessibleness of every thought but thatwe are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it; you are asremote when you are nearest as when you are farthest. Every thoughtis also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love thepoet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode or in anaction or in looks and behavior has yielded us a new thought. Heunlocks our chains and admits us to a new scene.

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This emancipation is dear to all men, and the power to impart it, asit must come from greater depth and scope of thought, is a measureof intellect. Therefore all books of the imagination endure, all whichascend to that truth that the writer sees nature beneath him, and usesit as his exponent. Every verse or sentence possessing this virtue willtake care of its own immortality. The religions of the world are theejaculations of a few imaginative men.

But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze.The poet did not stop at the color or the form, but read their mean-ing; neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the sameobjects exponents of his new thought. Here is the difference be-twixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to onesense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes oldand false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular andtransitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, notas farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in themistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.The morning-redness happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyesof Jacob Behmen, and comes to stand to him for truth and faith;and, he believes, should stand for the same realities to every reader.But the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother andchild, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweller polishing a gem.Either of these, or of a myriad more, are equally good to the personto whom they are significant. Only they must be held lightly, andbe very willingly translated into the equivalent terms which othersuse. And the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is justas true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us havea little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, in-stead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. Thehistory of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consistedin making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothingbut an excess of the organ of language.

Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently forthe translator of nature into thought. I do not know the man inhistory to whom things stood so uniformly for words. Before himthe metamorphosis continually plays. Everything on which his eyerests, obeys the impulses of moral nature. The figs become grapes

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whilst he eats them. When some of his angels affirmed a truth, thelaurel twig which they held blossomed in their hands. The noisewhich at a distance appeared like gnashing and thumping, on com-ing nearer was found to be the voice of disputants. The men in oneof his visions, seen in heavenly light, appeared like dragons, andseemed in darkness; but to each other they appeared as men, andwhen the light from heaven shone into their cabin, they complainedof the darkness, and were compelled to shut the window that theymight see.

There was this perception in him which makes the poet or seer anobject of awe and terror, namely that the same man or society ofmen may wear one aspect to themselves and their companions, anda different aspect to higher intelligences. Certain priests, whom hedescribes as conversing very learnedly together, appeared to the chil-dren who were at some distance, like dead horses; and many the likemisappearances. And instantly the mind inquires whether these fishesunder the bridge, yonder oxen in the pasture, those dogs in theyard, are immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me,and perchance to themselves appear upright men; and whether Iappear as a man to all eyes. The Bramins and Pythagoras propoundedthe same question, and if any poet has witnessed the transformationhe doubtless found it in harmony with various experiences. We haveall seen changes as considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is thepoet and shall draw us with love and terror, who sees through theflowing vest the firm nature, and can declare it.

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not with suf-ficient plainness or sufficient profoundness address ourselves to life,nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If wefilled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebratingit. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man,the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await. Dante’s praiseis that he dared to write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or intouniversality. We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannouseye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and saw,in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival ofthe same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then inthe Middle Age; then in Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the newspa-

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per and caucus, Methodism and Unitarianism, are flat and dull todull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the townof Troy and the temple of Delphi, and are as swiftly passing away.Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, ourNegroes and Indians, our boats and our repudiations, the wrath ofrogues and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, thesouthern planting, the western clearing, Oregon and Texas, are yetunsung. Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geographydazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres. If Ihave not found that excellent combination of gifts in my country-men which I seek, neither could I aid myself to fix the idea of thepoet by reading now and then in Chalmers’s collection of five cen-turies of English poets. These are wits more than poets, though therehave been poets among them. But when we adhere to the ideal ofthe poet, we have our difficulties even with Milton and Homer.Milton is too literary, and Homer too literal and historical.

But I am not wise enough for a national criticism, and must usethe old largeness a little longer, to discharge my errand from themuse to the poet concerning his art.

Art is the path of the creator to his work. The paths or methodsare ideal and eternal, though few men ever see them; not the artisthimself for years, or for a lifetime, unless he come into the condi-tions. The painter, the sculptor, the composer, the epic rhapsodist,the orator, all partake one desire, namely to express themselves sym-metrically and abundantly, not dwarfishly and fragmentarily. Theyfound or put themselves in certain conditions, as, the painter andsculptor before some impressive human figures; the orator, into theassembly of the people; and the others in such scenes as each hasfound exciting to his intellect; and each presently feels the new de-sire. He hears a voice, he sees a beckoning. Then he is apprised,with wonder, what herds of daemons hem him in. He can no morerest; he says, with the old painter, “By God, it is in me and must goforth of me.” He pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him.The poet pours out verses in every solitude. Most of the things hesays are conventional, no doubt; but by and by he says somethingwhich is original and beautiful. That charms him. He would saynothing else but such things. In our way of talking we say ‘That is

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yours, this is mine;’ but the poet knows well that it is not his; that itis as strange and beautiful to him as to you; he would fain hear thelike eloquence at length. Once having tasted this immortal ichor, hecannot have enough of it, and as an admirable creative power existsin these intellections, it is of the last importance that these thingsget spoken. What a little of all we know is said! What drops of allthe sea of our science are baled up! and by what accident it is thatthese are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature! Hence thenecessity of speech and song; hence these throbs and heart-beatingsin the orator, at the door of the assembly, to the end namely thatthought may be ejaculated as Logos, or Word.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say ‘It is in me, and shall out.’Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissedand hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee thatdream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a powertranscending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man isthe conductor of the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, orcreeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in turn arise and walkbefore him as exponent of his meaning. Comes he to that power, hisgenius is no longer exhaustible. All the creatures by pairs and bytribes pour into his mind as into a Noah’s ark, to come forth againto people a new world. This is like the stock of air for our respira-tion or for the combustion of our fireplace; not a measure of gal-lons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And therefore the richpoets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Raphael, have obviouslyno limits to their works except the limits of their lifetime, and re-semble a mirror carried through the street, ready to render an imageof every created thing.

O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, andnot in castles or by the sword-blade any longer. The conditions arehard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the museonly. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces,politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. Forthe time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, butin nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes ofanimals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also thatthou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content

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that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen and shallrepresent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do thegreat and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with na-ture, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. Theworld is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine:thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is thescreen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower,and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall consolethee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse thenames of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holyideal. And this is the reward; that the ideal shall be real to thee, andthe impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copi-ous, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalthave the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bathand navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and therivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others areonly tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord!Wherever snow falls or water flows or birds fly, wherever day andnight meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by cloudsor sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries,wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, andawe, and love,—there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee,and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not beable to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

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EXPEXPEXPEXPEXPERIENCEERIENCEERIENCEERIENCEERIENCE

The lords of life, the lords of life,—I saw them pass,In their own guise,Like and unlike,Portly and grim,Use and Surprise,Surface and Dream,Succession swift, and spectral Wrong,Temperament without a tongue,And the inventor of the gameOmnipresent without name;—Some to see, some to be guessed,They marched from east to west:Little man, least of all,Among the legs of his guardians tall,Walked about with puzzled look:—Him by the hand dear Nature took;Dearest Nature, strong and kind,Whispered, ‘Darling, never mind!Tomorrow they will wear another face,The founder thou! these are thy race!’

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XIVXIVXIVXIVXIV. EXP. EXP. EXP. EXP. EXPERIENCEERIENCEERIENCEERIENCEERIENCE

WHERE DO WE FIND ourselves? In a series of which we do not knowthe extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find our-selves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to haveascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upwardand out of sight. But the Genius which according to the old beliefstands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink,that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannotshake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetimeabout our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened asour perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should notknow our place again. Did our birth fall in some fit of indigenceand frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and soliberal of her earth that it appears to us that we lack the affirmativeprinciple, and though we have health and reason, yet we have nosuperfluity of spirit for new creation? We have enough to live andbring the year about, but not an ounce to impart or to invest. Ahthat our Genius were a little more of a genius! We are like millers onthe lower levels of a stream, when the factories above them haveexhausted the water. We too fancy that the upper people must haveraised their dams.

If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going,then when we think we best know! We do not know to-day whetherwe are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent,we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, andmuch was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while theypass, that ’tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of thiswhich we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any datedcalendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated some-where, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that

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Osiris might be born. It is said all martyrdoms looked mean whenthey were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that wesail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel and hangs onevery other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun torecord it. Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of per-petual retreating and reference. ‘Yonder uplands are rich pasturage,and my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,’ says the queru-lous farmer, ‘only holds the world together.’ I quote another man’ssaying; unluckily that other withdraws himself in the same way, andquotes me. ’Tis the trick of nature thus to degrade to-day; a gooddeal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped magically in. Everyroof is agreeable to the eye until it is lifted; then we find tragedy andmoaning women and hard-eyed husbands and deluges of lethe, andthe men ask, ‘What’s the news?’ as if the old were so bad. Howmany individuals can we count in society? how many actions? howmany opinions? So much of our time is preparation, so much isroutine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man’s geniuscontracts itself to a very few hours. The history of literature—takethe net result of Tiraboschi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of veryfew ideas and of very few original tales; all the rest being variation ofthese. So in this great society wide lying around us, a critical analy-sis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all customand gross sense. There are even few opinions, and these seem or-ganic in the speakers, and do not disturb the universal necessity.

What opium is instilled into all disaster! It shows formidable aswe approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction, but themost slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought; Ate Dea isgentle,—

“Over men’s heads walking aloft, With tender feet treading so soft.”

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so badwith them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering,in the hope that here at least we shall find reality, sharp peaks andedges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counter-feit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

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That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introducesme into the reality, for contact with which we would even pay thecostly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out thatbodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their objects.An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and thethings we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists.In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem tohave lost a beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my princi-pal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenienceto me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it foundme,—neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it doesnot touch me; something which I fancied was a part of me, whichcould not be torn away without tearing me nor enlarged withoutenriching me, falls off from me and leaves no scar. It was caducous.I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step intoreal nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse that the windshould not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him,is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we thePara coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death.We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying There at least isreality that will not dodge us.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets themslip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be themost unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to beobserved, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates. Wemay have the sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for ourphilosophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to make; all ourblows glance, all our hits are accidents. Our relations to each otherare oblique and casual.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life isa train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through themthey prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world theirown hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the moun-tain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we seeonly what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that seethem. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the

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sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is al-ways genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish natureor criticism. The more or less depends on structure or tempera-ment. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung.Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? Whocares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at some timeshown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he laugh and giggle? or ifhe apologize? or is infected with egotism? or thinks of his dollar? orcannot go by food? or has gotten a child in his boyhood? Of whatuse is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannotfind a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life? Ofwhat use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does notcare enough for results to stimulate him to experiment, and holdhim up in it? or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable bypleasure and pain, so that life stagnates from too much receptionwithout due outlet? Of what use to make heroic vows of amend-ment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them? What cheer canthe religious sentiment yield, when that is suspected to be secretlydependent on the seasons of the year and the state of the blood? Iknew a witty physician who found the creed in the biliary duct, andused to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man becamea Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian.Very mortifying is the reluctant experience that some unfriendlyexcess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of genius. We see youngmen who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise,but they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the ac-count; or if they live they lose themselves in the crowd.

Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions andshuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. There is an opticalillusion about every person we meet. In truth they are all creaturesof given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whoseboundaries they will never pass: but we look at them, they seemalive, and we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment itseems impulse; in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a cer-tain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box mustplay. Men resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as theevening wears on, that temper prevails over everything of time, place,

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and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. Somemodifications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the indi-vidual texture holds its dominion, if not to bias the moral judg-ments, yet to fix the measure of activity and of enjoyment.

I thus express the law as it is read from the platform of ordinarylife, but must not leave it without noticing the capital exception.For temperament is a power which no man willingly hears any onepraise but himself. On the platform of physics we cannot resist thecontracting influences of so-called science. Temperament puts alldivinity to rout. I know the mental proclivity of physicians. I hearthe chuckle of the phrenologists. Theoretic kidnappers and slave-drivers, they esteem each man the victim of another, who windshim round his finger by knowing the law of his being; and by suchcheap signboards as the color of his beard or the slope of his oc-ciput, reads the inventory of his fortunes and character. The gross-est ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness. Thephysicians say they are not materialists; but they are:—Spirit is matterreduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!—But the definition ofspiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notionsdo they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willinglypronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasionto profane them. I saw a gracious gentleman who adapts his conver-sation to the form of the head of the man he talks with! I had fan-cied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities; in thefact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual,what may befall me. I carry the keys of my castle in my hand, readyto throw them at the feet of my lord, whenever and in what disguisesoever he shall appear. I know he is in the neighborhood hiddenamong vagabonds. Shall I preclude my future by taking a high seatand kindly adapting my conversation to the shape of heads? WhenI come to that, the doctors shall buy me for a cent.—’But, sir, medi-cal history; the report to the Institute; the proven facts!’ —I distrustthe facts and the inferences. Temperament is the veto or limitation-power in the constitution, very justly applied to restrain an oppositeexcess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as a bar to originalequity. When virtue is in presence, all subordinate powers sleep. Onits own level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. I see not, if

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one be once caught in this trap of so-called sciences, any escape forthe man from the links of the chain of physical necessity. Given suchan embryo, such a history must follow. On this platform one lives ina sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. But it is impos-sible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelli-gence there is a door which is never closed, through which the creatorpasses. The intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover ofabsolute good, intervenes for our succor, and at one whisper of thesehigh powers we awake from ineffectual struggles with this nightmare.We hurl it into its own hell, and cannot again contract ourselves to sobase a state.

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession ofmoods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage isquicksand. This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: Pero simuove. When at night I look at the moon and stars, I seem station-ary, and they to hurry. Our love of the real draws us to permanence,but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind invariety or facility of association. We need change of objects. Dedi-cation to one thought is quickly odious. We house with the insane,and must humor them; then conversation dies out. Once I tooksuch delight in Montaigne, that I thought I should not need anyother book; before that, in Shakspeare; then in Plutarch; then inPlotinus; at one time in Bacon; afterwards in Goethe; even in Bettine;but now I turn the pages of either of them languidly, whilst I stillcherish their genius. So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis ofattention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would con-tinue to be pleased in that manner. How strongly I have felt ofpictures that when you have seen one well, you must take your leaveof it; you shall never see it again. I have had good lessons frompictures which I have since seen without emotion or remark. A de-duction must be made from the opinion which even the wise ex-press of a new book or occurrence. Their opinion gives me tidingsof their mood, and some vague guess at the new fact, but is nowiseto be trusted as the lasting relation between that intellect and thatthing. The child asks, ‘Mamma, why don’t I like the story as well aswhen you told it me yesterday?’ Alas! child it is even so with theoldest cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer thy question to

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say, Because thou wert born to a whole and this story is a particular?The reason of the pain this discovery causes us (and we make it latein respect to works of art and intellect), is the plaint of tragedywhich murmurs from it in regard to persons, to friendship and love.

That immobility and absence of elasticity which we find in thearts, we find with more pain in the artist. There is no power ofexpansion in men. Our friends early appear to us as representativesof certain ideas which they never pass or exceed. They stand on thebrink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take thesingle step that would bring them there. A man is like a bit of La-brador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand untilyou come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautifulcolors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, buteach has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men con-sists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shallbe oftenest to be practised. We do what we must, and call it by thebest names we can, and would fain have the praise of having in-tended the result which ensues. I cannot recall any form of manwho is not superfluous sometimes. But is not this pitiful? Life is notworth the taking, to do tricks in.

Of course it needs the whole society to give the symmetry weseek. The party-colored wheel must revolve very fast to appear white.Something is earned too by conversing with so much folly and de-fect. In fine, whoever loses, we are always of the gaining party.Divinity is behind our failures and follies also. The plays of chil-dren are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with thelargest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church,marriage, and so with the history of every man’s bread, and the waysby which he is to come by it. Like a bird which alights nowhere, buthops perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which abidesin no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from thisone, and for another moment from that one.

But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help fromthought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have hadlessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people havethought and written much on labor and reform, and for all thatthey have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a

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step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece ofbread down his throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm, thenoblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men andmaidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or pitcha ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men andmaidens it left pale and hungry. A political orator wittily comparedour party promises to western roads, which opened stately enough,with planted trees on either side to tempt the traveller, but soonbecame narrow and narrower and ended in a squirrel-track and ranup a tree. So does culture with us; it ends in headache. Unspeakablysad and barren does life look to those who a few months ago weredazzled with the splendor of the promise of the times. “There isnow no longer any right course of action nor any self-devotion leftamong the Iranis.” Objections and criticism we have had our fill of.There are objections to every course of life and action, and the prac-tical wisdom infers an indifferency, from the omnipresence of ob-jection. The whole frame of things preaches indifferency. Do notcraze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is forwell-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.Nature hates peeping, and our mothers speak her very sense whenthey say, “Children, eat your victuals, and say no more of it.” To fillthe hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice fora repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true artof life is to skate well on them. Under the oldest mouldiest conven-tions a man of native force prospers just as well as in the newestworld, and that by skill of handling and treatment. He can takehold anywhere. Life itself is a mixture of power and form, and willnot bear the least excess of either. To finish the moment, to find thejourney’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest numberof good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics,or of mathematicians if you will, to say that the shortness of lifeconsidered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration wewere sprawling in want or sitting high. Since our office is with mo-ments, let us husband them. Five minutes of today are worth asmuch to me as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised,

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and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat the men and womenwell; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are. Men live intheir fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and tremulousfor successful labor. It is a tempest of fancies, and the only ballast Iknow is a respect to the present hour. Without any shadow of doubt,amidst this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle myself ever thefirmer in the creed that we should not postpone and refer and wish,but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with,accepting our actual companions and circumstances, howeverhumble or odious as the mystic officials to whom the universe hasdelegated its whole pleasure for us. If these are mean and malig-nant, their contentment, which is the last victory of justice, is amore satisfying echo to the heart than the voice of poets and thecasual sympathy of admirable persons. I think that however athoughtful man may suffer from the defects and absurdities of hiscompany, he cannot without affectation deny to any set of men andwomen a sensibility to extraordinary merit. The coarse and frivo-lous have an instinct of superiority, if they have not a sympathy, andhonor it in their blind capricious way with sincere homage.

The fine young people despise life, but in me, and in such as withme are free from dyspepsia, and to whom a day is a sound and solidgood, it is a great excess of politeness to look scornful and to cry forcompany. I am grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental,but leave me alone and I should relish every hour and what it broughtme, the potluck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room. I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with oneof my friends who expects everything of the universe and is disap-pointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that Ibegin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always fullof thanks for moderate goods. I accept the clangor and jangle ofcontrary tendencies. I find my account in sots and bores also. Theygive a reality to the circumjacent picture which such a vanishingmeteorous appearance can ill spare. In the morning I awake andfind the old world, wife, babes, and mother, Concord and Boston,the dear old spiritual world and even the dear old devil not far off. Ifwe will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall haveheaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Every-

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thing good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is thetemperate zone. We may climb into the thin and cold realm of puregeometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Be-tween these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, ofpoetry,—a narrow belt. Moreover, in popular experience everythinggood is on the highway. A collector peeps into all the picture-shopsof Europe for a landscape of Poussin, a crayon-sketch of Salvator;but the Transfiguration, the Last Judgment, the Communion of St.Jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are on the walls ofthe Vatican, the Uffizii, or the Louvre, where every footman maysee them; to say nothing of Nature’s pictures in every street, of sun-sets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human bodynever absent. A collector recently bought at public auction, in Lon-don, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph ofShakspeare; but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet and candetect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein. Ithink I will never read any but the commonest books,—the Bible,Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. Then we are impatient ofso public a life and planet, and run hither and thither for nooks andsecrets. The imagination delights in the woodcraft of Indians, trap-pers, and bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and not sointimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wildbeast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches theclimbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox andwoodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when nearly seen, have nomore root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficialtenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy showsastronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that theworld is all outside; it has no inside.

The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know her, is no saint. Thelights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos, and corn-eaters, she doesnot distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and drinking andsinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are notchildren of our law; do not come out of the Sunday School, norweigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If wewill be strong with her strength we must not harbor such disconso-late consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other na-

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tions. We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumorsof wrath, past or to come. So many things are unsettled which it isof the first importance to settle;—and, pending their settlement,we will do as we do. Whilst the debate goes forward on the equity ofcommerce, and will not be closed for a century or two, New andOld England may keep shop. Law of copyright and internationalcopyright is to be discussed, and in the interim we will sell ourbooks for the most we can. Expediency of literature, reason of lit-erature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; muchis to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearestscholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and betweenwhiles add a line. Right to hold land, right of property, is disputed,and the conventions convene, and before the vote is taken, dig awayin your garden, and spend your earnings as a waif or godsend to allserene and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a skepti-cism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much more as theywill,—but thou, God’s darling! heed thy private dream; thou wiltnot be missed in the scorning and skepticism; there are enough ofthem; stay there in thy closet and toil until the rest are agreed whatto do about it. Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit requirethat thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flittingstate, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint.Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holdsthee dear, shall be the better.

Human life is made up of the two elements, power and form, andthe proportion must be invariably kept if we would have it sweetand sound. Each of these elements in excess makes a mischief ashurtful as its defect. Everything runs to excess; every good quality isnoxious if unmixed, and, to carry the danger to the edge of ruin,nature causes each man’s peculiarity to superabound. Here, amongthe farms, we adduce the scholars as examples of this treachery. Theyare nature’s victims of expression. You who see the artist, the orator,the poet, too near, and find their life no more excellent than that ofmechanics or farmers, and themselves victims of partiality, very hol-low and haggard, and pronounce them failures, not heroes, butquacks,—conclude very reasonably that these arts are not for man,but are disease. Yet nature will not bear you out. Irresistible nature

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made men such, and makes legions more of such, every day. Youlove the boy reading in a book, gazing at a drawing, or a cast; yetwhat are these millions who read and behold, but incipient writersand sculptors? Add a little more of that quality which now readsand sees, and they will seize the pen and chisel. And if one remem-bers how innocently he began to be an artist, he perceives that na-ture joined with his enemy. A man is a golden impossibility. Theline he must walk is a hair’s breadth. The wise through excess ofwisdom is made a fool.

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep forever thesebeautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once for all, to the perfectcalculation of the kingdom of known cause and effect. In the streetand in the newspapers, life appears so plain a business that manlyresolution and adherence to the multiplication-table through allweathers will insure success. But ah! presently comes a day, or is itonly a half-hour, with its angel-whispering, —which discomfits theconclusions of nations and of years! Tomorrow again everythinglooks real and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated, com-mon sense is as rare as genius,—is the basis of genius, and experi-ence is hands and feet to every enterprise;—and yet, he who shoulddo his business on this understanding would be quickly bankrupt.Power keeps quite another road than the turnpikes of choice andwill; namely the subterranean and invisible tunnels and channels oflife. It is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and doctors, and con-siderate people: there are no dupes like these. Life is a series of sur-prises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past andthe future. We would look about us, but with grand politeness hedraws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, andanother behind us of purest sky. ‘You will not remember,’ he seemsto say, `and you will not expect.’ All good conversation, manners,and action, come from a spontaneity which forgets usages and makesthe moment great. Nature hates calculators; her methods are salta-tory and impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements aresuch; and the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory and al-ternate; and the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers butby fits. We thrive by casualties. Our chief experiences have been

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casual. The most attractive class of people are those who are power-ful obliquely and not by the direct stroke; men of genius, but notyet accredited; one gets the cheer of their light without paying toogreat a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird or the morning light, andnot of art. In the thought of genius there is always a surprise; andthe moral sentiment is well called “the newness,” for it is never other;as new to the oldest intelligence as to the young child;—”the king-dom that cometh without observation.” In like manner, for practi-cal success, there must not be too much design. A man will not beobserved in doing that which he can do best. There is a certainmagic about his properest action which stupefies your powers ofobservation, so that though it is done before you, you wist not of it.The art of life has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man isan impossibility until he is born; every thing impossible until we seea success. The ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest skepti-cism,—that nothing is of us or our works,—that all is of God. Na-ture will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writing comes bythe grace of God, and all doing and having. I would gladly be moraland keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, and allow themost to the will of man; but I have set my heart on honesty in thischapter, and I can see nothing at last, in success or failure, thanmore or less of vital force supplied from the Eternal. The results oflife are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much whichthe days never know. The persons who compose our company, con-verse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, andsomewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked-for result. The indi-vidual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew inother persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blunderedmuch, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the indi-vidual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new and very un-like what he promised himself.

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the elements ofhuman life to calculation, exalted Chance into a divinity; but that isto stay too long at the spark, which glitters truly at one point, but theuniverse is warm with the latency of the same fire. The miracle of lifewhich will not be expounded but will remain a miracle, introduces anew element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir Everard Home I think

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noticed that the evolution was not from one central point, but coactivefrom three or more points. Life has no memory. That which proceedsin succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, orejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knowsnot its own tendency. So is it with us, now skeptical or without unity,because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yethostile value, and now religious, whilst in the reception of spirituallaw. Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of theparts; they will one day be members, and obey one will. On that onewill, on that secret cause, they nail our attention and hope. Life ishereby melted into an expectation or a religion. Underneath the in-harmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection; the Idealjourneying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam. Do butobserve the mode of our illumination. When I converse with a pro-found mind, or if at any time being alone I have good thoughts, I donot at once arrive at satisfactions, as when, being thirsty, I drink wa-ter; or go to the fire, being cold; no! but I am at first apprised of myvicinity to a new and excellent region of life. By persisting to read orto think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes oflight, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as ifthe clouds that covered it parted at intervals and showed the approach-ing traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal mead-ows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze and shepherds pipe anddance. But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial,and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and beholdwhat was there already. I make! O no! I clap my hands in infantine joyand amazement before the first opening to me of this august magnifi-cence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, youngwith the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert. And what afuture it opens! I feel a new heart beating with the love of the newbeauty. I am ready to die out of nature and be born again into thisnew yet unapproachable America I have found in the West:—

“Since neither now nor yesterday began These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can A man be found who their first entrance knew.”

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If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must now add thatthere is that in us which changes not and which ranks all sensationsand states of mind. The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale,which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with theflesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. The sentimentfrom which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and thequestion ever is, not what you have done or forborne, but at whosecommand you have done or forborne it.

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost,—these are quaint names,too narrow to cover this unbounded substance. The baffled intel-lect must still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named,—ineffable cause, which every fine genius has essayed to represent bysome emphatic symbol, as, Thales by water, Anaximenes by air,Anaxagoras by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and themoderns by love; and the metaphor of each has become a nationalreligion. The Chinese Mencius has not been the least successful inhis generalization. “I fully understand language,” he said, “and nour-ish well my vast-flowing vigor.”—“I beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor?”—said his companion. “The explanation,” repliedMencius, “is difficult. This vigor is supremely great, and in the highestdegree unbending. Nourish it correctly and do it no injury, and itwill fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. This vigor ac-cords with and assists justice and reason, and leaves no hunger.”—In our more correct writing we give to this generalization the nameof Being, and thereby confess that we have arrived as far as we cango. Suffice it for the joy of the universe that we have not arrived at awall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present so muchas prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hintof this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life seems to be mere advertise-ment of faculty; information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap;that we are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness is always in atendency or direction, not in an action. It is for us to believe in therule, not in the exception. The noble are thus known from the ig-noble. So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not whatwe believe concerning the immortality of the soul or the like, butthe universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstanceand is the principal fact in the history of the globe. Shall we de-

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scribe this cause as that which works directly? The spirit is not help-less or needful of mediate organs. It has plentiful powers and directeffects. I am explained without explaining, I am felt without acting,and where I am not. Therefore all just persons are satisfied withtheir own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are contentthat new actions should do them that office. They believe that wecommunicate without speech and above speech, and that no rightaction of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever dis-tance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.Why should I fret myself because a circumstance has occurred whichhinders my presence where I was expected? If I am not at the meet-ing, my presence where I am should be as useful to the common-wealth of friendship and wisdom, as would be my presence in thatplace. I exert the same quality of power in all places. Thus journeysthe mighty Ideal before us; it never was known to fall into the rear.No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but hisgood is tidings of a better. Onward and onward! In liberated mo-ments we know that a new picture of life and duty is already pos-sible; the elements already exist in many minds around you of adoctrine of life which shall transcend any written record we have.The new statement will comprise the skepticisms as well as the faithsof society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For skepti-cisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affir-mative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in andmake affirmations outside of them, just as much as it must includethe oldest beliefs.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery wehave made that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man.Ever afterwards we suspect our instruments. We have learned thatwe do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means ofcorrecting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or ofcomputing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenseshave a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we livedin what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, whichthreatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, let-ters, religions, objects, successively tumble in, and God is but oneof its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every

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evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The street isfull of humiliations to the proud. As the fop contrived to dress hisbailiffs in his livery and make them wait on his guests at table, sothe chagrins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once takeform as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shopmen or bar-keepersin hotels, and threaten or insult whatever is threatenable andinsultable in us. ’Tis the same with our idolatries. People forget thatit is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind’s eyewhich makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity,with the name of hero or saint. Jesus, the “providential man,” is agood man on whom many people are agreed that these optical lawsshall take effect. By love on one part and by forbearance to pressobjection on the other part, it is for a time settled, that we will lookat him in the centre of the horizon, and ascribe to him the proper-ties that will attach to any man so seen. But the longest love oraversion has a speedy term. The great and crescive self, rooted inabsolute nature, supplants all relative existence and ruins the king-dom of mortal friendship and love. Marriage (in what is called thespiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between everysubject and every object. The subject is the receiver of Godhead,and at every comparison must feel his being enhanced by that cryp-tic might. Though not in energy, yet by presence, this magazine ofsubstance cannot be otherwise than felt; nor can any force of intel-lect attribute to the object the proper deity which sleeps or wakesforever in every subject. Never can love make consciousness andascription equal in force. There will be the same gulf between everyme and thee as between the original and the picture. The universe isthe bride of the soul. All private sympathy is partial. Two humanbeings are like globes, which can touch only in a point, and whilstthey remain in contact, all other points of each of the spheres areinert; their turn must also come, and the longer a particular unionlasts the more energy of appetency the parts not in union acquire.

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. Any in-vasion of its unity would be chaos. The soul is not twin-born butthe only begotten, and though revealing itself as child in time, childin appearance, is of a fatal and universal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, every act betrays the ill-concealed deity. We believe

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in ourselves as we do not believe in others. We permit all things toourselves, and that which we call sin in others is experiment for us.It is an instance of our faith in ourselves that men never speak ofcrime as lightly as they think; or every man thinks a latitude safe forhimself which is nowise to be indulged to another. The act looksvery differently on the inside and on the outside; in its quality andin its consequences. Murder in the murderer is no such ruinousthought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettlehim or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an actquite easy to be contemplated; but in its sequel it turns out to be ahorrible jangle and confounding of all relations. Especially the crimesthat spring from love seem right and fair from the actor’s point ofview, but when acted are found destructive of society. No man atlast believes that he can be lost, nor that the crime in him is as blackas in the felon. Because the intellect qualifies in our own case themoral judgments. For there is no crime to the intellect. That isantinomian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as fact. “It isworse than a crime, it is a blunder,” said Napoleon, speaking thelanguage of the intellect. To it, the world is a problem in mathemat-ics or the science of quantity, and it leaves out praise and blame andall weak emotions. All stealing is comparative. If you come to abso-lutes, pray who does not steal? Saints are sad, because they beholdsin (even when they speculate), from the point of view of the con-science, and not of the intellect; a confusion of thought. Sin, seenfrom the thought, is a diminution, or less: seen from the conscienceor will, it is pravity or bad. The intellect names it shade, absence oflight, and no essence. The conscience must feel it as essence, essen-tial evil. This it is not; it has an objective existence, but no subjec-tive.

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every objectfall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the sub-ject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so Isee; use what language we will, we can never say anything but whatwe are; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are themind’s ministers. Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter agreat man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist whopasses through our estate and shows us good slate, or limestone, or

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anthracite, in our brush pasture. The partial action of each strongmind in one direction is a telescope for the objects on which it ispointed. But every other part of knowledge is to be pushed to thesame extravagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericity. Do yousee that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could lookwith her eyes you might see her surrounded with hundreds of fig-ures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, longconversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate,—andmeantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our mas-querade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shouting,and we shall find it was a solitary performance? A subject and anobject,—it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete,but magnitude adds nothing. What imports it whether it is Keplerand the sphere, Columbus and America, a reader and his book, orpuss with her tail?

It is true that all the muses and love and religion hate these devel-opments, and will find a way to punish the chemist who publishesin the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot say toolittle of our constitutional necessity of seeing things under privateaspects, or saturated with our humors. And yet is the God the na-tive of these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals the capitalvirtue of self-trust. We must hold hard to this poverty, however scan-dalous, and by more vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of ac-tion, possess our axis more firmly. The life of truth is cold and so farmournful; but it is not the slave of tears, contritions and perturba-tions. It does not attempt another’s work, nor adopt another’s facts.It is a main lesson of wisdom to know your own from another’s. Ihave learned that I cannot dispose of other people’s facts; but I pos-sess such a key to my own as persuades me, against all their denials,that they also have a key to theirs. A sympathetic person is placed inthe dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch athim, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger they will drown him.They wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but notfrom their vices. Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting onthe symptoms. A wise and hardy physician will say, Come out ofthat, as the first condition of advice.

In this our talking America we are ruined by our good nature and

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listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power of be-ing greatly useful. A man should not be able to look other thandirectly and forthright. A preoccupied attention is the only answerto the importunate frivolity of other people; an attention, and to anaim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, andleaves no appeal and no hard thoughts. In Flaxman’s drawing of theEumenides of Aeschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Fu-ries sleep on the threshold. The face of the god expresses a shade ofregret and compassion, but is calm with the conviction of the irrec-oncilableness of the two spheres. He is born into other politics, intothe eternal and beautiful. The man at his feet asks for his interest inturmoils of the earth, into which his nature cannot enter. And theEumenides there lying express pictorially this disparity. The god issurcharged with his divine destiny.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality,Subjectiveness,—these are threads on the loom of time, these arethe lords of life. I dare not assume to give their order, but I namethem as I find them in my way. I know better than to claim anycompleteness for my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a frag-ment of me. I can very confidently announce one or another law,which throws itself into relief and form, but I am too young yet bysome ages to compile a code. I gossip for my hour concerning theeternal politics. I have seen many fair pictures not in vain. A won-derful time I have lived in. I am not the novice I was fourteen, noryet seven years ago. Let who will ask Where is the fruit? I find aprivate fruit sufficient. This is a fruit,—that I should not ask for arash effect from meditations, counsels and the hiving of truths. Ishould feel it pitiful to demand a result on this town and county, anovert effect on the instant month and year. The effect is deep andsecular as the cause. It works on periods in which mortal lifetime islost. All I know is reception; I am and I have: but I do not get, andwhen I have fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not. Iworship with wonder the great Fortune. My reception has been solarge, that I am not annoyed by receiving this or thatsuperabundantly. I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the proverb,In for a mill, in for a million. When I receive a new gift, I do notmacerate my body to make the account square, for if I should die I

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could not make the account square. The benefit overran the meritthe first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself,so-called, I reckon part of the receiving.

Also that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to mean apostasy. In good earnest I am willing to spare this most unnec-essary deal of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. Hardest rough-est action is visionary also. It is but a choice between soft and turbu-lent dreams. People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, andurge doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know.That is an august entertainment, and would suffice me a great while.To know a little would be worth the expense of this world. I hearalways the law of Adrastia, “that every soul which had acquired anytruth, should be safe from harm until another period.”

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms,is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it.One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I havenot found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize theworld of thought. Many eager persons successively make an experi-ment in this way, and make themselves ridiculous. They acquire demo-cratic manners, they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse,I observe that in the history of mankind there is never a solitary ex-ample of success,—taking their own tests of success. I say this po-lemically, or in reply to the inquiry, Why not realize your world? Butfar be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry em-piricism;—since there never was a right endeavor but it succeeded.Patience and patience, we shall win at the last. We must be very suspi-cious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good deal oftime to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very littletime to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light ofour life. We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the householdwith our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgottennext week; but, in the solitude to which every man is always return-ing, he has a sanity and revelations which in his passage into newworlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mindthe defeat; up again, old heart!—it seems to say,—there is victory yetfor all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realizewill be the transformation of genius into practical power.

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CHARACHARACHARACHARACHARACTERCTERCTERCTERCTER

The sun set; but set not his hope:Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:

Fixed on the enormous galaxy,Deeper and older seemed his eye:

And matched his sufferance sublimeThe taciturnity of time.

He spoke, and words more soft than rainBrought the Age of Gold again:

His action won such reverence sweet,As hid all measure of the feat.

Work of his handHe nor commends nor grieves

Pleads for itself the fact;As unrepenting Nature leaves

Her every act.

XVXVXVXVXV. CHARA. CHARA. CHARA. CHARA. CHARACTERCTERCTERCTERCTER

I HAVE READ that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that therewas something finer in the man than any thing which he said. It hasbeen complained of our brilliant English historian of the FrenchRevolution that when he has told all his facts about Mirabeau, theydo not justify his estimate of his genius. The Gracchi, Agis,Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch’s heroes, do not in the record offacts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, SirWalter Raleigh, are men of great figure and of few deeds. We can-not find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in

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the narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller istoo great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to theworks or the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the rever-beration is longer than the thunder-clap, but somewhat resided inthese men which begot an expectation that outran all their perfor-mance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is that whichwe call Character,—a reserved force which acts directly by pres-ence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certainundemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses theman is guided but whose counsels he cannot impart; which is com-pany for him, so that such men are often solitary, or if they chanceto be social, do not need society but can entertain themselves verywell alone. The purest literary talent appears at one time great, atanother time small, but character is of a stellar and undiminishablegreatness. What others effect by talent or by eloquence, this manaccomplishes by some magnetism. “Half his strength he put notforth.” His victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not bycrossing of bayonets. He conquers because his arrival alters the faceof affairs. “O Iole! how did you know that Hercules was a god?”“Because,” answered Iole, “I was content the moment my eyes fellon him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see himoffer battle, or at least guide his horses in the chariot-race; but Her-cules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood, orwalked, or sat, or whatever thing he did.” Man, ordinarily a pen-dant to events, only half attached, and that awkwardly, to the worldhe lives in, in these examples appears to share the life of things, andto be an expression of the same laws which control the tides and thesun, numbers and quantities.

But to use a more modest illustration and nearer home, I observethat in our political elections, where this element, if it appears at all,can only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently understand itsincomparable rate. The people know that they need in their repre-sentative much more than talent, namely the power to make histalent trusted. They cannot come at their ends by sending to Con-gress a learned, acute, and fluent speaker, if he be not one who,before he was appointed by the people to represent them, was ap-pointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact,—invincibly persuaded

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of that fact in himself,—so that the most confident and the mostviolent persons learn that here is resistance on which both impudenceand terror are wasted, namely faith in a fact. The men who carry theirpoints do not need to inquire of their constituents what they shouldsay, but are themselves the country which they represent; nowhere areits emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them; nowhere sopure from a selfish infusion. The constituency at home hearkens totheir words, watches the color of their cheek, and therein, as in aglass, dresses its own. Our public assemblies are pretty good tests ofmanly force. Our frank countrymen of the west and south have ataste for character, and like to know whether the New Englander is asubstantial man, or whether the hand can pass through him.

The same motive force appears in trade. There are geniuses intrade, as well as in war, or the State, or letters; and the reason whythis or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; thatis all anybody can tell you about it. See him and you will know aseasily why he succeeds, as, if you see Napoleon, you would compre-hend his fortune. In the new objects we recognize the old game, theHabit of fronting the fact, and not dealing with it at second hand,through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to autho-rize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears notso much a private agent as her factor and Minister of Commerce.His natural probity combines with his insight into the fabric ofsociety to put him above tricks, and he communicates to all his ownfaith that contracts are of no private interpretation. The habit of hismind is a reference to standards of natural equity and public advan-tage; and he inspires respect and the wish to deal with him, both forthe quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectualpastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords. This im-mensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the SouthernOcean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar port, centres inhis brain only; and nobody in the universe can make his place good.In his parlor I see very well that he has been at hard work this morn-ing, with that knitted brow and that settled humor, which all hisdesire to be courteous cannot shake off. I see plainly how many firmacts have been done; how many valiant noes have this day beenspoken, when others would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with

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the pride of art and skill of masterly arithmetic and power of remotecombination, the consciousness of being an agent and playfellow ofthe original laws of the world. He too believes that none can supplyhim, and that a man must be born to trade or he cannot learn it.

This virtue draws the mind more when it appears in action toends not so mixed. It works with most energy in the smallest com-panies and in private relations. In all cases it is an extraordinary andincomputable agent. The excess of physical strength is paralyzed byit. Higher natures overpower lower ones by affecting them with acertain sleep. The faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance.Perhaps that is the universal law. When the high cannot bring upthe low to itself, it benumbs it, as man charms down the resistanceof the lower animals. Men exert on each other a similar occult power.How often has the influence of a true master realized all the tales ofmagic! A river of command seemed to run down from his eyes intoall those who beheld him, a torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohioor Danube, which pervaded them with his thoughts and colored allevents with the hue of his mind. “What means did you employ?”was the question asked of the wife of Concini, in regard to her treat-ment of Mary of Medici; and the answer was, “Only that influencewhich every strong mind has over a weak one.” Cannot Caesar inirons shuffle off the irons and transfer them to the person of Hippoor Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so immutable a bond?Suppose a slaver on the coast of Guinea should take on board agang of negroes which should contain persons of the stamp ofToussaint L’Ouverture: or, let us fancy, under these swarthy maskshe has a gang of Washingtons in chains. When they arrive at Cuba,will the relative order of the ship’s company be the same? Is therenothing but rope and iron? Is there no love, no reverence? Is therenever a glimpse of right in a poor slave-captain’s mind; and cannotthese be supposed available to break or elude or in any manner over-match the tension of an inch or two of iron ring?

This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooper-ates with it. The reason why we feel one man’s presence and do notfeel another’s is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being;justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures standin a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will

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of the pure runs down from them into other natures as water runsdown from a higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is nomore to be withstood than any other natural force. We can drive astone upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that allstones will forever fall; and whatever instances can be quoted ofunpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice mustprevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed. Char-acter is this moral order seen through the medium of an individualnature. An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty andnecessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer. Now, theuniverse is a close or pound. All things exist in the man tinged withthe manners of his soul. With what quality is in him he infuses allnature that he can reach; nor does he tend to lose himself in vast-ness, but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return into hisown good at last. He animates all he can, and he sees only what heanimates. He encloses the world, as the patriot does his country, asa material basis for his character, and a theatre for action. A healthysoul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet ar-ranges itself with the pole; so that he stands to all beholders like atransparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeystowards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the me-dium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.Thus, men of character are the conscience of the society to whichthey belong.

The natural measure of this power is the resistance of circum-stances. Impure men consider life as it is reflected in opinions, events,and persons. They cannot see the action until it is done. Yet itsmoral element preexisted in the actor, and its quality as right orwrong it was easy to predict. Everything in nature is bipolar, or hasa positive and negative pole. There is a male and a female, a spiritand a fact, a north and a south. Spirit is the positive, the event is thenegative. Will is the north, action the south pole. Character may beranked as having its natural place in the north. It shares the mag-netic currents of the system. The feeble souls are drawn to the southor negative pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the action. Theynever behold a principle until it is lodged in a person. They do notwish to be lovely, but to be loved. Men of character like to hear of

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their faults; the other class do not like to hear of faults; they worshipevents; secure to them a fact, a connection, a certain chain of cir-cumstances, and they will ask no more. The hero sees that the eventis ancillary; it must follow him. A given order of events has no powerto secure to him the satisfaction which the imagination attaches toit; the soul of goodness escapes from any set of circumstances; whilstprosperity belongs to a certain mind, and will introduce that powerand victory which is its natural fruit, into any order of events. Nochange of circumstances can repair a defect of character. We boastour emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have brokenany idols it is through a transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained,that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Neptune, or a mouseto Hecate; that I do not tremble before the Eumenides, or the Catho-lic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic Judgment-day,—if I quake at opin-ion, the public opinion, as we call it; or at the threat of assault, orcontumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at therumor of revolution, or of murder? If I quake, what matters it whatI quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape,according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if weare capable of fear, will readily find terrors. The covetousness or themalignity which saddens me when I ascribe it to society, is my own.I am always environed by myself. On the other part, rectitude is aperpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, whichis joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to fly to events for confirma-tion of our truth and worth. The capitalist does not run every hourto the broker to coin his advantages into current money of the realm;he is satisfied to read in the quotations of the market that his stockshave risen. The same transport which the occurrence of the bestevents in the best order would occasion me, I must learn to tastepurer in the perception that my position is every hour meliorated,and does already command those events I desire. That exultation isonly to be checked by the foresight of an order of things so excellentas to throw all our prosperities into the deepest shade.

The face which character wears to me is self-sufficingness. I reverethe person who is riches; so that I cannot think of him as alone, orpoor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron,benefactor, and beatified man. Character is centrality, the impossi-

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bility of being displaced or overset. A man should give us a sense ofmass. Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conver-sation into ceremonies and escapes. But if I go to see an ingeniousman I shall think myself poorly entertained if he give me nimblepieces of benevolence and etiquette; rather he shall stand stoutly inhis place and let me apprehend if it were only his resistance; knowthat I have encountered a new and positive quality;—great refresh-ment for both of us. It is much that he does not accept the conven-tional opinions and practices. That nonconformity will remain agoad and remembrancer, and every inquirer will have to dispose ofhim, in the first place. There is nothing real or useful that is not aseat of war. Our houses ring with laughter and personal and criticalgossip, but it helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable man, who is aproblem and a threat to society, whom it cannot let pass in silencebut must either worship or hate,—and to whom all parties feel re-lated, both the leaders of opinion and the obscure and eccentric,—he helps; he puts America and Europe in the wrong, and destroysthe skepticism which says, ‘man is a doll, let us eat and drink, ’tis thebest we can do,’ by illuminating the untried and unknown. Acqui-escence in the establishment and appeal to the public, indicate in-firm faith, heads which are not clear, and which must see a housebuilt, before they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise man notonly leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves out the few.Fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the commander becausehe is commanded, the assured, the primary,—they are good; forthese announce the instant presence of supreme power.

Our action should rest mathematically on our substance. In na-ture, there are no false valuations. A pound of water in the ocean-tempest has no more gravity than in a midsummer pond. All thingswork exactly according to their quality and according to their quan-tity; attempt nothing they cannot do, except man only. He has pre-tension; he wishes and attempts things beyond his force. I read in abook of English memoirs, “Mr. Fox (afterwards Lord Holland) said,he must have the Treasury; he had served up to it, and would haveit.” Xenophon and his Ten Thousand were quite equal to what theyattempted, and did it; so equal, that it was not suspected to be agrand and inimitable exploit. Yet there stands that fact unrepeated,

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a high-water mark in military history. Many have attempted it since,and not been equal to it. It is only on reality that any power ofaction can be based. No institution will be better than the institu-tor. I knew an amiable and accomplished person who undertook apractical reform, yet I was never able to find in him the enterprise oflove he took in hand. He adopted it by ear and by the understand-ing from the books he had been reading. All his action was tenta-tive, a piece of the city carried out into the fields, and was the citystill, and no new fact, and could not inspire enthusiasm. Had therebeen something latent in the man, a terrible undemonstrated ge-nius agitating and embarrassing his demeanor, we had watched forits advent. It is not enough that the intellect should see the evils andtheir remedy. We shall still postpone our existence, nor take theground to which we are entitled, whilst it is only a thought and nota spirit that incites us. We have not yet served up to it.

These are properties of life, and another trait is the notice of in-cessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. They mustalso make us feel that they have a controlling happy future openingbefore them, whose early twilights already kindle in the passing hour.The hero is misconceived and misreported; he cannot therefore waitto unravel any man’s blunders; he is again on his road, adding newpowers and honors to his domain and new claims on your heart,which will bankrupt you if you have loitered about the old thingsand have not kept your relation to him by adding to your wealth.New actions are the only apologies and explanations of old oneswhich the noble can bear to offer or to receive. If your friend hasdispleased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he hasalready lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his powerto serve you, and ere you can rise up again will burden you withblessings.

We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence that is only mea-sured by its works. Love is inexhaustible, and if its estate is wasted, itsgranary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and the man, though hesleep, seems to purify the air and his house to adorn the landscapeand strengthen the laws. People always recognize this difference. Weknow who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount ofsubscription to soup-societies. It is only low merits that can be enu-

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merated. Fear, when your friends say to you what you have done well,and say it through; but when they stand with uncertain timid looksof respect and half-dislike, and must suspend their judgment for yearsto come, you may begin to hope. Those who live to the future mustalways appear selfish to those who live to the present. Therefore it wasdroll in the good Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, tomake out a list of his donations and good deeds, as, so many hundredthalers given to Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein; a lucrative place foundfor Professor Voss, a post under the Grand Duke for Herder, a pen-sion for Meyer, two professors recommended to foreign universities;&c., &c. The longest list of specifications of benefit would look veryshort. A man is a poor creature if he is to be measured so. For all theseof course are exceptions, and the rule and hodiernal life of a goodman is benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred fromthe account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the way in which he had spenthis fortune. “Each bon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half amillion of my own money, the fortune I inherited, my salary and thelarge income derived from my writings for fifty years back, have beenexpended to instruct me in what I now know. I have besides seen,”&c.

I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate traits ofthis simple and rapid power, and we are painting the lightning withcharcoal; but in these long nights and vacations I like to consolemyself so. Nothing but itself can copy it. A word warm from theheart enriches me. I surrender at discretion. How death-cold is lit-erary genius before this fire of life! These are the touches that reani-mate my heavy soul and give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. Ifind, where I thought myself poor, there was I most rich. Thencecomes a new intellectual exaltation, to be again rebuked by somenew exhibition of character. Strange alternation of attraction andrepulsion! Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and charac-ter passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed beforenew flashes of moral worth.

Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it orto contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of per-sistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emula-tion.

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This masterpiece is best where no hands but nature’s have beenlaid on it. Care is taken that the greatly-destined shall slip up intolife in the shade, with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch and bla-zon every new thought, every blushing emotion of young genius.Two persons lately, very young children of the most high God, havegiven me occasion for thought. When I explored the source of theirsanctity and charm for the imagination, it seemed as if each an-swered, ‘From my nonconformity; I never listened to your people’slaw, or to what they call their gospel, and wasted my time. I wascontent with the simple rural poverty of my own; hence this sweet-ness; my work never reminds you of that;—is pure of that.’ Andnature advertises me in such persons that in democratic Americashe will not be democratized. How cloistered and constitutionallysequestered from the market and from scandal! It was only thismorning that I sent away some wild flowers of these wood-gods.They are a relief from literature,—these fresh draughts from thesources of thought and sentiment; as we read, in an age of polishand criticism, the first lines of written prose and verse of a nation.How captivating is their devotion to their favorite books, whetherAeschylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or Scott, as feeling that they have astake in that book; who touches that, touches them;—and espe-cially the total solitude of the critic, the Patmos of thought fromwhich he writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever readthis writing. Could they dream on still, as angels, and not wake tocomparisons, and to be flattered! Yet some natures are too good tobe spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches downinto the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friendswill warn them of the danger of the head’s being turned by theflourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile. I remember theindignation of an eloquent Methodist at the kind admonitions of aDoctor of Divinity,—’My friend, a man can neither be praised norinsulted.’ But forgive the counsels; they are very natural. I remem-ber the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious andspiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victim-ized in being brought hither?—or, prior to that, answer me this,‘Are you victimizable?’

As I have said, Nature keeps these sovereignties in her own hands,

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and however pertly our sermons and disciplines would divide someshare of credit, and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she goesher own gait and puts the wisest in the wrong. She makes very lightof gospels and prophets, as one who has a great many more to pro-duce and no excess of time to spare on any one. There is a class ofmen, individuals of which appear at long intervals, so eminentlyendowed with insight and virtue that they have been unanimouslysaluted as divine, and who seem to be an accumulation of that powerwe consider. Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrasefrom Napoleon, they are victory organized. They are usually re-ceived with ill-will, because they are new and because they set abound to the exaggeration that has been made of the personality ofthe last divine person. Nature never rhymes her children, nor makestwo men alike. When we see a great man we fancy a resemblance tosome historical person, and predict the sequel of his character andfortune; a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solvethe problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only inhis own high unprecedented way. Character wants room; must notbe crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in thepress of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a greatbuilding. It may not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; andwe should not require rash explanation, either on the popular eth-ics, or on our own, of its action.

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and theJove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait which the artist re-corded in stone he had seen in life, and better than his copy. Wehave seen many counterfeits, but we are born believers in great men.How easily we read in old books, when men were few, of the small-est action of the patriarchs. We require that a man should be solarge and columnar in the landscape, that it should deserve to berecorded that he arose, and girded up his loins, and departed tosuch a place. The most credible pictures are those of majestic menwho prevailed at their entrance, and convinced the senses; as hap-pened to the eastern magian who was sent to test the merits ofZertusht or Zoroaster. When the Yunani sage arrived at Balkh, thePersians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a day on which the Mobeds ofevery country should assemble, and a golden chair was placed for

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the Yunani sage. Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht,advanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani sage, on see-ing that chief, said, “This form and this gait cannot lie, and nothingbut truth can proceed from them.” Plato said it was impossible notto believe in the children of the gods, “though they should speakwithout probable or necessary arguments.” I should think myselfvery unhappy in my associates if I could not credit the best things inhistory. “John Bradshaw,” says Milton, “appears like a consul, fromwhom the fasces are not to depart with the year; so that not on thetribunal only, but throughout his life, you would regard him as sit-ting in judgment upon kings.” I find it more credible, since it isanterior information, that one man should know heaven, as theChinese say, than that so many men should know the world. “Thevirtuous prince confronts the gods, without any misgiving. He waitsa hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not doubt. He who con-fronts the gods, without any misgiving, knows heaven; he who waitsa hundred ages until a sage comes, without doubting, knows men.Hence the virtuous prince moves, and for ages shows empire theway.” But there is no need to seek remote examples. He is a dullobserver whose experience has not taught him the reality and forceof magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot goabroad without encountering inexplicable influences. One man fas-tens an eye on him and the graves of the memory render up theirdead; the secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to betraymust be yielded;—another, and he cannot speak, and the bones ofhis body seem to lose their cartilages; the entrance of a friend addsgrace, boldness, and eloquence to him; and there are persons hecannot choose but remember, who gave a transcendent expansionto his thought, and kindled another life in his bosom.

What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they springfrom this deep root? The sufficient reply to the skeptic who doubtsthe power and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyfulintercourse with persons, which makes the faith and practice of allreasonable men. I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfyingas the profound good understanding which can subsist after muchexchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whomis sure of himself and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which

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postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce,and churches, cheap. For when men shall meet as they ought, eacha benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds,with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which allthings announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the firstsymbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations tothe best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances ofyouth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid en-joyment.

If it were possible to live in right relations with men!—if we couldabstain from asking anything of them, from asking their praise, orhelp, or pity, and content us with compelling them through thevirtue of the eldest laws! Could we not deal with a few persons,—with one person,—after the unwritten statutes, and make an ex-periment of their efficacy? Could we not pay our friend the compli-ment of truth, of silence, of forbearing? Need we be so eager to seekhim? If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the an-cient world that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god;and there is a Greek verse which runs,—

“The Gods are to each other not unknown.”

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate toeach other, and cannot otherwise:—

When each the other shall avoid, Shall each by each be most enjoyed.

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods must seat them-selves without seneschal in our Olympus, and as they can instalthemselves by seniority divine. Society is spoiled if pains are taken,if the associates are brought a mile to meet. And if it be not society,it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of thebest. All the greatness of each is kept back and every foible in pain-ful activity, as if the Olympians should meet to exchange snuff-boxes.

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted

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by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter afriend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause,now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment fromthe resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations.

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hopeof the heart. Our beatitude waits for the fulfilment of these two inone. The ages are opening this moral force. All force is the shadowor symbol of that. Poetry is joyful and strong as it draws its inspira-tion thence. Men write their names on the world as they are filledwith this. History has been mean; our nations have been mobs; wehave never seen a man: that divine form we do not yet know, butonly the dream and prophecy of such: we do not know the majesticmanners which belong to him, which appease and exalt the be-holder. We shall one day see that the most private is the most publicenergy, that quality atones for quantity, and grandeur of characteracts in the dark, and succors them who never saw it. What greatnesshas yet appeared is beginnings and encouragements to us in thisdirection. The history of those gods and saints which the world haswritten and then worshipped, are documents of character. The ageshave exulted in the manners of a youth who owed nothing to for-tune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by thepure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendor around the facts ofhis death which has transfigured every particular into an universalsymbol for the eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto ourhighest fact. But the mind requires a victory to the senses; a force ofcharacter which will convert judge, jury, soldier, and king; whichwill rule animal and mineral virtues, and blend with the courses ofsap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents.

If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, at least let us dothem homage. In society, high advantages are set down to the pos-sessor as disadvantages. It requires the more wariness in our privateestimates. I do not forgive in my friends the failure to know a finecharacter and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When at lastthat which we have always longed for is arrived and shines on uswith glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, thento be critical and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicionof the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of

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heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul nolonger knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due.Is there any religion but this, to know that wherever in the widedesert of being the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into aflower, it blooms for me? if none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if Ialone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keepsabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom and my folly andjokes. Nature is indulged by the presence of this guest. There aremany eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and householdvirtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track,though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffer-ing, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself that it willbe a wretch and also a fool in this world sooner than soil its whitehands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,—only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compli-ment they can pay it is to own it.

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MANNERSMANNERSMANNERSMANNERSMANNERS

“How near to good is what is fair!Which we no sooner see,But with the lines and outward airOur senses taken be.

Again yourselves compose,And now put all the aptness onOf Figure, that ProportionOr Color can disclose;That if those silent arts were lost,Design and Picture, they might boastFrom you a newer ground,Instructed by the heightening senseOf dignity and reverenceIn their true motions found.”

BBBBBen Jen Jen Jen Jen Jonsononsononsononsononson

XVI. MANNERSXVI. MANNERSXVI. MANNERSXVI. MANNERSXVI. MANNERS

HALF THE WORLD, it is said, knows not how the other half live. OurExploring Expedition saw the Feejee islanders getting their dinneroff human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and chil-dren. The husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou (westof old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To set up their housekeep-ing nothing is requisite but two or three earthen pots, a stone togrind 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 nothingto lose. If the house do not please them, they walk out and enter

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another, as there are several hundreds at their command. “It is some-what singular,” adds Belzoni, to whom we owe this account, “to talkof happiness among people who live in sepulchres, among the corpsesand rags of an ancient nation which they know nothing of.” In thedeserts of Borgoo the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by theirneighbors to the shrieking of bats and to the whistling of birds.Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; individuals are calledafter their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and havenicknames merely. But the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold,for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into coun-tries where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked inone race with these cannibals and man-stealers; countries where manserves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk,and wool; honors himself with architecture; writes laws, and con-trives to execute his will through the hands of many nations; and,especially, establishes a select society, running through all the coun-tries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternityof the best, which, without written law or exact usage of any kind,perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted island and adoptsand makes its own whatever personal beauty or extraordinary na-tive endowment anywhere appears.

What fact more conspicuous in modern history than the creationof the gentleman? Chivalry is that, and loyalty is that, and, in En-glish literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir PhilipSidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The word gentleman,which, like the word Christian, must hereafter characterize thepresent and the few preceding centuries by the importance attachedto it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. Frivo-lous and fantastic additions have got associated with the name, butthe steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed to the valu-able properties which it designates. An element which unites all themost forcible persons of every country; makes them intelligible andagreeable to each other, and is somewhat so precise that it is at oncefelt if an individual lack the masonic sign,—cannot be any casualproduct, but must be an average result of the character and facultiesuniversally found in men. It seems a certain permanent average; as

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the atmosphere is a permanent composition, whilst so many gasesare combined only to be decompounded. Comme il faut, is theFrenchman’s description of good Society: as we must be. It is a spon-taneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who havemost vigor, who take the lead in the world of this hour, and thoughfar from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and highest toneof human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be. Itis made of the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a com-pound result into which every great force enters as an ingredient,namely virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power.

There is something equivocal in all the words in use to express theexcellence of manners and social cultivation, because the quantitiesare fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the cause.The word gentleman has not any correlative abstract to express thequality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we mustkeep alive in the vernacular the distinction between fashion, a wordof narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character whichthe gentleman imports. The usual words, however, must be respected;they will be found to contain the root of the matter. The point ofdistinction 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, arecontemplated. It is beauty which is the aim this time, and not worth.The result is now in question, although our words intimate wellenough the popular feeling that the appearance supposes a substance.The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and ex-pressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner depen-dent and servile, either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Be-yond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good-natureor benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness. The popularnotion certainly adds a condition of ease and fortune; but that is anatural result of personal force and love, that they should possessand dispense the goods of the world. In times of violence, everyeminent person must fall in with many opportunities to approve hisstoutness and worth; therefore every man’s name that emerged at allfrom the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a flourish oftrumpets. But personal force never goes out of fashion. That is stillparamount to-day, and in the moving crowd of good society the

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men of valor and reality are known and rise to their natural place.The competition is transferred from war to politics and trade, butthe personal force appears readily enough in these new arenas.

Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade, bruisersand pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks. God knowsthat all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used instrictness and with any emphasis, the name will be found to pointat original energy. It describes a man standing in his own right andworking after untaught methods. In a good lord there must first bea good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparableadvantage of animal spirits. The ruling class must have more, butthey must have these, giving in every company the sense of power,which makes things easy to be done which daunt the wise. Thesociety 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, or asea-fight. The intellect relies on memory to make some supplies toface these extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a base men-dicant with basket and badge, in the presence of these sudden mas-ters. The rulers of society must be up to the work of the world, andequal to their versatile office: men of the right Caesarian pattern,who have great range of affinity. I am far from believing the timidmaxim of Lord Falkland (“that for ceremony there must go two toit; since a bold fellow will go through the cunningest forms”), andam of opinion that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose formsare not to be broken through; and only that plenteous nature isrightful master which is the complement of whatever person it con-verses with. My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpraysaints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine allcourtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates and good withacademicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; hehas the private entrance to all minds, and I could as easily excludemyself, as him. The famous gentlemen of Asia and Europe havebeen of this strong type; Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar, Scipio,Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat very care-lessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value anycondition at a high rate.

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A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judg-ment, to the completion of this man of the world; and it is a mate-rial deputy which walks through the dance which the first has led.Money is not essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcendsthe habits of clique and caste and makes itself felt by men of allclasses. If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles and notwith truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the manof the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, sothat the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his ownorder, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas,are gentlemen of the best blood who have chosen the condition ofpoverty when that of wealth was equally open to them. I use theseold names, but the men I speak of are my contemporaries. Fortunewill not supply to every generation one of these well-appointedknights, but every collection of men furnishes some example of theclass; and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town,are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have in-vention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them infellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular.

The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotionby men of taste. The association of these masters with each otherand with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable andstimulating. The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, arerepeated and adopted. By swift consent everything superfluous isdropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners show them-selves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler sci-ence of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by theskill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword, —pointsand fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more trans-parent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and nota misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to fa-cilitate life, to get rid of impediments and bring the man pure toenergize. They aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aidstravelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the roadand leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These formsvery soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivatedwith the more heed that it becomes a badge of social and civil dis-

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tinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the mostpuissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and fol-lowed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.

There exists a strict relation between the class of power and theexclusive and polished circles. The last are always filled or fillingfrom the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even tothe petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. Napoleon,child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceasedto court the Faubourg St. Germain; doubtless with the feeling thatfashion is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a strangeway, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kindof posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but thechildren of the great: it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its faceagainst the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly in itshalls; they are absent in the field: they are working, not triumphing.Fashion is made up of their children; of those who through thevalue and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name,marks of distinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, intheir physical organization a certain health and excellence whichsecures to them, if not the highest power to work, yet high power toenjoy. The class of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson,the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent celebra-tion of such as they; that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico,Marengo, and Trafalgar beaten out thin; that the brilliant names offashion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixtyyears ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, andtheir sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the posses-sion of the harvest to new competitors with keener eyes and stron-ger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805,it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. Thecity would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that itwas reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came totown day before yesterday that is city and court today.

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These mu-tual selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger in the leastfavored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on theexcluding minority by the strong hand and kill them, at once a new

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class finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a bowl ofmilk: and if the people should destroy class after class, until twomen only were left, one of these would be the leader and would beinvoluntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep thisminority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, andis one of the estates of the realm. I am the more struck with thistenacity, when I see its work. It respects the administration of suchunimportant matters, that we should not look for any durability inits rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong moral influ-ence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious movement, and feel thatthe moral sentiment rules man and nature. We think all other dis-tinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashionfor example; yet come from year to year and see how permanentthat is, in this Boston or New York life of man, where too it has notthe least countenance from the law of the land. Not in Egypt or inIndia a firmer or more impassable line. Here are associations whoseties go over and under and through it, a meeting of merchants, amilitary corps, a college class, a fire-club, a professional association,a political, a religious convention;—the persons seem to draw in-separably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its members willnot in the year meet again. Each returns to his degree in the scale ofgood society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. Theobjects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless,but the nature of this union and selection can be neither frivolousnor accidental. Each man’s rank in that perfect graduation dependson some symmetry in his structure or some agreement in his struc-ture to the symmetry of society. Its doors unbar instantaneously to anatural claim of their own kind. A natural gentleman finds his wayin, and will keep the oldest patrician out who has lost his intrinsicrank. Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal supe-riority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of everyother. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves inLondon and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.

To say what good of fashion we can, it rests on reality, and hatesnothing so much as pretenders; to exclude and mystify pretendersand send them into everlasting ‘Coventry,’ is its delight. We con-temn in turn every other gift of men of the world; but the habit

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even in little and the least matters of not appealing to any but ourown sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry.There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and propor-tioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt and give it thefreedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if itwill, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so willJock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, andfind favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new circum-stance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes andcotillons. For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws ofbehavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at herfirst ball, the country-man at a city dinner, believes that there is aritual according to which every act and compliment must be per-formed, or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Laterthey learn that good sense and character make their own forms ev-ery moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go,sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on theirhead, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way; and thatstrong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. Allthat fashion demands is composure and self-content. A circle ofmen perfectly well-bred would be a company of sensible persons inwhich every man’s native manners and character appeared. If thefashionist have not this quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers ofself-reliance that we excuse in a man many sins if he will show us acomplete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, ofmine, or any man’s good opinion. But any deference to some emi-nent 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 withhis master. A man should not go where he cannot carry his wholesphere or society with him,—not bodily, the whole circle of hisfriends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new companythe same attitude of mind and reality of relation which his dailyassociates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and willbe an orphan in the merriest club. “If you could see Vich Ian Vohrwith his tail on!—” But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his belong-ings in some fashion, if not added as honor, then severed as dis-grace.

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There will always be in society certain persons who are mercuriesof its approbation, and whose glance will at any time determine forthe curious their standing in the world. These are the chamberlainsof the lesser gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of grace withthe loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege. They are clearin their office, nor could they be thus formidable without their ownmerits. But do not measure the importance of this class by theirpretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor andshame. They pass also at their just rate; for how can they otherwise,in circles which exist as a sort of herald’s office for the sifting ofcharacter?

As the first thing man requires of man is reality, so that appears inall the forms of society. We pointedly, and by name, introduce theparties to each other. Know you before all heaven and earth, thatthis is Andrew, and this is Gregory,—they look each other in theeye; they grasp each other’s hand, to identify and signalize each other.It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his eyes lookstraight forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that hehas been met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits andhospitalities? Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or dowe not insatiably ask, Was a man in the house? I may easily go intoa great household where there is much substance, excellent provi-sion for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there anyAmphitryon who shall subordinate these appendages. I may go intoa cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I havecome to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very natu-ral point of old feudal etiquette that a gentleman who received avisit, though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, butshould wait his arrival at the door of his house. No house, though itwere the Tuileries or the Escurial, is good for anything without amaster. 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 screensto interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as ifman was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so muchas a full rencontre front to front with his fellow? It were unmerciful,I know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of emi-

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nent convenience, whether the guest is too great or too little. Wecall together many friends who keep each other in play, or by luxu-ries and ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our re-tirement. Or if perchance a searching realist comes to our gate, be-fore whose eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to ourcurtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the Lord God inthe garden. Cardinal Caprara, the Pope’s legate at Paris, defendedhimself from the glances of Napoleon by an immense pair of greenspectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rallythem off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough witheight hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of freeborneyes, but fenced himself with etiquette and within triple barriers ofreserve; and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael, waswont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of allexpression. But emperors and rich men are by no means the mostskilful masters of good manners. No rentroll nor army-list can dig-nify skulking and dissimulation; and the first point of courtesy mustalways be truth, as really all the forms of good-breeding point thatway.

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt’s translation, Montaigne’saccount of his journey into Italy, and am struck with nothing moreagreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His arrival ineach place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of someconsequence. Wherever he goes he pays a visit to whatever prince orgentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and tocivilization. When he leaves any house in which he has lodged for afew weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a per-petual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen.

The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all thepoints of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is defer-ence. I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. Iprefer a tendency to stateliness to an excess of fellowship. Let theincommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolationof man teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted.I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroicand sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquil-lity and self-poise. We should meet each morning as from foreign

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countries, and, spending the day together, should depart at night,as into foreign countries. In all things I would have the island of aman inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peakall round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this reli-gion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. LoversShould guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slidesinto confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to aChinese etiquette; but coolness and absence of heat and haste indi-cate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studioushouse with blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience.Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbor’s needs.Must we have a good understanding with one another’s palates? asfoolish people who have lived long together know when each wantssalt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask mefor bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me forthem, and not to hold out his plate as if I knew already. Every natu-ral function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let usleave hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breed-ing should signify, however remotely, the recollection of the gran-deur of our destiny.

The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if wedare to open another leaf and explore what parts go to its conforma-tion, 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 propor-tion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions.Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage andcustoms. It is not quite sufficient to good-breeding, a union of kind-ness and independence. We imperatively require a perception of,and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other virtues are inrequest in the field and workyard, but a certain degree of taste is notto be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat with one whodid not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven andunpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shortdistances the senses are despotic. The same discrimination of fit andfair runs out, if with less rigor, into all parts of life. The averagespirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting under certain limi-

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tations and to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social inits nature, it respects everything which tends to unite men. It de-lights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of measureor proportion. The person who screams, or uses the superlative de-gree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. Ifyou wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a pro-digious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure. This per-ception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of the social instru-ment. Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but,being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional, orwhat belongs to coming together. That makes the good and bad ofmanners, namely what helps or hinders fellowship. For fashion isnot good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, butgood sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp pointsof character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomypeople; 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 generalinfusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellec-tual power is ever welcome in fine society as the costliest addition toits rule and its credit.

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must betempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accuracy is essentialto beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quickperceptions. One may be too punctual and too precise. He mustleave the omniscience of business at the door, when he comes intothe palace of beauty. Society loves creole natures, and sleepy lan-guishing manners, so that they cover sense, grace and good-will: theair of drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps becausesuch a person seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, andnot spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not seethe annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences that cloud the brow andsmother the voice of the sensitive.

Therefore besides personal force and so much perception as con-stitutes unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class anotherelement already intimated, which it significantly terms good-na-ture,—expressing all degrees of generosity, from the lowest willing-

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ness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity andlove. Insight we must have, or we shall run against one another andmiss the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. Thesecret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. Aman who is not happy in the company cannot find any word in hismemory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little im-pertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of theconversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction of thatwhich he has to say. The favorites of society, and what it calls wholesouls, are able men and of more spirit than wit, who have no un-comfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the com-pany; contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball ora jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich ingentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, agood model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, whoadded to his great abilities the most social disposition and real loveof men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than the de-bate in which Burke and Fox separated in the House of Commons;when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of old friendship withsuch tenderness that the house was moved to tears. Another anec-dote is so close to my matter, that I must hazard the story. A trades-man who had long dunned him for a note of three hundred guin-eas, found him one day counting gold, and demanded payment: —”No,” said Fox, “I owe this money to Sheridan; it is a debt of honor;if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing to show.” “Then,”said the creditor, “I change my debt into a debt of honor,” and torethe note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his confidence and paidhim, saying, “his debt was of older standing, and Sheridan mustwait.” Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the Africanslave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and Napoleon saidof him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, “Mr. Fox willalways hold the first place in an assembly at the Tuileries.”

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, when-ever we insist on benevolence as its foundation. The painted phan-tasm Fashion rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. But Iwill neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolicinstitution, nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We

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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, whichaffects to be honor, is often, in all men’s experience, only a ball-room-code. Yet so long as it is the highest circle in the imaginationof the best heads on the planet, there is something necessary andexcellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men have agreed tobe the dupes of anything preposterous; and the respect which thesemysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan characters, and thecuriosity with which details of high life are read, betray the univer-sality of the love of cultivated manners. I know that a comic dispar-ity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged ‘first circles’and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit tothe individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, sagesand lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes andmany 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, andpoints like Circe to her horned company. This gentleman is thisafternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord Ride, whocame yesterday from Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, from CapeTurnagain; and Captain Symmes, 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 con-verted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signor Torredel Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay ofNaples; Spahi, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the ex-iled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon.—But theseare monsters of one day, and to-morrow will be dismissed to theirholes and dens; for in these rooms every chair is waited for. Theartist, the scholar, and, in general, the clerisy, wins their way up intothese places and get represented here, somewhat on this footing ofconquest. Another mode is to pass through all the degrees, spend-ing a year and a day in St. Michael’s Square, being steeped in Co-logne water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and prop-erly grounded in all the biography and politics and anecdotes of theboudoirs.

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Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesquesculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed andcommandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The formsof politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees.What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means ofselfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true outOf the world? What if the false gentleman contrives so to addresshis companion as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse,and also to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose itsnobleness. All generosity is not merely French and sentimental; noris it to be concealed that living blood and a passion of kindness doesat last distinguish God’s gentleman from Fashion’s. The epitaph ofSir Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age:“Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend and persuaded hisenemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servantsrobbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supportedher in pain: he never forgot his children; and whoso touched hisfinger, drew after it his whole body.” Even the line of heroes is notutterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable person in plainclothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowningman; there is still some absurd inventor of charities; some guide andcomforter of runaway slaves; some friend of Poland; somePhilhellene; some fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second andthird generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some just man happy in an ill fame; some youthashamed of the favors of fortune and impatiently casting them onother shoulders. And these are the centres of society, on which itreturns for fresh impulses. These are the creators of Fashion, whichis an attempt to organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful and thegenerous are, in the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church:Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, andevery pure and valiant heart who worshipped Beauty by word andby deed. The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy are notfound in the actual aristocracy, or only on its edge; as the chemicalenergy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of thespectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who do notknow their sovereign when he appears. The theory of society sup-

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poses the existence and sovereignty of these. It divines afar off theircoming. It says with the elder gods,—

“As Heaven and Earth are fairer farThan 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 passIn glory that old Darkness:— for, ’tis the eternal law,That first in beauty shall be first in might.”

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society there is anarrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower ofcourtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and refer-ence, as to its inner and imperial court; the parliament of love andchivalry. And this is constituted of those persons in whom heroicdispositions are native; with the love of beauty, the delight in soci-ety, and the power to embellish the passing day. If the individualswho compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guardedblood of centuries, should pass in review, in such manner as that wecould at leisure and critically inspect their behavior, we might findno gentleman and no lady; for although excellent specimens of cour-tesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in theparticulars we should detect offence. Because elegance comes of nobreeding, but of birth. There must be romance of character, or themost fastidious exclusion of impertinencies will not avail. It mustbe genius which takes that direction: it must be not courteous, butcourtesy. High behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott ispraised for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor andconversation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens,nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the absurditythat had been put in their mouths before the days of Waverley; butneither does Scott’s dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave eachother in smart epigramatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume,

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and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life.In Shakspeare alone the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dia-logue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being thebest-bred man in England and in Christendom. Once or twice in alifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, inthe presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their nature,but whose character emanates freely in their word and gesture. Abeautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior isbetter than a beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statuesor pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thingin the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radi-ating from his countenance he may abolish all considerations ofmagnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. Ihave seen an individual whose manners, though wholly within theconventions of elegant society, were never learned there, but wereoriginal and commanding and held out protection and prosperity;one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holidayin his eye; who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors ofnew modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette,with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood;yet with the port of an emperor, if need be,—calm, serious, and fitto stand the gaze of millions.

The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers are theplaces where Man executes his will; let him yield or divide the sceptreat 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 de-portment which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall. OurAmerican institutions have been friendly to her, and at this mo-ment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels inwomen. A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the menmay give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman’s Rights. Cer-tainly let her be as much better placed in the laws and in socialforms as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirelyin her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only herself canshow us how she shall be served. The wonderful generosity of hersentiments raises her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and

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verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polymnia; and by the firm-ness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the coars-est calculators that another road exists than that which their feetknow. But besides those who make good in our imagination theplace of muses and of Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fillour vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs overand fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with courtesy; whounloose 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 ofhabitual reserve vanished and left us at large; we were children play-ing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we cried, inthese influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poetsand will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are.Was it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his Persian Lilla, She was anelemental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when Isaw her day after day radiating, every instant, redundant joy andgrace on all around her. She was a solvent powerful to reconcile allheterogeneous persons into one society: like air or water, an ele-ment of such a great range of affinities that it combines readily witha thousand substances. Where she is present all others will be morethan they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoevershe did, became her. She had too much sympathy and desire toplease, than that you could say her manners were marked with dig-nity, yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanor oneach occasion. She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the booksof the seven poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to bewritten upon her. For though the bias of her nature was not tothought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own natureas to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warmingthem by her sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing noblywith all, all would show themselves noble.

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fashion, which seemsso fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary factsfor science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spec-tators. The constitution of our society makes it a giant’s castle tothe ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in itsGolden Book, and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors

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and privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur isshadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance; its proudest gateswill fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For thepresent distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer fromthe tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove yourresidence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve themost extreme susceptibility. For the advantages which fashion valuesare plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streetsnamely. Out of this precinct they go for nothing; are of no use in thefarm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in theliterary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thoughtor virtue.

But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. Theworth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste for the em-blem. Everything that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itselfbefore the cause and fountain of honor, creator of titles and digni-ties, namely the heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire,which, in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kindand conquer and expand all that approaches it. This gives new mean-ings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeurbut its own. What is rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody? tosuccor the unfashionable and the eccentric? rich enough to makethe Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul’s paperwhich commends him “To the charitable,” the swarthy Italian withhis few broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by over-seers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck ofman or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and yourhouse from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feelthat they were greeted with a voice which made them both remem-ber and hope? What is vulgar but to refuse the claim on acute andconclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to allow it, and give theirheart and yours one holiday from the national caution? Withoutthe rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz couldnot afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at hisgate. Osman had a humanity so broad and deep that although hisspeech was so bold and free with the Koran as to disgust all thedervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane

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man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who had been muti-lated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled atonce to him; that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable inthe centre of the country, that it seemed as if the instinct of allsufferers drew them to his side. And the madness which he har-bored he did not share. Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightlyrich?

But I shall hear without pain that I play the courtier very ill, andtalk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see, thatwhat is called by distinction society and fashion has good laws aswell 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 atradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its char-acter. ‘I overheard Jove, one day,’ said Silenus, ‘talking of destroyingthe earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, whowent from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other.Minerva said she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little crea-tures, with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeter-minate aspect, seen far or seen near; if you called them bad, theywould appear so; if you called them good, they would appear so;and there was no one person or action among them, which wouldnot puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus, to know whether itwas fundamentally bad or good.’

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GIFTGIFTGIFTGIFTGIFTSSSSS

Gifts of one who loved me,—’T was high time they came;When he ceased to love me,Time they stopped for shame.

XVII. GIFTXVII. GIFTXVII. GIFTXVII. GIFTXVII. GIFTSSSSS

IT IS SAID THAT the world is in a state of bankruptcy; that the worldowes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go intochancery and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, whichinvolves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of thedifficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year and other times,in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, thoughvery vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choos-ing. If at any time it comes into my head that a present is due fromme to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity isgone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, becausethey are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all theutilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhatstern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard outof a work-house. Nature does not cocker us; we are children, notpets; she is not fond; everything is dealt to us without fear or favor,after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like thefrolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that welove flattery even though we are not deceived by it, because it showsthat we are of importance enough to be courted. Something likethat pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweethints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the

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flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attachedto them. If a man should send to me to come a hundred miles tovisit him and should set before me a basket of fine summer-fruit, Ishould think there was some proportion between the labor and thereward.

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty everyday, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option; since ifthe man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whetheryou could procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to seea man eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it isalways a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity doeseverything well. In our condition of universal dependence it seemsheroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give allthat 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 thinkof many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies. Next tothings of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends pre-scribed, is that we might convey to some person that which properlybelonged to his character, and was easily associated with him inthought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most partbarbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts.The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. There-fore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer,corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, hispicture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right andpleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when aman’s biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man’s wealth is anindex of his merit. But it is a cold lifeless business when you go to theshops to buy me something which does not represent your life andtalent, but a goldsmith’s. This is fit for kings, and rich men who rep-resent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of goldand silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment ofblack-mail.

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires carefulsailing, 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 notquite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of

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being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way ofreceiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes tobestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because thereseems something of degrading dependence in living by it:—

“Brother, if Jove 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 societyif it do not give us, besides earth and fire and water, opportunity,love, reverence, and objects of veneration.

He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad orsorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence Ithink is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at agift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a giftcomes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is notsupported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should beashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I lovehis commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flow-ing 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 tome. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you giveme this pot of oil or this flagon of wine when all your oil and wineis mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence thefitness of beautiful, not useful things, for gifts. This giving is flatusurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as allbeneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of thegift but looking back to the greater store it was taken from,—I rathersympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger of my lordTimon. For the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continuallypunished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a greathappiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from onewho has had the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very onerousbusiness, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes togive you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I soadmire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, “Do notflatter your benefactors.”

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The reason of these discords I conceive to be that there is no com-mensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give any-thing to a magnanimous person. After you have served him he atonce puts you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man ren-ders his friend is trivial and selfish compared with the service heknows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he hadbegun 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 himseems small. Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil,is so incidental and at random that we can seldom hear the ac-knowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit,without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a directstroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom havethe satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit which is directly received.But rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, andreceives with wonder the thanks of all people.

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which isthe genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect toprescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. Thereare persons from whom we always expect fairy-tokens; let us notcease to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited byour municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot bebought and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is alsonot in the will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you donot 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 othersby services, it proved an intellectual trick,—no more. They eat yourservice like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feelyou and delight in you all the time.

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NANANANANATURETURETURETURETURE

The rounded world is fair to see,Nine times folded in mystery:Though baffled seers cannot impartThe 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 withinBeckons to spirit of its kin;Self-kindled every atom glows,And hints the future which it owes.

XVIII. NAXVIII. NAXVIII. NAXVIII. NAXVIII. NATURETURETURETURETURE

THERE ARE DAYS which occur in this climate, at al-most any seasonof the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection; when the air,the heavenly bodies and the earth, make a harmony, as if naturewould indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of theplanet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest lati-tudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; wheneverything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle thatlie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. Thesehalcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pureOctober weather which we distinguish by the name of the Indiansummer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hillsand 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 toleave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The

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knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makesinto these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions,and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find Nature to bethe circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judgeslike a god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our closeand crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see whatmajestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly wewould escape the barriers which render them comparatively impo-tent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer na-ture to intrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a per-petual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently re-ported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hem-locks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The in-communicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, andquit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church, or state, isinterpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How easilywe might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed bynew pictures and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until bydegrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, allmemory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were ledin triumph by nature.

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. Theseare plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to our own,and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of theschools would persuade us to despise. We never can part with it; themind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is the rock, theground, to our eyes and hands and feet. It is firm water; it is coldflame; what health, what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever like a dearfriend and brother when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes inthis honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us outof our nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room enough.We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, andrequire so much scope, just as we need water for our bath. There areall degrees of natural influence, from these quarantine powers ofnature, up to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagina-tion and the soul. There is the bucket of cold water from the spring,the wood-fire to which the chilled traveller rushes for safety,—and

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there is the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle innature, and draw our living as parasites from her roots and grains,and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us tosolitude and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the pointin which romance and reality meet. I think if we should be raptaway into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse withGabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that would remain ofour furniture.

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we havegiven heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a stillair, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleetover a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving ryefield; themimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable floretswhiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowersin glassy lakes; the musical steaming odorous south wind, whichconverts all trees to windharps; the crackling and spurting of hem-lock in the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls andfaces in the sittingroom,—these are the music and pictures of themost ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limitedoutlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend tothe shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leavethe village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villagesand personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunsetand moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter withoutnovitiate and probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty;we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are bathed inthese lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, theproudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, powerand taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant.These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their pri-vate and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught thepoorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Artand luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancementand sequel to this original beauty. I am overinstructed for my re-turn. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys.I am grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no longer live with-out elegance, but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He

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who knows the most; he who knows what sweets and virtues are inthe ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come atthese enchantments,—is the rich and royal man. Only as far as themasters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can theyreach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hang-ing-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks and preserves, toback their faulty personality with these strong accessories. I do notwonder that the landed interest should be invincible in the Statewith 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, weknew of his villa, his grove, his wine and his company, but the provo-cation 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,or Paphos, or Ctesiphon. Indeed, it is the magical lights of the hori-zon and the blue sky for the background which save all our works ofart, which were otherwise bawbles. When the rich tax the poor withservility and obsequiousness, they should consider the effect of menreputed to be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! ifthe rich were rich as the poor fancy riches! A boy hears a militaryband play on the field at night, and he has kings and queens andfamous chivalry palpably before him. He hears the echoes of a hornin a hill country, in the Notch Mountains, for example, which con-verts the mountains into an Aeolian harp,—and this supernaturaltiralira restores to him the Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, andall divine hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note be so lofty, sohaughtily beautiful! To the poor young poet, thus fabulous is hispicture of society; he is loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich forthe sake of his imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if theywere not rich! That they have some high-fenced grove which theycall a park; that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons thanhe has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of theelegant, to watering-places and to distant cities,—these make thegroundwork from which he has delineated estates of romance, com-pared with which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks.The muse herself betrays her son, and enhances the gifts of wealthand well-born beauty by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, and

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forests that skirt the road,—a certain haughty favor, as if from patri-cian genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince ofthe power of the air.

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily,may not be always found, but the material landscape is never far off.We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake,or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the praises of local scenery.In every landscape the point of astonishment is the meeting of thesky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well asfrom the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down overthe brownest, homeliest common with all the spiritual magnificencewhich they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts ofEgypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and eveningwill transfigure maples and alders. The difference between land-scape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in thebeholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any particular land-scape as the necessity of being beautiful under which every land-scape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks ineverywhere.

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this topic,which schoolmen called natura naturata, or nature passive. One canhardly speak directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach inmixed companies what is called “the subject of religion.” A suscep-tible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind withoutthe apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a wood-lot, or tolook at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remotelocality, or he carries a fowling-piece or a fishing-rod. I suppose thisshame must have a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barrenand unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than his brother ofBroadway. Men are naturally hunters and inquisitive of wood-craft,and I suppose that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indiansshould furnish facts for, would take place in the most sumptuousdrawing-rooms of all the “Wreaths” and “Flora’s chaplets” of thebookshops; yet ordinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle atopic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write onnature, they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute toPan, who ought to be represented in the mythology as the most

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continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the admirablereserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right ofreturning often to this old topic. The multitude of false churchesaccredits the true religion. Literature, poetry, science are the hom-age of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no saneman can affect an indifference or incuriosity. Nature is loved bywhat is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, or ratherbecause there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that isunderneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must alwaysseem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figuresthat are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would neverbe this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace, nobody looksat the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with groomsand gazers, that we turn from the people to find relief in the majes-tic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. Thecritics who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of naturefrom the thing to be done, must consider that our hunting of thepicturesque is inseparable from our protest against false society. Manis 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 thefoaming brook with compunction: if our own life flowed with theright energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkleswith real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. Naturemay be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish be-comes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show whereour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phre-nology and palmistry.

But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid onthis topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Na-ture, natura naturans, the quick cause before which all forms flee asthe driven snows; itself secret, its works driven before it in flocksand multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus, ashepherd,) and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in crea-tures, reaching from particles and spiculae through transformationon transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consum-

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mate results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is a littlemotion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white and deadlycold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changespass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions ofboundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us intothe secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-schoolmeasures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for herlarge style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Nowwe learn what patient periods must round themselves before therock is formed; then before the rock is broken, and the first lichenrace has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and openedthe door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to comein. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! howinconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive, and then race afterrace of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet toPlato and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all mustcome, as surely as the first atom has two sides.

Motion or change and identity or rest are the first and secondsecrets of nature:—Motion and Rest. The whole code of her lawsmay be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. The whirl-ing bubble on the surface of a brook admits us to the secret of themechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it. A littlewater made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of the simplershells; the addition of matter from year to year, arrives at last at themost complex forms; and yet so poor is nature with all her craft, thatfrom 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-likevariety. Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, itis still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene herown laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. Shearms 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 destroyit. Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a birdwith a few feathers she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direc-tion is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials andbegins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage:

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otherwise all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catcha glance of a system in transition. Plants are the young of the world,vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towardsconsciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoantheir imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the noviceand probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young,having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are alreadydissipated: the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubtwhen they come to consciousness they too will curse and swear.Flowers so strictly belong to youth that we adult men soon come tofeel that their beautiful generations concern not us: we have hadour day; now let the children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and weare old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness.

Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the eye,from any one object the parts and properties of any other may bepredicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wallwould certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily asthe city. That identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothinggreat intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations fromnatural life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothestcurled 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 billetsdoux, toHimmaleh mountain-chains and the axis of the globe. If we con-sider how much we are nature’s, we need not be superstitious abouttowns, 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 disen-gaged air of natural objects makes them enviable to us, chafed andirritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grandas they if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be men instead ofwoodchucks and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, thoughwe sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk.

This guiding identity runs through all the surprises and contrastsof the piece, and characterizes every law. Man carries the world inhis head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in athought. Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain,

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therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every knownfact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of some-body, before it was actually verified. A man does not tie his shoewithout recognizing laws which bind the farthest regions of nature:moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. Com-mon sense knows its own, and recognizes the fact at first sight inchemical experiment. The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davyand Black, is the same common sense which made the arrangementswhich now it discovers.

If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runsalso into organization. The astronomers said, ‘Give us matter and alittle motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enoughthat we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, oneshove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifu-gal and centripetal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand, andwe can show how all this mighty order grew.’—’A very unreason-able postulate,’ said the metaphysicians, ‘and a plain begging of thequestion. Could you not prevail to know the genesis of projection,as well as the continuation of it?’ Nature, meanwhile, had not waitedfor the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, andthe balls rolled. It was no great affair, a mere push, but the astrono-mers were right in making much of it, for there is no end to theconsequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagatesitself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom ofevery ball; through all the races of creatures, and through the his-tory and performances of every individual. Exaggeration is in thecourse of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the worldwithout adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet,it is still necessary to add the impulse; so to every creature natureadded a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to putit on its way; in every instance a slight generosity, a drop too much.Without electricity the air would rot, and without this violence ofdirection which men and women have, without a spice of bigot andfanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We aim above the mark to hitthe mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. Andwhen now and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, whosees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play, but blabs the

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secret;—how then? Is the bird flown? O no, the wary Nature sendsa new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, with a little moreexcess of direction to hold them fast to their several aim; makesthem a little wrongheaded in that direction in which they are rightest,and on goes the game again with new whirl, for a generation or twomore. The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, com-manded by every sight and sound, without any power to compareand rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip,to a lead dragoon or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing everything,generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down atnight overpowered by the fatigue which this day of continual prettymadness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose withthe curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and hassecured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame by all theseattitudes and exertions,—an end of the first importance, which couldnot be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This glitter, thisopaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to his eye to insurehis fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We are made alive andkept alive by the same arts. Let the stoics say what they please, wedo not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory andthe appetite is keen. The vegetable life does not content itself withcasting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the airand earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thou-sands may plant themselves; that hundreds may come up, that tensmay live to maturity; that at least one may replace the parent. Allthings betray the same calculated profusion. The excess of fear withwhich the animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, start-ing at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, protects us, through amultitude of groundless alarms, from some one real danger at last.The lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, withno prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end,namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race.

But the craft with which the world is made, runs also into themind and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein offolly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head,to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which naturehad taken to heart. Great causes are never tried on their merits; but

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the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans,and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less re-markable is the overfaith of each man in the importance of what hehas to do or say. The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for whathe utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The strong,self-complacent Luther declares with an emphasis not to be mis-taken, that “God himself cannot do without wise men.” JacobBehmen and George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity oftheir controversial tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself tobe worshipped as the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to iden-tify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sa-cred. However this may discredit such persons with the judicious, ithelps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and public-ity to their words. A similar experience is not infrequent in privatelife. Each young and ardent person writes a diary, in which, whenthe hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. Thepages thus written are to him burning and fragrant; he reads themon his knees by midnight and by the morning star; he wets themwith his tears; they are sacred; too good for the world, and hardlyyet to be shown to the dearest friend. This is the man-child that isborn to the soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The umbili-cal cord has not yet been cut. After some time has elapsed, he beginsto wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and withhesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will theynot burn his eyes? The friend coldly turns them over, and passesfrom the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikesthe other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot suspectthe writing itself. Days and nights of fervid life, of communionwith angels of darkness and of light have engraved their shadowycharacters on that tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence orthe heart of his friend. Is there then no friend? He cannot yet creditthat one may have impressive experience and yet may not knowhow to put his private fact into literature; and perhaps the discoverythat wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we, that thoughwe should hold our peace the truth would not the less be spoken,might check injuriously the flames of our zeal. A man can onlyspeak so long as he does not feel his speech to be partial and inad-

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equate. 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 seesits partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. For no man can writeanything who does not think that what he writes is for the time thehistory of the world; or do anything well who does not esteem hiswork to be of importance. My work may be of none, but I must notthink it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity.

In like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking,something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere; keeps nofaith with us. All promise outruns the performance. We live in asystem of approximations. Every end is prospective of some otherend, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere.We are encamped in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirstlead us on to eat and to drink; but bread and wine, mix and cookthem how you will, leave us hungry and thirsty, after the stomach isfull. 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, foolsthe eager pursuer. What is the end sought? Plainly to secure theends of good sense and beauty, from the intrusion of deformity orvulgarity of any kind. But what an operose method! What a train ofmeans to secure a little conversation! This palace of brick and stone,these servants, this kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage, thisbank-stock and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house and cottage by the waterside, all for a little conversation, high,clear, and spiritual! Could it not be had as well by beggars on thehighway? No, all these things came from successive efforts of thesebeggars to remove friction from the wheels of life, and give oppor-tunity. Conversation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth wasgood as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney,silenced the creaking door, brought friends together in a warm andquiet room, and kept the children and the dinner-table in a differentapartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was knownthat men of thought and virtue sometimes had the headache, or wetfeet, or could lose good time whilst the room was getting warm inwinter days. Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove theseinconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object;

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the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has cometo be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London,Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world are citiesand governments of the rich; and the masses are not men, but poormen, 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 isdone, it is for nothing. They are like one who has interrupted theconversation of a company to make his speech, and now has forgot-ten what he went to say. The appearance strikes the eye everywhere ofan aimless society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so greatand cogent as to exact this immense sacrifice of men?

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 inwoods and waters a certain enticement and flattery, together with afailure to yield a present satisfaction. This disappointment is felt inevery landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty of the summerclouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their heightand privilege of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much thedrapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some pavilions andgardens of festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy, but the poet findshimself not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the river, thebank of flowers before him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is stillelsewhere. This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echoof the triumph that has passed by and is now at its glancing splendorand heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand inthe field, then in the adjacent woods. The present object shall giveyou this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has just goneby. What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and love-liness in the sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand orplant his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever andever. It is the same among the men and women as among the silenttrees; always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence andsatisfaction. Is it that beauty can never be grasped? in persons and inlandscape is equally inaccessible? The accepted and betrothed loverhas 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 heavenif she stoops to such a one as he.

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What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that firstprojectile impulse, of this flattery and balking of so many well-mean-ing creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe aslight treachery and derision? Are we not engaged to a serious re-sentment of this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, andfools of nature? One look at the face of heaven and earth lays allpetulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelli-gent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashlyexplained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus ar-rives; he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the samesorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Hermighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but noarchangel’s wing was yet strong enough to follow it and report ofthe return of the curve. But it also appears that our actions are sec-onded and disposed to greater conclusions than we designed. Weare escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents, and abeneficent purpose lies in wait for us. We cannot bandy words withNature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. If we measure ourindividual forces against hers we may easily feel as if we were thesport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead of identifying our-selves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streamsthrough us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first inour hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and,over them, of life, preexisting within us in their highest form.

The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chainof causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condi-tion of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken fromthe wheel. Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or Identity in-sinuates its compensation. All over the wide fields of earth growsthe prunella or self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off thefumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engagedwith particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us toevery experiment the innate universal laws. These, while they existin the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, apresent sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servi-tude to particulars betrays into a hundred foolish expectations. Weanticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, or a bal-

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loon; the new engine brings with it the old checks. They say that byelectro-magnetism your salad shall be grown from the seed whilstyour fowl is roasting for dinner; it is a symbol of our modern aimsand endeavors, of our condensation and acceleration of objects;—but nothing is gained; nature cannot be cheated; man’s life is butseventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In thesechecks and impossibilities however we find our advantage, not lessthan in the impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on thatside. And the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being,from the centre to the poles of nature, and have some stake in everypossibility, lends that sublime lustre to death, which philosophy andreligion have too outwardly and literally striven to express in thepopular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The reality is moreexcellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spentball. The divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the in-carnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomeswater and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile es-sence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hencethe virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of naturalobjects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, man crys-tallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. That powerwhich does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and theparticle its equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, anddistils its essence into every drop of rain. Every moment instructs,and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. It has beenpoured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us aspleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days ofcheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after a long time.

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POLITICSPOLITICSPOLITICSPOLITICSPOLITICS

Gold and iron are goodTo buy iron and gold;All earth’s fleece and foodFor their like are sold.Boded Merlin wise,Proved Napoleon great,—Nor kind nor coinage buysAught above its rate.Fear, Craft, and AvariceCannot rear a State.Out of dust to buildWhat is more than dust,—Walls Amphion piledPhoebus stablish must.When the Muses nineWith the Virtues meet,Find to their designAn Atlantic seat,By green orchard boughsFended from the heat,Where the statesman ploughsFurrow for the wheat;When the Church is social worth,When the state-house is the hearth,Then the perfect State is come,The republican at home.

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XIX. POLITICSXIX. POLITICSXIX. POLITICSXIX. POLITICSXIX. POLITICS

IN DEALING WITH the State we ought to remember that its institutionare not aboriginal, though they ex-isted before we were born; thatthey are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was oncethe act of a single man; every law and usage was a man’s expedientto meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; wemay make as good, we may make better. Society is an illusion to theyoung citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names,men and institutions rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round whichall arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knowsthat society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres, but anyparticle may suddenly become the centre of the movement and com-pel the system to gyrate round it; as every man of strong will, likePisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth,like Plato or Paul, does forever. But politics rest on necessary foun-dations, and cannot be treated with levity. Republics abound inyoung civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that gravemodifications of the policy and modes of living and employmentsof the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may bevoted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, maybe imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to makeit a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sandwhich perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and notlead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurperis quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build foreternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the ex-pression of what cultivation exists in the population which permitsit. The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and es-teem the statute somewhat: so much life as it has in the character ofliving men is its force. The statute stands there to say, Yesterday weagreed so and so, but how feel ye this article to-day? Our statute is a

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currency which we stamp with our own portrait: it soon becomesunrecognizable, and in process of time will return to the mint. Na-ture is not democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but despotic, andwill not be fooled or abated of any jot of her authority by the pertestof her sons; and as fast as the public mind is opened to more intel-ligence, the code is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks notarticulately, and must be made to. Meantime the education of thegeneral mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple areprophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, andpaints to-day, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presentlybe the resolutions of public bodies; then shall be carried as griev-ance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall betriumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it givesplace in turn to new prayers and pictures. The history of the Statesketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at adistance the delicacy of culture and of aspiration.

The theory of politics which has possessed the mind of men, andwhich they have expressed the best they could in their laws and intheir revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objectsfor whose protection government exists. Of persons, all have equalrights, in virtue of being identical in nature. This interest of coursewith its whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of allas persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rightsin property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and an-other owns a county. This accident, depending primarily on theskill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every degree, andsecondarily on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights of courseare unequal. Personal rights, universally the same, demand a gov-ernment framed on the ratio of the census; property demands agovernment framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban,who has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by an officer onthe frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off; and pays a taxto that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds and no fear of the Midianites,and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed fit that Laban and Jacobshould have equal rights to elect the officer who is to defend theirpersons, but that Laban and not Jacob should elect the officer whois to guard the sheep and cattle. And if question arise whether addi-

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tional officers or watch-towers should be provided, must not Labanand Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds to buy protec-tion for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, thanJacob, who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their breadand not his own?

In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, andso long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinionwould arise in any equitable community than that property shouldmake the law for property, and persons the law for persons.

But property passes through donation or inheritance to those whodo not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner’s,as labor made it the first owner’s: in the other case, of patrimony,the law makes an ownership which will be valid in each man’s viewaccording to the estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity.

It was not however found easy to embody the readily admittedprinciple that property should make law for property, and personsfor persons; since persons and property mixed themselves in everytransaction. At last it seemed settled that the rightful distinctionwas that the proprietors should have more elective franchise thannon-proprietors, on the Spartan principle of “calling that which isjust, equal; not that which is equal, just.”

That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared informer times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too muchweight had not been allowed in the laws to property, and such astructure given to our usages as allowed the rich to encroach on thepoor, and to keep them poor; but mainly because there is an in-stinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticulate, that the wholeconstitution of property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and itsinfluence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly the onlyinterest for the consideration of the State is persons; that propertywill always follow persons; that the highest end of government isthe culture of men; and if men can be educated, the institutions willshare their improvement and the moral sentiment will write the lawof the land.

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is lesswhen we take note of our natural defences. We are kept by betterguards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect.

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Society always consists in greatest part of young and foolish per-sons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts andstatesmen, die and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe theirown newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such an igno-rant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, butthat there are limitations beyond which the folly and ambition ofgovernors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men; andthings refuse to be trifled with. Property will be protected. Cornwill not grow unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer willnot plant or hoe it unless the chances are a hundred to one that hewill cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property mustand will have their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily asmatter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth never so cunningly,divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it willalways weigh a pound; it will always attract and resist other matterby the full virtue of one pound weight:—and the attributes of aperson, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law orextinguishing tyranny, their proper force,—if not overtly, then co-vertly; if not for the law, then against it; if not wholesomely, thenpoisonously; with right, or by might.

The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, aspersons are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under the do-minion of an idea which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civilfreedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are nolonger subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously benton freedom or conquest can easily confound the arithmetic of stat-ists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to theirmeans; as the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, andthe French have done.

In like manner to every particle of property belongs its own at-traction. A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn orother commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. Itis so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land.The law may do what it will with the owner of property; its justpower will still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak saythat all shall have power except the owners of property; they shallhave no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year

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after year, write every statute that respects property. The non-propri-etor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do,the whole power of property will do, either through the law or else indefiance of it. Of course I speak of all the property, not merely of thegreat estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it isthe joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Ev-ery man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheel-barrow, or hisarms, and so has that property to dispose of.

The same necessity which secures the rights of person and prop-erty against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, determines theform and methods of governing, which are proper to each nationand to its habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other statesof society. In this country we are very vain of our political institu-tions, which are singular in this, that they sprung, within the memoryof living men, from the character and condition of the people, whichthey still express with sufficient fidelity,—and we ostentatiously preferthem to any other in history. They are not better, but only fitter forus. We may be wise in asserting the advantage in modern times ofthe democratic form, but to other states of society, in which religionconsecrated the monarchical, that and not this was expedient. De-mocracy is better for us, because the religious sentiment of the presenttime accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise quali-fied to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living in the mo-narchical idea, was also relatively right. But our institutions, thoughin coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemptionfrom the practical defects which have discredited other forms. Ev-ery actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws toowell. What satire on government can equal the severity of censureconveyed in the word politic, which now for ages has signified cun-ning, intimating that the State is a trick?

The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear inthe parties, into which each State divides itself, of opponents anddefenders of the administration of the government. Parties are alsofounded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humbleaims than the sagacity of their leaders. They have nothing perversein their origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. Wemight as wisely reprove the east wind or the frost, as a political

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party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account oftheir position, but stand for the defence of those interests in whichthey find themselves. Our quarrel with them begins when they quitthis deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and obeyingpersonal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance anddefence of points nowise belonging to their system. A party is per-petually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the associationfrom dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders.They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal of the masses whichthey direct. Ordinarily our parties are parties of circumstance, andnot of principle; as the planting interest in conflict with the com-mercial; the party of capitalists and that of operatives; parties whichare identical in their moral character, and which can easily changeground with each other in the support of many of their measures.Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party of free-trade, ofuniversal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of abolition of capital pun-ishment,—degenerate into personalities, or would inspire enthusi-asm. The vice of our leading parties in this country (which may becited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion) is that they donot plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to whichthey are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the car-rying of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to thecommonwealth. Of the two great parties which at this hour almostshare the nation between them, I should say that one has the bestcause, and the other contains the best men. The philosopher, thepoet, or the religious man will of course wish to cast his vote withthe democrat, for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition oflegal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every mannerthe access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth andpower. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-calledpopular party propose to him as representatives of these liberalities.They have not at heart the ends which give to the name of democ-racy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our Americanradicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not loving; it has no ulte-rior and divine ends, but is destructive only out of hatred and self-ishness. On the other side, the conservative party, composed of themost moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid,

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and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires tono real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy; itdoes not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion,nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate theslave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. Fromneither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect inscience, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources ofthe nation.

I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at themercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, hu-man nature always finds itself cherished; as the children of the con-victs at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentimentas other children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our demo-cratic institutions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more cau-tious among ourselves are learning from Europeans to look withsome terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license ofconstruing the Constitution, and in the despotism of public opin-ion, we have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he hasfound the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and an-other thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressedthe popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchyand a republic, saying that a monarchy is a merchantman, whichsails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom;whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then yourfeet are always in water. No forms can have any dangerous impor-tance whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes nodifference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads,so long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment themass a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reac-tion is equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centrip-etal and centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activitydevelops the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want ofliberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.‘Lynch-law’ prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency;everybody’s interest requires that it should not exist, and only jus-tice satisfies all.

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We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shinesthrough all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as charac-teristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads; and an abstract of thecodes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience.Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men. Rea-son for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other.There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they neverso many or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction forhis simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, whichhe calls Truth and Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find aperfect agreement, and only in these; not in what is good to eat,good to wear, good use of time, or what amount of land or of publicaid, each is entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presentlyendeavor to make application of to the measuring of land, the ap-portionment of service, the protection of life and property. Theirfirst endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. Yet absolute right isthe first governor; or, every government is an impure theocracy. Theidea after which each community is aiming to make and mend itslaw, is the will of the wise man. The wise man it cannot find innature, and it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his gov-ernment by contrivance; as by causing the entire people to give theirvoices on every measure; or by a double choice to get the represen-tation of the whole; or, by a selection of the best citizens; or tosecure the advantages of efficiency and internal peace by confidingthe government to one, who may himself select his agents. All formsof government symbolize an immortal government, common to alldynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men ex-ist, perfect where there is only one man.

Every man’s nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the char-acter of his fellows. My right and my wrong is their right and theirwrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what isunfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and worktogether for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominionover myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction ofhim also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him.I may have so much more skill or strength than he that he cannotexpress adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a

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lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assump-tion; it must be executed by a practical lie, namely by force. Thisundertaking for another is the blunder which stands in colossal ug-liness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in num-bers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enougha great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control,and my going to make somebody else act after my views; but whena quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, Imay be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearlythe absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vagueand quixotic beside private ones. For any laws but those which menmake for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place ofmy child, and we stand in one thought and see that things are thusor thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there,both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look overinto his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that,he will never obey me. This is the history of governments,—oneman does something which is to bind another. A man who cannotbe acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me ordainsthat a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end,—notas I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of alldebts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this ongovernment! Everywhere they think they get their money’s worth,except for these.

Hence the less government we have the better,—the fewer laws,and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formalGovernment is the influence of private character, the growth of theIndividual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy;the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing governmentis, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all thingstend to educe; which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions,go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of Nature, toreach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man theState exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State ex-pires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. Thewise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, —he lovesmen too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him;

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no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library,for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; nostatute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; noroad, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of thecreator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has nopersonal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer andpiety of all men unto him needs not husband and educate a few toshare with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is an-gelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense andflowers.

We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only atthe cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous societythe influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, asthe rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, itspresence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it;the Annual Register is silent; in the Conversations’ Lexicon it is notset down; the President’s Message, the Queen’s Speech, have notmentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which ge-nius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. The gladiatorsin the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of force and simu-lation, the presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade andambition are confession of this divinity; and successes in those fieldsare the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul at-tempts to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in allquarters. It is because we know how much is due from us that weare impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute for worth.We are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur of charac-ter, and are false to it. But each of us has some talent, can do some-what useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative.That we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves for not reach-ing the mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy us,whilst we thrust it on the notice of our companions. It may throwdust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or give us thetranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do penance aswe go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and we are constrained toreflect on our splendid moment with a certain humiliation, as some-what too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of

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our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in society witha kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, ‘I am not all here.’ Sena-tors and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, notbecause they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apologyfor real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. Thisconspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being ofa poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like oneclass of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail; climbthey must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that hecould enter into strict relations with the best persons and make lifeserene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior,could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press,and covet relations so hollow and pompous as those of a politician?Surely nobody would be a charlatan who could afford to be sincere.

The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government,and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties ofhis own constitution; which work with more energy than we believewhilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this di-rection has been very marked in modern history. Much has beenblind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not af-fected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. Itwas never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It sepa-rates the individual from all party, and unites him at the same timeto the race. It promises a recognition of higher rights than those ofpersonal freedom, or the security of property. A man has a right tobe employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered. The power oflove, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not imag-ine that all things are lapsing into confusion if every tender protes-tant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions;nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit oflabor secured, when the government of force is at an end. Are ourmethods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? couldnot a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand,let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a pre-mature surrender of the bayonet and the system of force. For, ac-cording to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, itstands thus; there will always be a government of force where men

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are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code offorce they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of thepost-office, of the highway, of commerce and the exchange of prop-erty, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science canbe answered.

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tributeto governments founded on force. There is not, among the mostreligious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations,a reliance on the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unityof things, to persuade them that society can be maintained withoutartificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the privatecitizen might be reasonable and a good neighbor, without the hintof a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was inany man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire himwith the broad design of renovating the State on the principle ofright and love. All those who have pretended this design have beenpartial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacyof the bad State. I do not call to mind a single human being who hassteadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground ofhis own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate asthey are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If theindividual who exhibits them dare to think them practicable, hedisgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent and women ofsuperior sentiments cannot hide their contempt. Not the less doesnature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of thisenthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in theplural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been convers-ing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience willmake it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of humanbeings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplestsentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.

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NOMINALIST AND REALISTNOMINALIST AND REALISTNOMINALIST AND REALISTNOMINALIST AND REALISTNOMINALIST AND REALIST

In countless upward-striving wavesThe moon-drawn tide-wave strives:In thousand far-transplanted graftsThe parent fruit survives;So, in the new-born millions,The perfect Adam lives.Not less are summer-mornings dearTo every child they wake,And each with novel life his sphereFills for his proper sake.

XX. NONIMALIST AND REALISTXX. NONIMALIST AND REALISTXX. NONIMALIST AND REALISTXX. NONIMALIST AND REALISTXX. NONIMALIST AND REALIST

I CANNOT OFTEN ENOUGH say that a man is only a rela-tive and rep-resentative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough frombeing that truth which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests tous. If I seek it in him I shall not find it. Could any man conductinto me the pure stream of that which he pretends to be! Long after-wards I find that quality elsewhere which he promised me. Thegenius of the Platonists is intoxicating to the student, yet how fewparticulars of it can I detach from all their books. The man mo-mentarily stands for the thought, but will not bear examination;and a society of men will cursorily represent well enough a certainquality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty of manners; butseparate them and there is no gentleman and no lady in the group.The least hint sets us on the pursuit of a character which no manrealizes. We have such exorbitant eyes that on seeing the smallestarc we complete the curve, and when the curtain is lifted from the

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diagram which it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that no morewas drawn than just that fragment of an arc which we first beheld.We are greatly too liberal in our construction of each other’s facultyand promise. Exactly what the parties have already done they shalldo again; but that which we inferred from their nature and incep-tion, they will not do. That is in nature, but not in them. Thathappens in the world, which we often witness in a public debate.Each of the speakers expresses himself imperfectly; no one of themhears much that another says, such is the preoccupation of mind ofeach; and the audience, who have only to hear and not to speak,judge very wisely and superiorly how wrongheaded and unskilful iseach of the debaters to his own affair. Great men or men of greatgifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. When I meeta pure intellectual force or a generosity of affection, I believe herethen is man; and am presently mortified by the discovery that thisindividual is no more available to his own or to the general endsthan his companions; because the power which drew my respect isnot supported by the total symphony of his talents. All persons existto society by some shining trait of beauty or utility which they have.We borrow the proportions of the man from that one fine feature,and finish the portrait symmetrically; which is false, for the rest ofhis body is small or deformed. I observe a person who makes a goodpublic appearance, and conclude thence the perfection of his pri-vate character, on which this is based; but he has no private charac-ter. He is a graceful cloak or lay-figure for holidays. All our poets,heroes, and saints, fail utterly in some one or in many parts to sat-isfy our idea, fail to draw our spontaneous interest, and so leave uswithout any hope of realization but in our own future. Our exag-geration of all fine characters arises from the fact that we identifyeach in turn with the soul. But there are no such men as we fable;no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor Washington,such as we have made. We consecrate a great deal of nonsense be-cause it was allowed by great men. There is none without his foible.I verily believe if an angel should come to chant the chorus of themoral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, or take libertieswith private letters, or do some precious atrocity. It is bad enoughthat our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no

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man is fit for society who has fine traits. He is admired at a distance,but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. The men offine parts protect themselves by solitude, or by courtesy, or by sat-ire, or by an acid worldly manner, each concealing as he best can hisincapacity for useful association, but they want either love or self-reliance.

Our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach us alittle reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden surrender to the brilliantqualities of persons. Young people admire talents or particularexcellences; as we grow older we value total powers and effects, asthe impression, the quality, the spirit of men and things. The geniusis all. The man,—it is his system: we do not try a solitary word oract, but his habit. The acts which you praise, I praise not, since theyare departures from his faith, and are mere compliances. The mag-netism which arranges tribes and races in one polarity is alone to berespected; the men are steel-filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle,and say, ‘O steel-filing number one! what heart-drawings I feel tothee! what prodigious virtues are these of thine! how constitutionalto thee, and incommunicable.’ Whilst we speak the loadstone iswithdrawn; down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and wecontinue our mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for uni-versals; for the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and itspersons are poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence is anignis fatuus. If they say it is great, it is great; if they say it is small, itis small; you see it, and you see it not, by turns; it borrows all its sizefrom the momentary estimation of the speakers: the Will-of-the-wisp vanishes if you go too near, vanishes if you go too far, and onlyblazes at one angle. Who can tell if Washington be a great man orno? Who can tell if Franklin be? Yes, or any but the twelve, or six, orthree great gods of fame? And they too loom and fade before theeternal.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, havingtwo sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. We adjust ourinstrument for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easilyas we pick out a single figure in the terrestrial landscape. We arepractically skilful in detecting elements for which we have no placein our theory, and no name. Thus we are very sensible of an atmo-

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spheric influence in men and in bodies of men, not accounted forin an arithmetical addition of all their measurable properties. Thereis a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numericalcitizens, but which characterizes the society. England, strong, punc-tual, practical, well-spoken England I should not find if I should goto the island to seek it. In the parliament, in the play-house, atdinner-tables, I might see a great number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conventional, proud men,—many old women,—and not any-where the Englishman who made the good speeches, combined theaccurate engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. It is evenworse in America, where, from the intellectual quickness of the race,the genius of the country is more splendid in its promise and moreslight in its performance. Webster cannot do the work of Webster.We conceive distinctly enough the French, the Spanish, the Ger-man genius, and it is not the less real that perhaps we should notmeet in either of those nations a single individual who correspondedwith the type. We infer the spirit of the nation in great measurefrom the language, which is a sort of monument to which eachforcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contrib-uted a stone. And, universally, a good example of this social force isthe veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In any con-troversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety tothe sentiments which the language of the people expresses. Prov-erbs, words, and grammar-inflections convey the public sense withmore purity and precision than the wisest individual.

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had agood deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods:they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.Our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our life and divest itof poetry. The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of thesocial scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His mea-sures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, ge-ometry, astronomy and all the lovely accidents of nature play throughhis mind. Money, which represents the prose of life, and which ishardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects andlaws, as beautiful as roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world,and is always moral. The property will be found where the labor,

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the wisdom, and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and (thewhole life-time considered, with the compensations) in the indi-vidual also. How wise the world appears, when the laws and usagesof nations are largely detailed, and the completeness of the munici-pal system is considered! Nothing is left out. If you go into themarkets and the custom-houses, the insurers’ and notaries’ offices,the offices of sealers of weights and measures, of inspection of pro-visions,—it will appear as if one man had made it all. Wherever yougo, a wit like your own has been before you, and has realized itsthought. The Eleusinian mysteries, the Egyptian architecture, theIndian astronomy, the Greek sculpture, show that there always wereseeing and knowing men in the planet. The world is full of masonicties, of guilds, of secret and public legions of honor; that of scholars,for example; and that of gentlemen, fraternizing with the upperclass of every country and every culture.

I am very much struck in literature by the appearance that oneperson wrote all the books; as if the editor of a journal planted hisbody of reporters in different parts of the field of action, and re-lieved some by others from time to time; but there is such equalityand identity both of judgment and point of view in the narrativethat it is plainly the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman. Ilooked into Pope’s Odyssey yesterday: it is as correct and elegantafter our canon of to-day as if it were newly written. The modern-ness of all good books seems to give me an existence as wide as man.What is well done I feel as if I did; what is ill done I reck not of.Shakspeare’s passages of passion (for example, in Lear and Hamlet)are in the very dialect of the present year. I am faithful again to thewhole over the members in my use of books. I find the most plea-sure in reading a book in a manner least flattering to the author. Iread Proclus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read a dictionary, fora mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination. I read for thelustres, as if one should use a fine picture in a chromatic experi-ment, for its rich colors. ’Tis not Proclus, but a piece of nature andfate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see the author’s author, thanhimself. A higher pleasure of the same kind I found lately at a con-cert, where I went to hear Handel’s Messiah. As the master over-powered the littleness and incapableness of the performers and made

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them conductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe whatefforts nature was making, through so many hoarse, wooden, andimperfect persons, to produce beautiful voices, fluid and soul-guidedmen and women. The genius of nature was paramount at the orato-rio.

This preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of thatdeification of art, which is found in all superior minds. Art, in theartist, is proportion, or a habitual respect to the whole by an eyeloving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is thesanity in insanity which it denotes. Proportion is almost impossibleto human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate. In con-versation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.In modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscella-neous; the artist works here and there and at all points, adding andadding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought. Beautiful de-tails we must have, or no artist; but they must be means and neverother. The eye must not lose sight for a moment of the purpose.Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and the cool reader findsnothing but sweet jingles in it. When they grow older, they respectthe argument.

We obey the same intellectual integrity when we study in excep-tions the law of the world. Anomalous facts, as the never quite ob-solete rumors of magic and demonology, and the new allegations ofphrenologists and neurologists, are of ideal use. They are good indi-cations. Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but ofgreat value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.So with Mesmerism, Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the MillennialChurch; they are poor pretensions enough, but good criticism onthe science, philosophy, and preaching of the day. For these abnor-mal insights of the adepts ought to be normal, and things of course.

All things show us that on every side we are very near to the best.It seems not worth while to execute with too much pains some oneintellectual, or aesthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dreamwill scatter, and we shall burst into universal power. The reason ofidleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we arewaiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, andwith crimes.

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Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents withwhich we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass,and life will be simpler when we live at the centre and flout thesurfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimesI must pinch myself to keep awake and preserve the due decorum.They melt so fast into each other that they are like grass and trees,and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals. Though the un-inspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in householdmatters, the divine man does not respect them; he sees them as arack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives over thesurface of the water. But this is flat rebellion. Nature will not beBuddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher inevery moment with a million of fresh particulars. It is all idle talk-ing: as much as a man is a whole, so is he also a part; and it werepartial not to see it. What you say in your pompous distributiononly distributes you into your class and section. You have not gotrid of parts by denying them, but are the more partial. You are onething, but Nature is one thing and the other thing, in the samemoment. She will not remain orbed in a thought, but rushes intopersons; and when each person, inflamed to a fury of personality,would conquer all things to his poor crotchet, she raises up againsthim another person, and by many persons incarnates again a sort ofwhole. She will have all. Nick Bottom cannot play all the parts,work it how he may; there will be somebody else, and the world willbe round. Everything must have its flower or effort at the beautiful,coarser or finer according to its stuff. They relieve and recommendeach other, and the sanity of society is a balance of a thousand in-sanities. She punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an in-duction which is rare and casual. We like to come to a height ofland and see the landscape, just as we value a general remark inconversation. But it is not the intention of Nature that we shouldlive by general views. We fetch fire and water, run about all dayamong the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes madeand mended, and are the victims of these details; and once in afortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment. If we were notthus infatuated, if we saw the real from hour to hour, we should notbe here to write and to read, but should have been burned or frozen

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long ago. She would never get anything done, if she suffered admi-rable Crichtons and universal geniuses. She loves better a wheel-wright who dreams all night of wheels, and a groom who is part ofhis horse; for she is full of work, and these are her hands. As thefrugal farmer takes care that his cattle shall eat down the rowen, andswine shall eat the waste of his house, and poultry shall pick thecrumbs,—so our economical mother dispatches a new genius andhabit of mind into every district and condition of existence, plantsan eye wherever a new ray of light can fall, and gathering up intosome man every property in the universe, establishes thousandfoldoccult mutual attractions among her offspring, that all this washand waste of power may be imparted and exchanged.

Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this incarnation and dis-tribution of the godhead, and hence Nature has her maligners, as ifshe were Circe; and Alphonso of Castille fancied he could have givenuseful advice. But she does not go unprovided; she has hellebore atthe bottom of the cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop ofdespots. The recluse thinks of men as having his manner, or as nothaving his manner; and as having degrees of it, more and less. Butwhen he comes into a public assembly he sees that men have verydifferent manners from his own, and in their way admirable. In hischildhood and youth he has had many checks and censures, andthinks modestly enough of his own endowment. When afterwardshe comes to unfold it in propitious circumstance, it seems the onlytalent; he is delighted with his success, and accounts himself alreadythe fellow of the great. But he goes into a mob, into a bankinghouse, into a mechanic’s shop, into a mill, into a laboratory, into aship, into a camp, and in each new place he is no better than anidiot; other talents take place, and rule the hour. The rotation whichwhirls every leaf and pebble to the meridian, reaches to every gift ofman, and we all take turns at the top.

For Nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her heart on breakingup all styles and tricks, and it is so much easier to do what one hasdone before than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual ten-dency to a set mode. In every conversation, even the highest, thereis a certain trick, which may be soon learned by an acute person andthen that particular style continued indefinitely. Each man too is a

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tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others;and their trick is their natural defence. Jesus would absorb the race;but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resist-ing this exuberance of power. Hence the immense benefit of partyin politics, as it reveals faults of character in a chief, which the intel-lectual force of the persons, with ordinary opportunity and not hurledinto aphelion by hatred, could not have seen. Since we are all sostupid, what benefit that there should be two stupidities! It is likethat brute advantage so essential to astronomy, of having the diam-eter of the earth’s orbit for a base of its triangles. Democracy is mo-rose, and runs to anarchy, but in the State and in the schools it isindispensable to resist the consolidation of all men into a few men.If John was perfect, why are you and I alive? As long as any manexists, there is some need of him; let him fight for his own. A newpoet has appeared; a new character approached us; why should werefuse to eat bread until we have found his regiment and section inour old army-files? Why not a new man? Here is a new enterprise ofBrook Farm, of Skeneateles, of Northampton: why so impatient tobaptize them Essenes, or Port-Royalists, or Shakers, or by any knownand effete name? Let it be a new way of living. Why have only twoor three ways of life, and not thousands? Every man is wanted, andno man is wanted much. We came this time for condiments, notfor corn. We want the great genius only for joy; for one star more inour constellation, for one tree more in our grove. But he thinks wewish to belong to him, as he wishes to occupy us. He greatly mis-takes us. I think I have done well if I have acquired a new wordfrom a good author; and my business with him is to find my own,though it were only to melt him down into an epithet or an imagefor daily use:—

“Into paint will I grind thee, my bride!”

To embroil the confusion, and make it impossible to arrive at anygeneral statement,—when we have insisted on the imperfection ofindividuals, our affections and our experience urge that every indi-vidual is entitled to honor, and a very generous treatment is sure tobe repaid. A recluse sees only two or three persons, and allows them

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all their room; they spread themselves at large. The statesman looksat many, and compares the few habitually with others, and theselook less. Yet are they not entitled to this generosity of reception?and is not munificence the means of insight? For though gamesterssay that the cards beat all the players, though they were never soskilful, yet in the contest we are now considering, the players arealso the game, and share the power of the cards. If you criticise afine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, andinstead of the poet, are censuring your own caricature of him. Forthere is somewhat spheral and infinite in every man, especially inevery genius, which, if you can come very near him, sports with allyour limitations. For rightly every man is a channel through whichheaven floweth, and whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I wascensuring or rather terminating my own soul. After taxing Goetheas a courtier, artificial, unbelieving, worldly,—I took up this bookof Helena, and found him an Indian of the wilderness, a piece ofpure nature like an apple or an oak, large as morning or night, andvirtuous as a brier-rose.

But care is taken that the whole tune shall be played. If we werenot kept among surfaces, every thing would be large and universal;now the excluded attributes burst in on us with the more brightnessthat they have been excluded. “Your turn now, my turn next,” is therule of the game. The universality being hindered in its primaryform, comes in the secondary form of all sides; the points come insuccession to the meridian, and by the speed of rotation a new wholeis formed. Nature keeps herself whole and her representation com-plete in the experience of each mind. She suffers no seat to be va-cant in her college. It is the secret of the world that all things subsistand do not die but only retire a little from sight and afterwardsreturn again. Whatever does not concern us is concealed from us.As soon as a person is no longer related to our present well-being,he is concealed, or dies, as we say. Really, all things and persons arerelated to us, but according to our nature they act on us not at oncebut in succession, and we are made aware of their presence one at atime. All persons, all things which we have known, are here present,and many more than we see; the world is full. As the ancient said,the world is a plenum or solid; and if we saw all things that really

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surround us we should be imprisoned and unable to move. Forthough nothing is impassable to the soul, but all things are perviousto it and like highways, yet this is only whilst the soul does not seethem. As soon as the soul sees any object, it stops before that object.Therefore, the divine Providence which keeps the universe open inevery direction to the soul, conceals all the furniture and all thepersons that do not concern a particular soul, from the senses ofthat individual. Through solidest eternal things the man finds hisroad as if they did not subsist, and does not once suspect their be-ing. As soon as he needs a new object, suddenly he beholds it, andno longer attempts to pass through it, but takes another way. Whenhe has exhausted for the time the nourishment to be drawn fromany one person or thing, that object is withdrawn from his observa-tion, and though still in his immediate neighborhood, he does notsuspect its presence. Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead,and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there theystand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new andstrange disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is very well alive: nor John,nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we haveseen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go.

If we cannot make voluntary and conscious steps in the admi-rable science of universals, let us see the parts wisely, and infer thegenius of nature from the best particulars with a becoming charity.What is best in each kind is an index of what should be the averageof that thing. Love shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosingto me in my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth ofgood in every other direction. It is commonly said by farmers that agood pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear than a poorone; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought,or friend, but the best.

The end and the means, the gamester and the game, —life ismade up of the intermixture and reaction of these two amicablepowers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as eachdenies and tends to abolish the other. We must reconcile the contra-dictions as we can, but their discord and their concord introducewild absurdities into our thinking and speech. No sentence will holdthe whole truth, and the only way in which we can be just, is by

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giving ourselves the lie; Speech is better than silence; silence is bet-ter than speech;—All things are in contact; every atom has a sphereof repulsion;—Things are, and are not, at the same time;—and thelike. All the universe over, there is but one thing, this old Two-Face,creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any proposi-tion may be affirmed or denied. Very fitly therefore I assert thatevery man is a partialist, that nature secures him as an instrumentby self-conceit, preventing the tendencies to religion and science;and now further assert, that, each man’s genius being nearly andaffectionately explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his na-ture is found to be immense; and now I add that every man is auniversalist also, and, as our earth, whilst it spins on its own axis,spins all the time around the sun through the celestial spaces, so theleast of its rational children, the most dedicated to his private affair,works out, though as it were under a disguise, the universal prob-lem. We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but everypumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.The rabid democrat, as soon as he is senator and rich man, hasripened beyond possibility of sincere radicalism, and unless he canresist the sun, he must be conservative the remainder of his days.Lord Eldon said in his old age that “if he were to begin life again, hewould be damned but he would begin as agitator.”

We hide this universality if we can, but it appears at all points. Weare as ungrateful as children. There is nothing we cherish and striveto draw to us but in some hour we turn and rend it. We keep arunning fire of sarcasm at ignorance and the life of the senses; thengoes by, perchance, a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and happy, andmaking the commonest offices beautiful by the energy and heartwith which she does them; and seeing this we admire and love herand them, and say, ‘Lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth, notdissipated or too early ripened by books, philosophy, religion, soci-ety, or care!’ insinuating a treachery and contempt for all we had solong loved and wrought in ourselves and others.

If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundestprophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is readyto sell all and join the crusade could have any certificate that tomor-row his prophet shall not unsay his testimony! But the Truth sits

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veiled there on the Bench, and never interposes an adamantine syl-lable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if theark of God were carried forward some furlongs, and planted therefor the succor of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set asideby the same speaker, as morbid; “I thought I was right, but I wasnot,”—and the same immeasurable credulity demanded for newaudacities. If we were not of all opinions! if we did not in any mo-ment shift the platform on which we stand, and look and speakfrom another! if there could be any regulation, any ‘one-hour-rule,’that a man should never leave his point of view without sound oftrumpet. I am always insincere, as always knowing there are othermoods.

How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in themind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, from the inca-pacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the samewords! My companion assumes to know my mood and habit ofthought, and we go on from explanation to explanation until all issaid which words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first,because of that vicious assumption. Is it that every man believesevery other to be an incurable partialist, and himself a universalist?I talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers; I endeavored to showmy good men that I love everything by turns and nothing long; thatI loved the centre, but doated on the superficies; that I loved man, ifmen seemed to me mice and rats; that I revered saints, but woke upglad that the old pagan world stood its ground and died hard; thatI was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live intheir arms. Could they but once understand that I loved to knowthat they existed, and heartily wished them God-speed, yet, out ofmy poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for themwhen they came to see me, and could well consent to their living inOregon, for any claim I felt on them,—it would be a great satisfac-tion.

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NENENENENEW ENGLW ENGLW ENGLW ENGLW ENGLAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERS

In the suburb, in the town,On the railway, in the square,Came a beam of goodness downDoubling daylight everywhere:Peace now each for malice takes,Beauty for his sinful weeks,For the angel Hope aye makesHim an angel whom she leads.

NENENENENEW ENGLW ENGLW ENGLW ENGLW ENGLAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERSAND REFORMERS

A Lecture Read before the Society in Amory Hall,on Sunday, March 3, 1844.

WHOEVER HAS HAD opportunity of acquaintance with society in NewEngland during the last twenty-five years, with those middle andwith those leading sections that may constitute any just representa-tion of the character and aim of the community, will have beenstruck with the great activity of thought and experimenting. Hisattention must be commanded by the signs that the Church, orreligious party, is falling from the Church nominal, and is appear-ing in temperance and non-resistance societies; in movements ofabolitionists and of socialists; and in very significant assemblies calledSabbath and Bible Conventions; composed of ultraists, of seekers,of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in ques-tion the authority of the Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of theChurch. In these movements nothing was more remarkable thanthe discontent they begot in the movers. The spirit of protest and of

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detachment drove the members of these Conventions to bear testi-mony against the Church, and immediately afterward, to declaretheir discontent with these Conventions, their independence of theircolleagues, and their impatience of the methods whereby they wereworking. They defied each other, like a congress of kings, each ofwhom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concertunprofitable. What a fertility of projects for the salvation of theworld! One apostle thought all men should go to farming, and an-other that no man should buy or sell, that the use of money was thecardinal evil; another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eatand drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foesto the death to fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewifethat God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation justas dearly as he loves vegetation; that fermentation develops the sac-charine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and moredigestible. No; they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shallnot ferment. Stop, dear nature, these incessant advances of thine;let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the systemof agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming, and the tyr-anny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food. Theox must be taken from the plough and the horse from the cart, thehundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk,wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insectworld was to be defended,—that had been too long neglected, anda society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoswas to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the ad-epts of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology,and their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles! Others as-sailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the mer-chant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Othersattacked the institution of marriage as the fountain of social evils.Others devoted themselves to the worrying of churches and meet-ings for public worship; and the fertile forms of antinomianismamong the elder puritans seemed to have their match in the plentyof the new harvest of reform.

With this din of opinion and debate there was a keener scrutinyof institutions and domestic life than any we had known; there was

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sincere protesting against existing evils, and there were changes ofemployment dictated by conscience. No doubt there was plentifulvaporing, and cases of backsliding might occur. But in each of thesemovements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption ofsimpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of the privateman. Thus it was directly in the spirit and genius of the age, whathappened in one instance when a church censured and threatenedto excommunicate one of its members on account of the somewhathostile part to the church which his conscience led him to take inthe anti-slavery business; the threatened individual immediatelyexcommunicated the church in a public and formal process. Thishas been several times repeated: it was excellent when it was donethe first time, but of course loses all value when it is copied. Everyproject in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surpris-ing, is good when it is the dictate of a man’s genius and constitu-tion, but very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. It isright and beautiful in any man to say, ‘I will take this coat, or thisbook, or this measure of corn of yours,’—in whom we see the act tobe original, and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him; forthen that taking will have a giving as free and divine; but we are veryeasily disposed to resist the same generosity of speech when we missoriginality and truth to character in it.

There was in all the practical activities of New England for thelast quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal of tender consciencesfrom the social organizations. There is observable throughout, thecontest between mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steadytendency of the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief and reli-ance on spiritual facts.

In politics for example it is easy to see the progress of dissent. Thecountry is full of rebellion; the country is full of kings. Hands off!let there be no control and no interference in the administration ofthe affairs of this kingdom of me. Hence the growth of the doctrineand of the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that ex-periment, in the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess,the motto of the Globe newspaper is so attractive to me that I canseldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its columns:“The world is governed too much.” So the country is frequently

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affording solitary examples of resistance to the government, solitarynullifiers, who throw themselves on their reserved rights; nay, whohave reserved all their rights; who reply to the assessor and to theclerk of court that they do not know the State, and embarrass thecourts of law by non-juring and the commander-in-chief of themilitia by non-resistance.

The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in civil,festive, neighborly, and domestic society. A restless, prying, consci-entious criticism broke out in unexpected quarters. Who gave methe money with which I bought my coat? Why should professionallabor and that of the counting-house be paid so disproportionatelyto the labor of the porter and woodsawyer? This whole business ofTrade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relationsbetween men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved ofany responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person whom Ipay with money; whereas if I had not that commodity, I should beput on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be abenefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he hada right to those aids and services which each asked of the other. AmI not too protected a person? is there not a wide disparity betweenthe lot of me and the lot of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister?Am I not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of those gymnas-tics which manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute?I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions ofsociety; I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspectmyself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy andluxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.

The same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for thereform of Education. The popular education has been taxed with awant of truth and nature. It was complained that an education tothings was not given. We are students of words: we are shut up inschools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years,and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and donot know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes,or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we can-not tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun.It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse, of a cow,

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of a dog, of a snake, of a spider. The Roman rule was to teach a boynothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was,‘All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.’ And it seems asif a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he mightsecure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friendsand fellow-men. The lessons of science should be experimental also.The sight of the planet through a telescope is worth all the courseon astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvaluesall the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artifi-cial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.

One of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisition it fixed on ourscholastic devotion to the dead languages. The ancient languages,with great beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of ge-nius, which draw, and always will draw, certain likeminded men,—Greek men, and Roman men,—in all countries, to their study; butby a wonderful drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of allmen. Once (say two centuries ago), Latin and Greek had a strictrelation to all the science and culture there was in Europe, and theMathematics had a momentary importance at some era of activityin physical science. These things became stereotyped as education,as the manner of men is. But the Good Spirit never cared for thecolleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Latin,Greek, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high and dryon the beach, and was now creating and feeding other matters atother ends of the world. But in a hundred high schools and collegesthis warfare against common sense still goes on. Four, or six, or tenyears, the pupil is parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he leavesthe University, as it is ludicrously called, he shuts those books forthe last time. Some thousands of young men are graduated at ourcolleges in this country every year, and the persons who, at fortyyears, still read Greek, can all be counted on your hand. I never metwith ten. Four or five persons I have seen who read Plato.

But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal talent of this countryshould be directed in its best years on studies which lead to noth-ing? What was the consequence? Some intelligent persons said orthought, ‘Is that Greek and Latin some spell to conjure with, andnot words of reason? If the physician, the lawyer, the divine, never

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use it to come at their ends, I need never learn it to come at mine.Conjuring is gone out of fashion, and I will omit this conjugating,and go straight to affairs.’ So they jumped the Greek and Latin, andread law, medicine, or sermons, without it. To the astonishment ofall, the self-made men took even ground at once with the oldest ofthe regular graduates, and in a few months the most conservativecircles of Boston and New York had quite forgotten who of theirgownsmen was college-bred, and who was not.

One tendency appears alike in the philosophical speculation andin the rudest democratical movements, through all the petulanceand all the puerility, the wish, namely, to cast aside the superfluousand arrive at short methods; urged, as I suppose, by an intuitionthat the human spirit is equal to all emergencies, alone, and thatman is more often injured than helped by the means he uses.

I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and the indica-tion of growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the indi-vidual, to be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy, andthat it is feeling its own profound truth and is reaching forward atthis very hour to the happiest conclusions. I readily concede that inthis, as in every period of intellectual activity, there has been a noiseof denial and protest; much was to be resisted, much was to be gotrid of by those who were reared in the old, before they could beginto affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his removalof rubbish; and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They arepartial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose theirway; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness they expend all theirenergy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power ofbenefit. It is of little moment that one or two or twenty errors of oursocial system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses.

The criticism and attack on institutions, which we have witnessed,has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man,not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: hehas become tediously good in some particular but negligent or nar-row in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgustingresult.

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than theestablishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a

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sally against evil by some single improvement, without supportingit by a total regeneration. Do not be so vain of your one objection.Do you think there is only one? Alas! my good friend, there is nopart of society or of life better than any other part. All our things areright and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institu-tions alike. Do you complain of our Marriage? Our marriage is noworse than our education, our diet, our trade, our social customs.Do you complain of the laws of Property? It is a pedantry to givesuch importance to them. Can we not play the game of life withthese counters, as well as with those? in the institution of property,as well as out of it? Let into it the new and renewing principle oflove, and property will be universality. No one gives the impressionof superiority to the institution, which he must give who will re-form it. It makes no difference what you say, you must make me feelthat you are aloof from it; by your natural and supernatural advan-tages do easily see to the end of it,—do see how man can do with-out it. Now all men are on one side. No man deserves to be heardagainst property. Only Love, only an Idea, is against property as wehold it.

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all mytime in attacks. If I should go out of church whenever I hear a falsesentiment I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out?the street is as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or tomy manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a specialreformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to yourone virtue? Is virtue piecemeal? This is a jewel amidst the rags of abeggar.

In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst of abuses,in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false churches, alike in one placeand in another,—wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul finds it-self, there it will do what is next at hand, and by the new quality ofcharacter it shall put forth it shall abrogate that old condition, lawor school in which it stands, before the law of its own mind.

If partiality was one fault of the movement party, the other defectwas their reliance on Association. Doubts such as those I have inti-mated drove many good persons to agitate the questions of social

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reform. But the revolt against the spirit of commerce, the spirit ofaristocracy, and the inveterate abuses of cities, did not appear pos-sible to individuals; and to do battle against numbers they armedthemselves with numbers, and against concert they relied on newconcert.

Following or advancing beyond the ideas of St. Simon, of Fourier,and of Owen, three communities have already been formed in Mas-sachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the country at large.They aim to give every member a share in the manual labor, to givean equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a liberal culturewith an education to labor. The scheme offers, by the economies ofassociated labor and expense, to make every member rich, on thesame amount of property, that, in separate families, would leaveevery member poor. These new associations are composed of menand women of superior talents and sentiments; yet it may easily bequestioned whether such a community will draw, except in its be-ginnings, the able and the good; whether those who have energywill not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the world,to the humble certainties of the association; whether such a retreatdoes not promise to become an asylum to those who have tried andfailed, rather than a field to the strong; and whether the memberswill not necessarily be fractions of men, because each finds that hecannot enter it, without some compromise. Friendship and associa-tion are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of thehuman race, banded for some catholic object; yes, excellent; butremember that no society can ever be so large as one man. He, in hisfriendship, in his natural and momentary associations, doubles ormultiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himselfto two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one.

But the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such,concert appears the sole specific of strength. I have failed, and youhave failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. Our housekeep-ing is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community,might be. Many of us have differed in opinion, and we could findno man who could make the truth plain, but possibly a college, oran ecclesiastical council might. I have not been able either to per-suade my brother or to prevail on myself, to disuse the traffic or the

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potation of brandy, but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence mighteffectually restrain us. The candidate my party votes for is not to betrusted with a dollar, but he will be honest in the Senate, for we canbring public opinion to bear on him. Thus concert was the specificin all cases. But concert is neither better nor worse, neither morenor less potent than individual force. All the men in the world can-not make a statue walk and speak, cannot make a drop of blood, ora blade of grass, any more than one man can. But let there be oneman, let there be truth in two men, in ten men, then is concert forthe first time possible; because the force which moves the world is anew quality, and can never be furnished by adding whatever quan-tities of a different kind. What is the use of the concert of the falseand the disunited? There can be no concert in two, where there isno concert in one. When the individual is not individual, but isdual; when his thoughts look one way and his actions another; whenhis faith is traversed by his habits; when his will, enlightened byreason, is warped by his sense; when with one hand he rows andwith the other backs water, what concert can be?

I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire. The world isawaking to the idea of union, and these experiments show what it isthinking of. It is and will be magic. Men will live and communicate,and plough, and reap, and govern, as by added ethereal power, whenonce they are united; as in a celebrated experiment, by expirationand respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man fromthe ground by the little finger only, and without sense of weight.But this union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is tobe reached by a reverse of the methods they use. The union is onlyperfect when all the uniters are isolated. It is the union of friendswho live in different streets or towns. Each man, if he attempts tojoin himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of hisproportion; and the stricter the union the smaller and the morepitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour andplace the secret soul; he will go up and down doing the works of atrue member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be donewith concert, though no man spoke. Government will be adaman-tine without any governor. The union must be ideal in actual indi-vidualism.

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I pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in man,which the heart is preaching to us in these days, and which engagesthe more regard, from the consideration that the speculations ofone generation are the history of the next following.

In alluding just now to our system of education, I spoke of thedeadness of its details. But it is open to graver criticism than thepalsy of its members: it is a system of despair. The disease withwhich the human mind now labors is want of faith. Men do notbelieve in a power of education. We do not think we can speak todivine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all highaims. We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so manyfrivolous people who make up society, are organic, and society is ahospital of incurables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whosecompassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there,said to me that “he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches,and other public amusements go on.” I am afraid the remark is toohonest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant,“If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.” Inotice too that the ground on which eminent public servants urgethe claims of popular education is fear; ‘This country is filling upwith thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate themto keep them from our throats.’ We do not believe that any educa-tion, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will evergive depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselvesinto this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, di-version, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tonguewith languages, his body with inoffensive and comely manners. Sohave we cunningly hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death wecannot avert. Is it strange that society should be devoured by a se-cret melancholy which breaks through all its smiles and all its gay-ety and games?

But even one step farther our infidelity has gone. It appears thatsome doubt is felt by good and wise men whether really the happi-ness and probity of men is increased by the culture of the mind inthose disciplines to which we give the name of education. Unhap-pily too the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who havetried these methods. In their experience the scholar was not raised

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by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them toselfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turn-ing his gifts to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance andgrowth. It was found that the intellect could be independently devel-oped, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can beinvigorated, and the result was monstrous. A canine appetite for knowl-edge was generated, which must still be fed but was never satisfied,and this knowledge, not being directed on action, never took thecharacter of substantial, humane truth, blessing those whom it en-tered. It gave the scholar certain powers of expression, the power ofspeech, the power of poetry, of literary art, but it did not bring him topeace or to beneficence.

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strangethat society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief. Whatremedy? Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to ahigher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there,the whole aspect of things changes. I resist the skepticism of oureducation and of our educated men. I do not believe that the differ-ences of opinion and character in men are organic. I do not recog-nize, beside the class of the good and the wise, a permanent class ofskeptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malignants, or of material-ists. I do not believe in two classes. You remember the story of thepoor woman who importuned King Philip of Macedon to grant herjustice, which Philip refused: the woman exclaimed, “I appeal:” theking, astonished, asked to whom she appealed: the woman replied,“From Philip drunk to Philip sober.” The text will suit me verywell. I believe not in two classes of men, but in man in two moods,in Philip drunk and Philip sober. I think, according to the good-hearted word of Plato, “Unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth.”Iron conservative, miser, or thief, no man is but by a supposed ne-cessity which he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight. Thesoul lets no man go without some visitations and holydays of a di-viner presence. It would be easy to show, by a narrow scanning ofany man’s biography, that we are not so wedded to our paltry per-formances of every kind but that every man has at intervals thegrace to scorn his performances, in comparing them with his beliefof what he should do; —that he puts himself on the side of his

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enemies, listening gladly to what they say of him, and accusing him-self of the same things.

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which de-grades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short.Its own idea it never executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, the Doriccolumn, the Roman arch, the Gothic minster, the German anthem,when they are ended, the master casts behind him. How sinks thesong in the waves of melody which the universe pours over his soul!Before that gracious Infinite out of which he drew these few strokes,how mean they look, though the praises of the world attend them.From the triumphs of his art he turns with desire to this greaterdefeat. Let those admire who will. With silent joy he sees himself tobe capable of a beauty that eclipses all which his hands have done;all which human hands have ever done.

Well, we are all the children of genius, the children of virtue,—and feel their inspirations in our happier hours. Is not every mansometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when theyare least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are con-servatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they aresick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their con-science has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they readpoetry, they are radicals. In the circle of the rankest tories that couldbe collected in England, Old or New, let a powerful and stimulatingintellect, a man of great heart and mind, act on them, and veryquickly these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly influ-ence, these hopeless will begin to hope, these haters will begin tolove, these immovable statues will begin to spin and revolve. I can-not help recalling the fine anecdote which Warton relates of BishopBerkeley, when he was preparing to leave England with his plan ofplanting the gospel among the American savages. “Lord Bathursttold me that the members of the Scriblerus club being met at hishouse at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also his guest,on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to the manylively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, anddisplayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force ofeloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and, aftersome pause, rose up all together with earnestness, exclaiming, ‘Let

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us set out with him immediately.’” Men in all ways are better thanthey seem. They like flattery for the moment, but they know thetruth for their own. It is a foolish cowardice which keeps us fromtrusting them and speaking to them rude truth. They resent yourhonesty for an instant, they will thank you for it always. What is itwe heartily wish of each other? Is it to be pleased and flattered? No,but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsenseof all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and phantoms. Weare weary of gliding ghostlike through the world, which is itself soslight and unreal. We crave a sense of reality, though it come instrokes of pain. I explain so,—by this manlike love of truth,—thoseexcesses and errors into which souls of great vigor, but not equalinsight, often fall. They feel the poverty at the bottom of all theseeming affluence of the world. They know the speed with whichthey come straight through the thin masquerade, and conceive adisgust at the indigence of nature: Rousseau, Mirabeau, Charles Fox,Napoleon, Byron, —and I could easily add names nearer home, ofraging riders, who drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of liv-ing to forget its illusion: they would know the worst, and tread thefloors of hell. The heroes of ancient and modern fame, Cimon,Themistocles, Alcibiades, Alexander, Caesar, have treated life andfortune as a game to be well and skilfully played, but the stake notto be so valued but that any time it could be held as a trifle light asair, and thrown up. Caesar, just before the battle of Pharsalia, dis-courses with the Egyptian priest concerning the fountains of theNile, and offers to quit the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, if hewill show him those mysterious sources.

The same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations, in thepreference, namely, which each man gives to the society of superiorsover that of his equals. All that a man has will he give for rightrelations with his mates. All that he has will he give for an erectdemeanor in every company and on each occasion. He aims at suchthings as his neighbors prize, and gives his days and nights, his tal-ents and his heart, to strike a good stroke, to acquit himself in allmen’s sight as a man. The consideration of an eminent citizen, of anoted merchant, of a man of mark in his profession; a naval andmilitary honor, a general’s commission, a marshal’s baton, a ducal

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coronet, the laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, the acknowl-edgment of eminent merit, —have this lustre for each candidatethat they enable him to walk erect and unashamed in the presenceof some persons before whom he felt himself inferior. Having raisedhimself to this rank, having established his equality with class afterclass of those with whom he would live well, he still finds certainothers before whom he cannot possess himself, because they havesomewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer, which extortshomage of him. Is his ambition pure? then will his laurels and hispossessions seem worthless: instead of avoiding these men who makehis fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him and seek their societyonly, woo and embrace this his humiliation and mortification, untilhe shall know why his eye sinks, his voice is husky, and his brillianttalents are paralyzed in this presence. He is sure that the soul whichgives the lie to all things will tell none. His constitution will notmislead him. If it cannot carry itself as it ought, high andunmatchable in the presence of any man; if the secret oracles whosewhisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life do here with-draw and accompany him no longer,—it is time to undervalue whathe has valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, andwith Caesar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra,and say, “All these will I relinquish, if you will show me the foun-tains of the Nile.” Dear to us are those who love us; the swift mo-ments we spend with them are a compensation for a great deal ofmisery; they enlarge our life;—but dearer are those who reject us asunworthy, for they add another life: they build a heaven before uswhereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powersout of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattemptedperformances.

As every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior society,wishes to be convicted of his error and to come to himself,—so hewishes that the same healing should not stop in his thought, butshould penetrate his will or active power. The selfish man suffersmore from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness with-holds some important benefit. What he most wishes is to be liftedto some higher platform, that he may see beyond his present fearthe transalpine good, so that his fear, his coldness, his custom may

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be broken up like fragments of ice, melted and carried away in thegreat stream of good will. Do you ask my aid? I also wish to be abenefactor. I wish more to be a benefactor and servant than youwish to be served by me; and surely the greatest good fortune thatcould befall me is precisely to be so moved by you that I should say,‘Take me and all mine, and use me and mine freely to your ends’!for I could not say it otherwise than because a great enlargementhad come to my heart and mind, which made me superior to myfortunes. Here we are paralyzed with fear; we hold on to our littleproperties, house and land, office and money, for the bread whichthey have in our experience yielded us, although we confess that ourbeing does not flow through them. We desire to be made great; wedesire to be touched with that fire which shall command this ice tostream, and make our existence a benefit. If therefore we start ob-jections to your project, O friend of the slave, or friend of the poor,or of the race, understand well that it is because we wish to driveyou to drive us into your measures. We wish to hear ourselves con-futed. We are haunted with a belief that you have a secret which itwould highliest advantage us to learn, and we would force you toimpart it to us, though it should bring us to prison, or to worseextremity.

Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover oftruth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The enter-tainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy andprofanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could itbe received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.It has had a name to live in some dogmatic theology, but each man’sinnocence and his real liking of his neighbor have kept it a deadletter. I remember standing at the polls one day when the anger ofthe political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the inde-pendent electors, and a good man at my side, looking on the people,remarked, “I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on ei-ther side, mean to vote right.” I suppose considerate observers, look-ing at the masses of men in their blameless and in their equivocalactions, will assent, that in spite of selfishness and frivolity, the gen-eral purpose in the great number of persons is fidelity. The reasonwhy any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your

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benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer oftruth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you haveit not. You have not given him the authentic sign.

If it were worth while to run into details this general doctrine ofthe latent but ever soliciting Spirit, it would be easy to adduce illus-tration in particulars of a man’s equality to the Church, of his equal-ity to the State, and of his equality to every other man. It is yet in allmen’s memory that, a few years ago, the liberal churches complainedthat the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. Ithink the complaint was confession: a religious church would notcomplain. A religious man like Behmen, Fox, or Swedenborg is notirritated by wanting the sanction of the Church, but the Churchfeels the accusation of his presence and belief.

It only needs that a just man should walk in our streets to make itappear how pitiful and inartificial a contrivance is our legislation.The man whose part is taken and who does not wait for society inanything, has a power which society cannot choose but feel. Thefamiliar experiment called the hydrostatic paradox, in which a cap-illary column of water balances the ocean, is a symbol of the rela-tion of one man to the whole family of men. The wise Dandamis,on hearing the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes read,“judged them to be great men every way, excepting, that they weretoo much subjected to the reverence of the laws, which to secondand authorize, true virtue must abate very much of its original vigor.”

And as a man is equal to the Church and equal to the State, so heis equal to every other man. The disparities of power in men aresuperficial; and all frank and searching conversation, in which aman lays himself open to his brother, apprises each of their radicalunity. When two persons sit and converse in a thoroughly goodunderstanding, the remark is sure to be made, See how we havedisputed about words! Let a clear, apprehensive mind, such as everyman knows among his friends, converse with the most command-ing poetic genius, I think it would appear that there was no inequal-ity such as men fancy, between them; that a perfect understanding,a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished differences; and the poetwould confess that his creative imagination gave him no deep ad-vantage, but only the superficial one that he could express himself

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and the other could not; that his advantage was a knack, whichmight impose on indolent men but could not impose on lovers oftruth; for they know the tax of talent, or what a price of greatnessthe power of expression too often pays. I believe it is the convictionof the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does notmuch vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in somefaculty. His want of skill in other directions has added to his fitnessfor his own work. Each seems to have some compensation yieldedto him by his infirmity, and every hindrance operates as a concen-tration of his force.

These and the like experiences intimate that man stands in strictconnection with a higher fact never yet manifested. There is powerover and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications.We seek to say thus and so, and over our head some spirit sits whichcontradicts what we say. We would persuade our fellow to this orthat; another self within our eyes dissuades him. That which wekeep back, this reveals. In vain we compose our faces and our words;it holds uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and heanswers civilly to us, but believes the spirit. We exclaim, ‘There’s atraitor in the house!’ but at last it appears that he is the true man,and I am the traitor. This open channel to the highest life is the firstand last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet so tenacious, that although Ihave never expressed the truth, and although I have never heard theexpression of it from any other, I know that the whole truth is herefor me. What if I cannot answer your questions? I am not painedthat I cannot frame a reply to the question, What is the operationwe call Providence? There lies the unspoken thing, present, omni-present. Every time we converse we seek to translate it into speech,but whether we hit or whether we miss, we have the fact. Everydiscourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequencethat we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for con-templation forever.

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make themselvesgood in time, the man who shall be born, whose advent men andevents prepare and foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connectionwith a higher life, with the man within man; shall destroy distrustby his trust, shall use his native but forgotten methods, shall not

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take counsel of flesh and blood, but shall rely on the Law alive andbeautiful which works over our heads and under our feet. Pitiless, itavails itself of our success when we obey it, and of our ruin when wecontravene it. Men are all secret believers in it, else the word justicewould have no meaning: they believe that the best is the true; thatright is done at last; or chaos would come. It rewards actions aftertheir nature, and not after the design of the agent. ‘Work,’ it saith toman, ‘in every hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, andthou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse,planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done tothine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well asto the thought: no matter how often defeated, you are born to vic-tory. The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.’

As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond surfaces, and to seehow this high will prevails without an exception or an interval, hesettles himself into serenity. He can already rely on the laws of grav-ity, that every stone will fall where it is due; the good globe is faith-ful, and carries us securely through the celestial spaces, anxious orresigned, we need not interfere to help it on: and he will learn oneday the mild lesson they teach, that our own orbit is all our task,and we need not assist the administration of the universe. Do notbe so impatient to set the town right concerning the unfoundedpretensions and the false reputation of certain men of standing. Theyare laboring harder to set the town right concerning themselves,and will certainly succeed. Suppress for a few days your criticism onthe insufficiency of this or that teacher or experimenter, and he willhave demonstrated his insufficiency to all men’s eyes. In like man-ner, let a man fall into the divine circuits, and he is enlarged. Obe-dience to his genius is the only liberating influence. We wish toescape from subjection and a sense of inferiority, and we make self-denying ordinances, we drink water, we eat grass, we refuse the laws,we go to jail: it is all in vain; only by obedience to his genius, onlyby the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angelseem to arise before a man and lead him by the hand out of all thewards of the prison.

That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as weare, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our

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aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which when it isvaliantly conducted will yield the imagination a higher joy than anyfiction. All around us what powers are wrapped up under the coarsemattings of custom, and all wonder prevented. It is so wonderful toour neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it doesnot occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see withthem; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the un-wise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders atthe usual. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust thePower by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen tothe Soul that has guided it so gently and taught it so much, securethat the future will be worthy of the past?

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