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LITERARY ETHICS

BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

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LITERARY ETHICS.

AN ORATION DELIVERED TIEFORE THE LIT- ERARY SOCIETIES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, JULY 24, 1S3S.

Gentlemen : The invitation to address you this day, with which you have honored me, was a call so •welcome, that I made haste to obey it. A summons ■to celebrate with scholars a literary festival is so al- luring to me as to overcome the doubts I might well entertain of my ability to bring you any thought worthy of your attention. I have reached the middle age of man ; yet I believe I am not less glad or san- guine at the meeting of scholars than when, a boy, I first saw the graduates of my own college assembled at their anniversary. Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men's aspirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind ; feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages. And because the scholar, by every thought he thinks, extends his dominion into the general mind of men, he is not one, but many. The few scholars in each country whose genius I

2 LITERARY ETHICS.

know seem to me not individuals, but societies ; and when events occur of great import I count over these representatives of opinion, whom they will affect, as if I were counting nations. And even if his results were incommunicable, if they abode in his own spirit, the intellect hath somewhat so sacred in its possessions, that the fact of his existence and pursuits would be a happy omen.

Meantime I know that a very different estimate of the scholar's profession prevails in this countr}', and the importunity with which society presses its claim upon young men tends to pervert the views of the youth in respect to the culture of the intellect. Hence the historical failure on which Europe and America have so freely commented. This country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expec- tation of mankind. Men looked, when all feudal straps and bandages were snapped asunder, that Nature, too long the mother of dwarfs, should reim- burse itself by a brood of Titans, who should laugh and leap in the continent, and run up the mountains of the West with the errand of genius and of love. But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpt- ure, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new, but derivative ; a vase of fair outline, but empty, — which whoso sees may fill with what wit and charac- ter is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit light- nings on all beholders.

I will not lose myself in the desultory questions, what are the limitations, and what the causes of the

LITERARY ETHICS. 3

fact. It suffices me to say, in general, that the diffi- dence of mankind in the soul has crept over the American mind ; that men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought.

Yet in every sane hour the service of thought ap- pears reasonable, the despotism of the senses insane. The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant ; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is a realist, and con- verses with things. For the scholar is the student of the world ; and of what worth the world is, and with what emphasis it accosts the soul of man, such is the worth, such the call of the scholar.

The want of the times and the propriety of this anniversary concur to draw attention to the doctnne of Literary Ethics. What I have to say on that doc- trine distributes itself under the topics of the re- sources, the subject, and the discipline of the scholar.

I. The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect. The resources of the scholar are coextensive with nature and truth, yet can never be his, unless claimed by him with an equal greatness of mind. He cannot know them until he has beheld with awe the infinitude and impersonality of the intellectual power. When he has seen that it is not his, nor any man's, but that it is the Soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfiilly hold

4 LITERARY ETHICS.

all things subordinate and answerable to it. A divine pilgrim in nature, all things attend his steps. Over him stream the flying constellations ; over him streams Time, as they, scarcely divided into months and years. He inhales the year as a vapor: its fragrant midsummer breath, its sparkling January heaven. And so pass into his mind, in bright trans- figuration, the grand events of history, to take a new order and scale from him. He is the world ; and the epochs and heroes of chronology are pictorial images, in which his thoughts are told. There is no event but sprung somewhere from the soul of man ; and therefore there is none but the soul of man can interpret. Every presentiment of the mind is exe- cuted somewhere in a gigantic fact. What else is Greece, Rome, England, France, St. Helena? What else are churches, literatures, and empires? The new man must feel that he is new, and has not come into the world mortgaged to the opinions and usages of Europe, and Asia, and Egypt. The sense of spiritual independence is like the lovely varnish of the dew, whereby the old, hard, peaked earth, and its old self-same productions, are made new every morning, and shining with the last touch of the artist's hand. A false humility, a complaisance to reigning schools, or to the wisdom of antiquity, must not defraud me of supreme possession of this hour. If any person have less love of liberty, and less jeal- ousy to guard his integrity, shall he therefore dictate to you and me ? Say to such doctors, We are thank- ful to you, as we are to history, to the pyramids, and the authors ; but now our day is come ; we have

LITERARY ETHICS.

5

been born out of the eternal silence ; and now will we live, — live for ourselves, — and not as the pall- bearers of a funeral, but as the upholders and creators of our age ; and neither Greece nor Rome, nor the three Unities of Aristotle, nor the three Kings of Cologne, nor the College of the Sorbonne, nor the "Edinburgh Review," is to command any longer. Now that we are here, we will put our own interpreta- tion on things, andour own things for interpretation. Please himself with complaisance who will, — for me, things must take my scale, not I theirs.. I will say with the warlike king: — "God gave me this crown, and the whole world shall not take it away."

The whole value of histor\', of biography, is to in- crease my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. This is the moral of the Plutarchs, the Cudworths, the Tennemanns, who give us the story of men or of opinions. Any history of philosophy fortifies my faith, by showing me that what high dogmas I had supposed were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture, and only now possible to some recent Kant or Fichte, were the prompt im- provisations of the earliest inquirers, — of Parmen- ides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes. In view of these students, the soul seems to whisper: — "There is a better way than this indolent learning of another. Leave me alone ; do not teach me out of Leibnitz or Schelling, and I shall find it all out myself."

Still more do we owe to biography the fortification of our hope. If you would know the power of character, see how much you would impoverish the world if you could take clean out of history the

6 LITERARY ETHICS.

lives of Milton, Sliakspeare, and Plato, — these three, — and cause them not to be. See you not how much less the power of man would be? I console myself in the poverty of my thouglits, in the paucity of great men, in the malignity and dulness of the nations, by falling back on these sublime recollec- tions, and seeing what the prolific soul could beget on actual nature ; seeing that Plato was, and Shakspeare, and Milton, — three irrefragable facts. Then I dare ; I also will essay to be. The humblest, the most hopeless, in view of these radiant facts, may now theorize and hope. In spite of all the rueful abortions that squeak and gibber in the street, ia spite of slumber and guilt, in spite of the army, the bar-room, and the jail, have been these glorious manifestations of the mind ; and I will thank my great brothers so truly for the admonition of their being, as to endeavor also to be just and brave, to asisire and to speak. Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and the immortal bards of philosophy, — that which they have written out with patient courage, makes me bold. No more will I dismiss, with haste, the visions which flash and sparkle across my sky ; but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, brood on them, and draw out of the past, genuine life for the present hour.

To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and provocation, you must come to know that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. The impoverislnng pliilosophy of ages has laid stress on the distinctions of the individual, and not ou the

LITERARY ETHICS. 7

universal attributes of man. The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see that it is only a projection of his own soul which he admires. In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth loiters and mourns. With inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read the story of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has brought home to the surrounding woods the faint roar of cannonades in the ^Milanese, and marches in Germany. He is curious concerning that man's day. What filled it? the crowded orders, the stern deci- sions, the foreign despatches, the Castilian etiquette? The soul answers, Behold his day here ! In the sighing of these woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these northern mountains ; in the workmen, the boys, the maidens, you meet, — in the hopes of the morning, the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the afternoon ; in the disquieting comparisons ; in the regrets at want of vigor ; in the great idea, and the puny execution, — behold Charles the Fifth's day; an- other, yet the same ; behold Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's, Scipio's, Pericles' day, — day of all that are bom of women. The difference of cir- cumstance is merely costume. I am tasting the self- same life, its sweetness, its greatness, its pain,, which I so admire in other men. Do not foolishly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past what it can^ not tell, — the details of that nature, of that day, called Byron, or Burke ; but ask it of the envelop- ing Now ; the more quaintly you inspect its eva- nescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual

8 LITERARY ETHICS.

causes, its astounding whole, so much the more you master the biography of this hero and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books.

An intimation of these broad rights is familiar in tlia sense of injury which men feel in the assumption of any man to limit their possible progress. We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance. Say to the man of letters that he cannot paint a Transfiguration, or build a steamboat, or be a grand-marshal, and he will not seem to himself depreciated. But deny to him any quality of literary or metaphysical power, and he is piqued. Concede to him genius, which is a sort of Stoical plemt/n annulling the comparative, and he, is content ; but concede him talents never so i"are, denying him genius, and he is aggrieved. What does this mean? Why, simply that the soul has assurance, by instincts and presentiments, of all power in the direction of its ray, as well as of the special skills it has already acquired.

In order to a knowledge of the resources of the scholar, we must not rest in the use of slender accomplishments, — of faculties to do this and that other feat with words ; but we must pay our vows ta the highest power, and pass, if it be possible, by assiduous love and watching, into the visions of absolute truth. The growth of the intellect is strictly analogous in all individuals. It is larger reception. Able men, in general, have good dispo- sitions and a respect for justice ; because an able man is nothing else than a good, free, vascular or-

LTTERARY ETHICS. 9

ganization, wliereinto the universal spirit freel-y flows ; so that his fund of justice is not only vast, but in- finite. All men, in the abstract, are just and good ; what hinders them, in the particular, is the momen- tary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self seems to be a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse to the exclusion of the law of universal being. The hero is great by means of the predominance of the universal nature ; he has only to open his mouth, and it speaks ; he has only to be forced to act, and it acts. All men catch the word or embrace the deed with the heart, for it is verily theirs as much as his ; but in them this disease of an excess of organization cheats them of equal issues. Nothing is more simple than greatness ; indeed, to be simple is to be great. The vision of genius comes by re- nouncing the too officious activity of the understand- ing, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. Out of this must all that is alive and genial in thought go. Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid. Observe the phenomenon of extempore debate. A man of cultivated mind, but resen-ed habits, sitting silent, admires the miracle of free, impassioned, picturesque speech, in the man address- ing an assembly, — a state of being and power, how unlike his own ! Presently his own emotion rises to

lO LITERARY ETHICS.

his lips and overflows in speecli. He must also rise and say somewhat. Once embarked, once having overcome the novelty of the situation, he finds it just as easy and natural to speak — to speak with thoughts, with pictures, with rhythmical balance of sentences — as it was to sit silent ; for it needs not to do, but to suffer ; he only adjusts himself to the free spirit which gladly utters itself through him, and motion is as easy as rest.

II. I pass now to consider the task offered to the intellect of this country. The view I have taken of the resources of the scholar presupposes a subject as broad. We do not seem to have imagined its riches. We have not heeded the invitation it holds out. To be as good a scholar as Englishmen are, to have as much learning as our contemporaries, to have written a book that is read, satisfies us. We assume that all thought is already long ago ade- quately set down in books, all imaginations in poems ; and what we say, we only throw in as con- firmatory of this supposed complete body of litera- ture. A very shallow assumption. Say, rather, all literature is yet to be written. Poetry has scarce chanted its first song. The perpetual admonition of Nature to us is : — "The world is new, untried. Do not believe the past. I give you the universe a virgin to-day."

By Latin and English poetry we were born and bred in an oratorio of praises of Nature, — flowers, birds, mountains, sun, and moon ; yet the natural- ist of this hour finds that he knows nothing, by all

LITERARY ETJflCS. it

their poems, of any of these fine things ; that he i has conversed with the mere surface and show of 1 them all ; and of their essence, or of their history, knows nothing. Further inquiry will discover that j nobody, that not these chanting poets themselves, I knew anything sincere of these handsome natures I they so commended ; that they contented them- j selves with the passing chirp of a bird, that they saw ! one or two mornings, and listlessly looked at sunsets, and repeated idly these few glimpses in their song. But go into the forest, you shall find all new and undescribed. The screaming of th^ wild geese fly- ing by night ; the thin note of the companionable titmouse in the wnter day ; the fall of swarms of \ flies in autumn, from combats high in the air, l pattering down on the leaves like rain ; the angry i hiss of the woodbirds ; the pine throwing out its pollen for the benefit of the next century ; the tur- pentine exuding from the tree ; and, indeed, any vegetation, any animation, any and all, are alike unattempted. The man who stands on the seashore or who rambles in the woods seems to be the first man that ever stood on the shore or entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. Whilst I read the poets, I think that noth- ing new can be said about morning and evening. But when I see the daybreak, I am not reminded of these Homeric, or Shakspearian, or Aliltonic, or Chaucerian pictures. No ; but I feel perhaps the pain of an alien world, a world not yet subdued by the thought ; or I am cheered by the moist, warm, glittering, budding, melodious hour, that takes down

12 LITERARY ETHICS.

the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life and pulsation to the very horizon. That is morning, to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body, and to become as large as Nature.

The noonday darkness of the American forest, the deep, echoing, aboriginal woods, where the liv- ing columns of the oak and fir tower up from the ruins of the trees of the last millenium ; where, from year to year, the eagle and the crow see no intruder ; the pines, bearded with savage moss, yet touched with grace by the violets at their feet ; the broad, cold lowland, which forms its coat of vapor with the stillness of subterranean crystallization ; and where the traveller, amid the repulsive plants that are native in the swamp, thinks with pleasing terror of the distant town ; this beauty — haggard and desert beauty, which the sun and the moon, the snow and the rain, repaint and varj' — has never been recorded by art, yet is not indifferent to any passenger. All men are poets at heart. They serve Nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes. What mean these journeys to Niagara; these pilgrims to the White Hills? Men believe in the adaptations of . utility always ; in the mountains they may believe in the adaptations of the eye. Undoubtedly the changes of geology have a relation to the prosperous sprouting of the corn and peas in my kitchen garden ; but not less is there a relation of beauty between my soul and the dim crags of Agiocochook up there in the clouds. Every man, when this is told, hearkens with joy, and yet his own conversation with Nature is still unsung.

LITERARY ETHICS. 13

Is it otherwise with civil history? Is it not the lesson of our experience that every man, were life long enough, would ^vrite history for himself? What else do these volumes of extracts and manuscript commentaries, that every scholar writes, indicate? Greek history is one thing to me ; another, to you. Since the birth of Niebuhr and Wolf, Roman and Greek History have been written anew. Since Carlyle wrote French History, we see that no history that we have is safe, but a new classifier shall give it new and more philosophical arrangement. Thu- cydides, Livy, have only provided materials. The moment a man of genius pronounces the name of the Pelasgi, of Athens, of the Etrurian, of the Roman people, we see their state under a new aspect. As in poetry and history, so in the other departments. There are few masters or none. Religion is yet to be settled on its fast foundations in the breast of man ; and politics, and philosophy, and letters, and art. As yet we have nothing but tendency and indication.

This starting, this warping of the best literary works from the adamant of nature, is especially obsen-able in philosophy. Let it take what tone of pretension it will, to this complexion must it come at last. Take, for example, the French Eclecticism, Avhich Cousin esteems so conclusive : there is an optical illusion in it. It avows great pretensions. It looks as if they had all truth, in taking all the sys- tems, and had nothing to do but to sift and wash and strain, and the gold and diamonds would remain in the last colander. But Truth is such a flyaway.

14

LITEJ^ARY ETHICS.

such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light. Shut the shutters never so quick, to keep all the light in, it is all in vain ; it is gone before you can cry, Hold. And so it happens with our philosophy. Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you nothing; for Truth will not be compelled in any mechanical manner. But the first observation you make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new view of Nature and of man, that, like a menstruum, shall dissolve all theories in it ; shall take up Greece, Rome, Stoicism, Eclecticism, and what not, as mere data and food for analysis, and dispose of your world-containing sys- tem as a very little unit. A profound thought any- where classifies all things ; a profound thought will lift Olympus. The book of philosophy is only a fact, and no more inspiring fact than another, and no less ; but a wise man will never esteem it anything final and transcending. Go and talk with a man of genius, and the first word he utters sets all your so-called knowledge afloat and at large. Then Plato, Bacon, Kant, and the Eclectic Cousin condescend instantly to be men and mere facts.

I by no means aim in these remarks to disparage the merit of these or of any existing compositions ; I only say that any particular portraiture does not in any manner exclude or forestall a new attempt, but, when considered by the soul, warps and shrinks away. The inundation of the spirit sweeps away before it all our little architecture of wit and memory, as straws and straw-huts before the torrent. Works

LITERARY ETHICS. 15

of the intellect are great only by comparison with each Othen "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley" compared with "Castle RadcHffe" and the Porter novels; but noth- ing is great — not mighty Homer and Milton — be- side the infinite Reason. It carries them away as a flood. They are as a sleep.

Thus is justice done to each generation and indi- vidual, — wisdom teaching man that he shall not hate, or fear, or mimic his ancestors ; that he shall not bewail himself, as if the world was old, and thought was spent, and he was born into the dotage of things ; for, by virtue of the Deity, thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new sub- ject with countless relations.

III. Ha\-ing thus spoken of the resources and the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith pro- ceeds also the rule of his ambition and life. Let him know that the world is his, but he must possess it by putting himself into harmony with the constitution of things. He must be a solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable soul.

He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must liave his glees and his glooms alone. His own estimate must be measure enough, his own praise reward enough for him. And why must the student be solitary and silent? That he may become ac- quainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely place : his heart is in the market ; he does not see ; he does not hear ; he does not think.

1 6 LITERARY ETHICS.

But go cherish your soul ; expel companions ; set your habits to a life of solitude, — then will the facul- ties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers ; you will have results which, when you meet your fellow-men, you can communicate and they will gladly receive. Do not go into solitude only that you may presently come into public. Such solitude denies itself; is public and stale. The public can get public experience, but they wish the scholar to replace to them those private, sincere, divine experiences, of which they have been de- frauded by dwelling in the street. It is the noble, manlike, just thought which is the superiority de- manded of you, and not crowds but solitude confers this elevation. Not insulation of place, but indepen- dence of spirit is essential ; and it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock are a sort of mechanical aids to this that they are of value. Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. The poets who have lived in cities have been hermits still. Inspiration makes solitude any- where. Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, De Stael dwell in crowds, it may be, but the instant thought comes, the crowd grows dim to their eye ; their eye fixes on the horizon, on vacant space ; they forget the bystanders ; they spurn personal relations ; they deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. They are alone with the mind.

Of course, I would not have any superstition about solitude. Let the youth study tlie uses of solitude and of society. Let him use both, not serve either. The reason why an ingenious soul shuns society is

LITERARY ETHICS. 17

to the end of finding society. It repudiates the false out of love of the true. You can very soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. Its foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. Then accept the hint of shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which true nature gives you, and retire and hide ; lock the door ; shut the shutters ; then welcome falls the im- prisoning rain, dear hermitage of Nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. Digest and correct the past experience, and blend it with the new and divine life.

You will pardon me, gentlemen, if I say I think that we have need of a more rigorous scholastic rule ; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the hardi- hood and devotion of the scholar himself can en- force. We live in the sun and on the surface, a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can great- ness ever grow? Come, now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness the sublimities of the moral constitution. How mean to go blazing, a gaudy butterfly, in fashionable or political saloons, the fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a topic for

i8 LITERARY ETHICS.

newspapers, a piece of the street, and forfeiting the real prerogative of the russet coat, the privacy, and the true and warm heart of the citizen !

Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. A mistake of the main end to which they labor is in- cident to litarary men, who, dealing with the organ of language, the subtlest, strongest, and longest- lived of man's creations, and only fitly used as the weapon of thought and of justice, learn to enjoy the pride of playing with this splendid engine, but rob it of its almightiness by failing to work with it. Extri- cating themselves from the tasks of the world, the world revenges itself by exposing, at every turn, the folly of these incomplete, pedantic, useless, ghostly creatures. The scholar will feel that the richest romance, the noblest fiction that was ever woven, the heart and soul of beauty, lies enclosed in human life. Itself of surpassing value, it is also the ricliest material for his creations. How shall he know its secrets of tenderness, of terror, of will, and of fate? How can he catch and keep the strain of upper music that peals from it? Its laws are concealed under the details of daily action. All action is an experi- ment upon them. He must bear his share of the common load. He must work with men in houses, and not with their names in books. His needs, appetites, talents, affections, accomplishments, are keys that open to him the beautiful museum of human life. Why should he read it as an Arabian tale, and not know, in his own beating bosom, its sweet and smart? Out of love and hatred, out of

LITERARY ETHICS. 19

earnings, and borrowings, and landings, and losses; out of sickness and pain ; out of wooing and worship- ping ; out of travelling, and voting, and watching, and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, — comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws. Let him not slur his lesson ; let him learn it by heart. Let him endeavor exactly, bravely, and cheerfully to solve the problem of that life which is set before him. And this by punctual action, and not by promises or dreams. Believing, as in God, in the presence and favor of the grandest influences, let him deser\'e that favor, and learn how to receive and use it, by fidelity also to the lower observances.

This lesson is taught with emphasis in the life of the great actor of this age, and affords the explana- tion of his success. Bonaparte represents truly a great recent revolution, which we in this country, please God, shall carry to its farthest consummation. Not the least instructive passage in modem history seems to me a trait of Napoleon, exhibited to the English when he became their prisoner. On coming on board the " Bellerophon," a file of English sol- diers drawn up on deck gave him a military salute. Napoleon observ'ed that their manner of handling their arms differed from the French exercise, and, putting aside the guns of those nearest him, walked up to a soldier, took his gun, and himself went through the motion in the French mode. The Eng- lish officers and men looked on with astonishment, and inquired if such familiarity was usual with the Emperor.

In this instance, as always, that man, with what-

2 o LITER A R Y E THICS.

ever defects or vices, represented laerformance in lieu of pretension. Feudalism and Orientalism had long enough thought it majestic to do nothing ; the mod- ern majesty consists in work. He belonged to a class, fast growing in the world, who think that what a man can do is his greatest ornament, and that he always consults his dignity by doing it. He was not a be- liever in luck ; he had a faith, like sight, in the ap- plication of means to ends. Means to ends is the motto of all his behavior. He believed that the great captains of antiquity performed their exploits only by correct combinations, and by justly comparing the re- lation between means and consequences, efforts and obstacles. The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius. But Napoleon, thus faithful to facts, had also this crown- ing merit, that, whilst he believed in number and weight, and omitted no j^art of prudence, he believed also in the freedom aad quite incalculable force of the soul. A man of infinite caution, he neglected never the least particular of preparation, of patient adaptation ; yet nevertheless he had a sublime confi- dence, as in his all, in the sallies of the courage, and the faith in his destiny, which, at the right moment, repaired all losses, and demolished cavalry, infantry, king, and kaiser as with irresistible thunderbolts. As they say the bough of tlie tree has the character of the leaf, and the whole tree of the bough, so it is curious to remark, Bonaparte's army partook of this double strength of the captain ; for whilst strictly supplied in all its appointments, and everything ex- pected from the valor and discipline of every platoon.

LITERARY ETHICS. 2i

3n flank and centre, yet always remained his total trust in thie prodigious revolutions of fortune, which his reserved Imperial Guard were capable of working, if, in all else, the day was lost. Here he was sub- lime. He no longer calculated the chance of the cannon-ball. He was faithful to tactics to the utter- most ; and when all tactics had come to an end, then he dilated, and availed himself of the mighty saltations of the most formidable soldiers in nature.

Let the scholar appreciate this combination of gifts, •which, applied to better purpose, make true wdsdom. He is a revealer of things. Let him first learn the things. Let him not, too eager to grasp some badge of reward, omit the work to be done. Let him know that, though the success of the market is in the re- ward, true success is the doing ; that, in the private obedience to his mind ; in the sedulous inquiry, day after day, year after year, to know how the thing stands; in the use of all means, and most in the rev- erence of the humble commerce and humble needs of life, — to hearken what they say, and so, by mut- ual reaction of thought and life, to make thought solid and life wise ; and in a contempt for the gab- ble of to-day's opinions, the secret of the world is to be learned, and the skill truly to unfold it is acquired. Or, lather, is it not that, by this discipline, the usurpation of the senses is overcome, and the lower faculties of man are subdued to docility ; through which, as an unobstructed channel, the soul now easily and gladly flows ?

The good scholar will not refuse to bear the yoke in his youth ; to know, if he can, the uttermost secret

22 LITERARY ETHICS.

of toil and endurance ; to make his own hands acquainted with the soil by which he is fed, and the sweat that goes before comfort and luxury. Let him pay his tithe, and serv-e the world as a true and noble man ; never forgetting to worship the immortal divin- ities, who whisper to the poet, and make him the utterer of melodies that pierce the ear of eternal time. If he have this twofold goodness — the drill and the inspiration — then he has health ; then he is a ■whole, and not a fragment ; and the perfection of his endowment will appear in his compositions. Indeed, this twofold merit characterizes ever the productions of great masters. The man of genius should occupy the whole space between God or pure mind, and the multitude of uneducated men. He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one side ; and he must pene- trate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. From one he must draw his strength ; to the other he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the real ; the other, to the apparent. At one pole is Reason; at the other, Commonsense. If he be defective at either extreme of the scale, his philos- ophy will seem low and utilitarian ; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life.

The student, as we all along insist, is great only by being passive to the superincumbent spirit. Let this faith, then, dictate all his action. Snares and bribes abound to mislead him ; let him be true never- theless. His success has its perils too. There is somewhat inconvenient and injurious in his position. They whom his thoughts have entertained or inflamed, seek him before yet they have learned the hard con-

LITERARY ETHICS. 23

ditions of thought. They seek him, that he may turn his lamp on the dark riddles whose solution they think is inscribed on the walls of their being. They find that he is a poor, ignorant man, in a white-seamed, rusty coat, like themselves, nowise emitting a continuous stream of light, but now and then a jet of luminous thought, followed by total darkness ; moreover, that he cannot make of his infrequent illumination a portable taper to carry whither he would, and explain now this dark riddle, now that. Sorrow ensues. The scholar regrets to damp the hope of ingenuous boys ; and the youth has lost a star out of his new flaming firmament. Hence the temptation to the scholar to mystify ; to hear the question ; to sit upon it ; to make an answer of words, in lack of the oracle of things. Not the less let him be cold and true, and wait in patience, knowing that truth can make even silence eloquent and memorable. Truth shall be policy enough for him. Let him open his breast to all honest inquiry, and be an artist superior to tricks of art. Show frankly, as a saint would do, your experience, methods, tools, and means. Welcome all comers to the freest use of the same. And out of this superior frankness and charity you shall learn higher secrets of your nature, which gods will bend and aid you to communicate.

If, -with a high trust, he can thus submit himself, he will find that ample returns are poured into his bosom, out of what seemed hours of obstruction and loss. Let him not grieve too much on account of unfit associates. When he sees how much thought he owes to the disagreeable antagonism of various

24 LITERARY ETHICS.

persons who pass and cross him, he can easily thimc that in a society of perfect sympathy, no word, no act, no record, would be. He will learn that it is not much matter what he reads, what he does. Be a scholar, and he shall have the scholar's part of everything. As, in the counting-room, the mer- chant cares little whether the cargo be hides or barilla ; the transaction, a letter of credit or a transfer of stocks ; be it what it may, his commis- sion comes gently out of it ; so you shall get your lesson out of the hour, and the object, whether it be a concentrated or a wasteful employment, even in reading a dull book, or working off a stint of mechanical day labor, which your necessities or the necessities of others impose.

Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholar's place, and hope, because I thought that, standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this college, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admon- ished of those primary duties of the intellect, whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. • ' What is this Truth you seek ? what is this Beauty ? " men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say: — "As others do, so will I ; I renounce, I am sorry

LITERARY ETHICS. 25

for it, my early visions ; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go until a more convenient season," — then dies the man in you ; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history ; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domi- neering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science ; and it is the office and right of the intellect to make and not take its estimate. Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. Forewarned that the vice of the times and the country is an excessive pretension, let us seek the shade, and find wisdom in neglect. Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of per- petual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept an- other's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barnT Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's pos- sessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

You will not fear that I am enjoining too stern an asceticism. Ask not, Of what use is a scholarship

26 LITERARY ETHICS.

that systematically retreats? or, Who is the better for the philosopher who conceals his accomplish- ments, and hides his thoughts from the waiting world? Hides his thoughts! Hide the sun and moon. Thought is all light, and publishes itself to the universe. It will speak, though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will , flow out of your actions, your manners, and your face. It will bring you friendships. It will impledge you to truth by the love and expectation of generous minds. By virtue of the laws of that Nature, which is one and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven.

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