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Ralph Waldo Emereon.

LITERARY ETHICS

BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

r-

V O 1 ^

u

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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