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essays: second series

BEING VOLUME III.

OF

EMERSON'S COMPLETE WORKS

ESSAYS

BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

SECOND SERIES

ii^etD anH Eebtsicli 6tittton

BOSTON

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street

®{)e Hiticrsitre Pres";^, Camfcritioe
1888

' ^ ^9.

Copyright, 1856 and 1876,
Bt RALPH WALDO LMEHSON,

Copyright, 1883,
Bt EDWAUD W. EMERSON.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Electrotjped ood Priuted by U. 0. Houghton & Co.

CONTENTS.
>

PAGE

I. The Poet 7

n. Experience 47

III. Character 87

IV. Manners 115

V. Gifts 151

VI. Nature 161

VII. Politics 189

VIII. Nominalist and Eealist 213

New England Reformers. Lecture at Amory Hall . 237

THE POET.

A moody child and wildly "wise

Pursued the game with joyful eyes,

Which chose, like meteors, their way,

And rived the dark "svith private ray :

They overleapt the horizon's edge,

Searched with Apollo's privilege ;

Through man, and woman, and sea, and star

Saw the dance of nature forward far ;

Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times

Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.

01}Tnpian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,

Which always find us young,
And always keej) us so.

THE POET.

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are
often persons who have acquired some knowledge
of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an in-
clination for whatever is elegant ; but if you inquire
whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their
own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they
are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local,
as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot
to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their
knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules
and particulars, or some limited judgment of color
or form, which is exercised for amusement or for
show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doc-
trine of beauty as it lies in the minds of ovir ama-
teurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of
the instant dependence of form upon soul. There
is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We
were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan
to be carried about : but there is no accurate ad-
justment between the spirit and the organ, much

10 THE POET.

less is the latter the germination of the former. So
in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do
not believe in any essential dependence of the ma-
terial world on thought and volition. Theologians
think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual
meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a con-
tract, but they prefer to come again to the solid
ground of historical evidence ; and even the poets
are contented with a civil and conformed manner
of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a
safe distance from their own experience. But the
highest minds of the world have never ceased to
explore the double meaning, or shall I say the
quadruple or the centuple or much more manifold
meaning, of every sensuous fact ; Orpheus, Emped-
ocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swe-
denborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and
poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor
even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but chil-
dren of the fire, made of it, and only the same di-
vinity transmuted and at two or three removes,
when we know least about it. And this hidden
truth, that the fountains whence all this river of
Time and its creatures floweth are intrinsically
ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration
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 the art in tho
present time.

THE POET. 11

The breadtli of the problem is great, for the poet
is representative. He stands among partial men
for the complete man, and apprises us not of his
wealth, but of the common wealth. The young
man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly,
they are more himself than he is. They receive of
the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature
enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men,
from their belief that the poet is beholding her
shows at the same time. He is isolated among liis
contemporaries by truth and by his art, but with
this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw
all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth
and stand in need of expression. In love, in art,
in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study
to utter our painful secret. The man is only half
himself, the other half is his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published,
adequate expression is rare. I know not how it
is that we need an interpreter, but the great major-
ity of men seem to be minors, who have not yet
come into possession of their own, or mutes, who
cannot report the conversation they have had with
nature. There is no man who does not anticipate
a sujiersensual utility in the sun and stars, earth
and water. These stand and wait to render him a
peculiar service. But there is some obstruction or
some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which

12 THE POET.

does not suffer them to yield the due effect. Too
feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make
us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man
should be so much an artist that he could rei)ort in
conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in our
experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient
force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to
reach the quick and compel the reproduction of
themselves in speech. The poet is the person in
whom these powers are In balance, the man with-
out impediment, who sees and handles that which
others dream of, traverses the whole scale of expe-
rience, and Is representative of man, in virtue of
being the largest power to receive and to im-
part.

For the Universe has three children, born at
one time, which reappear under different names
in axevy system of thought, whether they 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 tmth, for the
love of good, and for the love of beauty. These
three are equal. Each is that which he is, essen-
tially, so that he cannot be surmounted or ana-
lyzed, and each of these three has the power of the
others latent in him, and his o\\'n, patent.

THE POET. 13

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents
beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the cen-
tre. For the world is not painted or adorned, but
is from the beginning beautiful ; and God has not
made some beautifid things, but Beauty is the cre-
ator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any
permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own
right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materi-
alism, which assumes that manual skill and activity
is the first merit of all men, and disparages such
as say and do not, overlooking the fact that some
men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into the
world to the end of expression, and confoimds them
with those whose pro^Tace is action but who quit it
to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as
costly and admirable to Homer as Agamemnon's
victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not
wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and
think primarily, so he writes primarily what will
and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though
primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries
and servants ; as sitters or models in the studio of
a painter, or as assistants who bring building-mate-
rials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and
whenever we are so finely organized that we can
penetrate into that region where the air is music,
we hear those primal warblings and attempt to

14 THE POET.

write them clown, but we lose ever and anon a word
or a verse and substitute something of our own,
and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more
delicate ear write down these cadences more faith-
fully, and tliese transcripts, though imperfect, be-
come the songs of the nations. For nature is as
truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable,
and must as much appear as it must be done, or be
known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent
modes of the divine energy. Words are also ac-
tions, and actions are a kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he
announces that which no man foretold. He is the
true and only doctor ; he knows and tells ; he is
the only teller of news, for he was present and privy
to the appearance which he describes. He is a be-
holder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and
causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical
talents, or of industi-y and skill in metre, but of the
true poet. I took part in a conversation the other
day concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of
subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-
box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill
and conmiand of language we coidd not sufficiently
praise. But when 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 an
eternal man. He does not stand out of our low

THE POET. 15

limitations, like a Chimborazo under tlie line, run-
ning up from a torrid base tlu-ough all the climates
of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every lat-
itude on its high and mottled sides ; but this gen-
ius is the landscape - garden of a modern house,
adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred
men and women standing and sitting in the walks
and terraces. AYe hear, through all the varied
music, the ground-tone of conventional life. Our
poets are men of talents who sing, and not the chil-
dren of music. The argument is secondary, the
finish of the verses is primary.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argu-
ment that makes a poem, — a thought so passionate
and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an ani-
mal it has an architecture of its o^\ti, and adorns
nature with a new thing. The thought and the
form are equal in the order of time, but in the or-
der of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The
poet has a new thought ; he has a whole new expe-
rience to unfold ; he will tell us how it was with
him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune.
For the experience of each new age requires a new
confession, and the world seems always waiting for
its poet, I remember when I was young how much
I was moved one morning by tidings that genius
had appeared in a youth who sat near me at table.
He had left his work and gone rambling none knew

16 rilE POET.

whither, and had written hundreds of lines, hut
couhl not tell whether that which was in him was
therein told ; he could teU nothing but that all
was changed, — man, beast, heaven, earth and sea.
How gladly we listened ! how credidous ! Society
seemed to be compromised. We sat in the aurora
of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars.
Boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had
the night before, or was much farther than that.
Kome, — what was Rome ? Plutarch and Shak-
speare were in the yellow leaf, and Homer no more
shoidd be heard of. It is much to know that po-
etry has been written this very day, under this very
roof, by your side. What ! that wonderful spirit
has not expired ! These stony moments are still
sparkling and animated ! I had fancied that the
oracles were all silent, and nature had sjDent her
fires ; and behold ! all night, from every pore, these
fine auroras have been streaming. Every one has
some interest in the advent of the poet, and no one
knows how much it may concern him. We know
that the secret of the world is profound, but who or
what shall be om- interpreter, we know not. A
mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new person,
may put the key into our hands. Of course the
value of genius to us is in the veracity of its report.
Talent may frolic and juggle ; genius realizes and
adds. IMankind in good earnest have availed so fai

THE POET. 17

in understanding themselves and their work, that
the foremost watchman on the peak announces his
news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and the
phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and the im-
erring voice of the world for that time.

All that we call sacred history attests that the
birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.
Man, never so often deceived, still watches for the
arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to a
truth imtil he has made it his own. With what
joy I begin to read a poem which I confide in as an
inspiration ! And now my chains are to be broken ;
I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in
which I live, — opaque, though they seem transpar-
ent, — and from the heaven of truth I shall see
and comprehend my relations. That will reconcile
me to life and renovate nature, to see trifles ani-
mated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing.
Life will no more be a noise ; now I shall see men
and women, and know the signs by which they may
be discerned from fools and satans. This day shall
be better than my birthday : then I became an ani-
mal ; now I am invited into the science of the real.
Such is the hope, but the fruition is postponed. Of-
tener it falls that this winged man, who will carry
me into the heaven, whirls me into mists, then leaps
and frisks about with me as it were from cloud to
cloud, still affirming that he is botmd heavenward ;

18 THE POET.

and I, being myself a novice, am slow in perceiving
tliat lie does not know the way into the heavens, and
is merely bent that I should admire his skill to rise,
like a fowl or a flying fish, a little way from the
groimd or the water ; but the all-piercing, all-feed-
ing, and ocular air of heaven that man shall never
inhabit. I tiunble down again soon into my old
nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before,
and have lost my faith in the possibility of any
guide who can lead me thither where I would be.

But, leaving these \'ictims of vanity, let us, with
new hope, observe how nature, by worthier im-
pulses, has insured the poet's fidelity to his office
of announcement and affirming, namely by the
beauty of things, which becomes a new and higher
beauty when expressed. Nature offers all her crea-
tures to him as a picture-language. Being used as
a ty[5e, a second wonderf id value appears in the ob-
ject, far better than its old value ; as the carjien-
ter's stretched cord, if you hold your ear close
enough, is musical in the breeze. " Things more
excellent than every image," says Jamblichus, " are
expressed through images." Things admit of be-
ing used as symbols because nature is a symbol, in
the whole, and in every part. Every line we can
draw in the sand has expression ; and there is no
body without its spirit or genius. All form is an
effect of character ; all condition, of the quality of

TEE POET. 19

the life ; all harmony, of health ; and for this rea-
son a perception of beauty should be sympathetic,
or proper only to the good. The beautifid rests on
the foundations of the necessary. The soul makes
the body, as the wise Spenser teaches : —

" So every spirit, as it is more piire,
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."

Here we find ourselves suddenly not in a critical
speculation but in a holy place, and should go very
warily and reverently. We stand before the secret
of the world, there where Being passes into Appear-
ance and Unity into Variety.

The Universe is the externization of the soul.
Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance
around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore
superficial. The earth and the heavenly bodies,
physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if
they were self -existent ; but these are the retinue of
that Being we have. " The mighty heaven," said
Proclus, " exhibits, in its transfigurations, clear
images of the splendor of intellectual perceptions;
being moved in conjrmction with the unapparent
periods of intellectual natures." Therefore science

20 THE POET.

always goes abreast with the just elevation of the
man, kcei)ing step with religion and metaphysics ;
or the state of science is an index of our self-knowl-
edge. Since every thing in nature answers to a
moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and
dark it is because the corresponding faculty in the
observer is not yet active.

No wonder then, if these waters be so deep, that
we hover over them with a religious regard. The
beauty of the fable proves the importance of the
sense ; to the poet, and to all others ; or, if you
please, every man is so far a poet as to be suscep-
tible of these enchantments of nature ; for all men
have the thoughts whereof the universe is the cele-
bration. I find that the fascination resides in the
symbol. Who loves nature ? Who does not ? Is
it only poets, and men of leisxtre and cultivation,
who live with her ? No ; but also hunters, farmers,
grooms, and butchers, though they express their af-
fection in their choice of life and not in their choice
of words. The \\Titer wonders what the coachman
or the hunter values in riding, in horses and dogs.
It is not superficial qualities. When you talk with
him he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His
worship is sympathetic ; he has no definitions, but
he is commanded in nature by the living power
which he feels to be there present. No imitation or
placing of these things would content him ; he loves

THE POET. 21

the earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone, and
wood, and iron. A beauty not explicable is dearer
than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It
is nature the symbol, nature certifjang the super-
natural, body overflowed by life which he worships
with coarse but sincere rites.

The inwardness and mystery of this attachment
drive men of every class to the use of emblems.
The schools of poets and philosophers are not more
intoxicated with their symbols than the populace
with theirs. In oiu' political parties, compute the
power of badges and emblems. See the great ball
which they roll from Baltimore to Bunker Hill!
In the political processions, Lowell goes in a loom,
and Lynn in a shoe, and Salem in a ship. Witness
the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the hickory-stick, the
palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. See the
power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies,
leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figui*e
which came into credit God knows how, on an old
rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at
the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle
under the rudest or the most conventional exterior.
The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all
poets and mystics !

Beyond this universality of the symbolic language,
we are apprised of the divineness of this superior
use of things, whereby the world is a temple whose

22 THE POET.

walls are covered with emblems, pictures, ana com-
mantlments of the Deity, — in this, that there is no
fact in nature which does not carry the whole sense
of nature ; and the distinctions which we make in
events and in affairs, of low and high, honest and
base, disappear when nature is used as a symbol.
Tliought makes everything fit for use. The vocab-
ulary of an omniscient man woidd embrace words
and images excluded from polite conversation.
What would be base, or even obscene, to the ob-
scene, becomes illustrious, spoken in a new connec-
tion of thought. The piety of the Hebrew prophets
purges their grossness. The circumcision is an ex-
ample of the power of poetry to raise the low and
offensive. Small and mean things serve as well as
great symbols. The meaner the type by which a
law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the
more lasting in the memories of men ; just as we
choose the smallest box or case in which any need-
fid utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words
are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited
mind ; as it is related of Lord Chatham that he was
accustomed to read in Bailey's Dictionary when he
was preparing to speak in Parliament. The poor-
est experience is rich enough for all the pm'poses of
expressing thought. Why covet a knowledge of
new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a
few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would

THE POET. 23

all trades and all spectacles. "We are far from
having exhausted the significance of the few sym-
bols we use. We can come to use them yet with a
terrible simplicity. It does not need that a poem
should be long. Every word was once a poem.
Every new relation is a new word. Also we use
defects and deformities to a sacred purpose, so ex-
pressing our sense that the evils of the world are
such only to the evil eye. In the old mythology,
mythologists observe, defects are ascribed to divine
natures, as lameness to Vulcan, blindness to Cupid,
and the like, — to signify exuberances.

For as it is dislocation and detachment from the
life of God that makes things ugly, the poet, who
re-attaches things to nature and the Whole, — re-
attaching even artificial things and violations of
nature, to nature, by a deeper insight, — disposes
very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Read-
ers 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 the poet sees
them fall within the great Order not less than the
beehive or the spider's geometrical web. Nature
adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the
gliding train of cars she loves like her own. Be*
sides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing how
many mechanical inventions you exhibit. Though

24 THE POET.

you add millions, and never so surprising, the fact
of mechanics has not gained a gTain's weight. The
spiritual fact remains imalterable, by many or by
few particulars ; as no moimtain is of any appreci-
able height to break the curve of the sphere. A
shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first
time, and the complacent citizen is not satisfied
with his little wonder. It is not that he does not
see all the fine houses and know that he never saw
such before, but he disposes of them as easily as
the poet finds place for the railway. The chief
value of the new fact is to enhance the great and
constant fact of Life, which can dwarf any and
every circumstance, and to which the belt of wam-
pum and the commerce of America are alilie.

Tlie woi'ld being thus put under the mind for
verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it.
For though life is great, and fascinates and absorbs ;
and though all men are intelligent of the symbols
through which it is named ; yet they cannot origi-
nally use them. We are symbols and inhabit sym-
bols ; workmen, work, and tools, words and things,
bii-th and death, all are emblems ; but we sympa-
thize ^^^th the symbols, and being infatuated with
the economical uses of things, we do not know that
they are thoughts. The poet, by an idterior intel-
lectual i)erception, gives them a power which makes
their old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue

THE POET. 25

into every dumb and Inanimate object. He per-
ceives tlie independence of the thought on the sym-
bol, the stability of the thought, the accidency and
fugacity of the symbol. As the eyes of Lyncaeus
were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns
the world to glass, and shows us all things in their
right series and procession. For through that bet-
ter perception he stands one step nearer to things,
and sees the flowing or metamorphosis ; perceives
that thought is multiform ; that wdthin the form of
every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into
a higher form ; and following with his eyes the life,
uses the forms which express that life, and so his
speech flows with the flowing of nature. All the
facts of the animal economy, sex, nutriment, ges-
tation, birth, growth, are symbols of the passage of
the world into the soul of man, to suffer there a
change and reappear a new and liigher fact. He
uses forms according to the life, and not according
to the form. This is true science. The poet alone
knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation and anima-
tion, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs
them as signs. He knows why the plain or meadow
of space was strown with these flowers we call suns
and moons and stars ; why the great deep is adorned
with animals, with men, and gods ; for in every
word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of
thought.

26 THE POET.

By vii'tue of this science the poet is the Namer
or Lan^iage-maker, naming things sometimes after
their ajjpearance, sometimes after their essence, and
giving to every one its own name and not another's,
thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in
detachment or boundary. The poets made all the
words, and therefore language is the archives of
history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of
the muses. For though the origin of most of our
words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke
of genius, and obtained currency because for the
moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker
and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the dead-
est word to have been once a brilliant picture.
Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the
continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of
animalcules, so language is made up of images or
tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long
ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. But the
poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes
one step nearer to it than any other. This expres-
sion or naming is not art, but a second nature,
grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What
we call nature is a cei^tain self-regulated motion or
change ; and nature does all things by her own
hands, and does not leave another to baptize her
but baptizes herself ; and this through the meta-
morphosis again. I remember that a certain poet
described it to me thus : —

THE POET. 27

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays
of things, whether wholly or partly of a material
and finite kind. Nature, through all her king-
doms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting
the poor fungus ; so she shakes down from the gills
of one agaric countless spores, any one of which,
being preserved, transmits new billions of spores
to-morrow or next day. The new agaric of this
hour has a chance which the old one had not.
This atom of seed is thrown into a new place, not
subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent
two rods off. She makes a man ; and having
brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the
risk of losing this wonder at a blow, but she de-
taches from him a new self, that the kind may be
safe from accidents to which the individual is ex-
posed. So when the soul of the poet has come to
ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away
from it its poems or songs, — a fearless, sleepless,
deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the acci-
dents of the weary kingdom of time ; a fearless,
vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the
virtue of the soul out of which they came) which
carry them fast and far, and infix them irrecovera-
bly into the hearts of men. These wings are the
beauty of the poet's soul. The songs, thus flying
immortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by
clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far

28 THE POET.

greater numbers and threaten to devour them ; but
these last are not winged. At the end of a very
short leap they fall plump down and rot, ha^^ng re-
ceived from the souls out of which they came no
beautiful wings. But the melodies of the poet as-
cend and leap and pierce into the deeps of infinite
time.

So far the bard taught me, using his freei
speech. But nature has a higher end, in the pro-
duction of new individuals, than security, namely
ascension, or the passage of the soid into higher
forms. I knew in my younger days the sculptor
who made the statue of the youth which stands in
the public garden. He was, as I remember, unable
to tell directly what made him happy or unhappy,
but by wonderful indirections he could tell. He
rose one day, according to his habit, before the
dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the
eternity out of which it came, and for many days
after, he strove to express, this tranquillity, and lo!
his chisel had fashioned out of marble the form of
a beautiful youth. Phosphorus, whose aspect is such
that it is said all persons who look on it become
silent. The poet also resigns himself to his mood,
and that thought which agitated him is expressed,
but alter idem, in a manner totally new. The ex-
pression is organic, or the new type which thinga

THE POET. 29

themselves take when liberated. As, in the sun, ob-
jects paint their images on the retina of the eye, so
they, sharing the asj)iration of the whole universe,
tend to paint a far more delicate copy of their es-
sence in his mind. Like the metamorphosis of
things into higher organic forms is their change
into melodies. Over everything stands its daemon
or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected
by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a
melody. The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, and
every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-can-
tations, which sail like odors in the air, and when
any man goes by with an ear sufficiently fine, he
overhears them and endeavors to write down the
notes without diluting or depraving them. And
herein is the legitimation of criticism, in the mind's
faith that the poems are a corrupt version of some
text in nature with which they ought to be made to
tally. A rhyme in one of our sonnets should not
be less pleasing than the iterated nodes of a sea-
shell, or the resembling difference of a group of
flowers. The pairing of the birds is an idyl, not
tedious as our idyls are ; a tempest is a rough ode,
without falsehood or rant ; a summer, with its
harvest sown, reaped, and stored, is an epic song,
subordinating how many admirably executed parts.
Why shoidd not the s}Tiimetry and truth that mod-
ulate these, glide into our spirits, and we particic
pate the invention of nature ?

80 THE POET.

This insight, which expresses itseK by what is
called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing,
which does not come by study, but by the intellect
being where and what it sees ; by sharing the path
or circuit of things through forms, and so making
them translucid to others. The path of things is
silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them ?
A spy they will not suffer ; a lover, a poet, is the
transcendency of their own nature, — him they will
suffer. The condition of true naming, on the poet's
part, is his resigning himself to the divine aura
which breathes through forms, and accompanying
that.

It is a secret which every intellectual man
quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his pos-
sessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new
energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by
abandonment to the nature of things ; that beside
his privacy of power as an individual man, there is
a great public power on which he can draw, by un-
locking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering
the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him ;
then he is caught up into the life of the Universe,
his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his
words are universally intelligible as the plants and
animals. The poet linows that he speaks ade-
quately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly,
or " with the flower of the mind ; " not with the in>

THE POET. 31

tellect used as an organ, but with the intellect re-
leased from all service and suffered to take its di-
rection from its celestial life ; or as the ancients
were wont to express themselves, not with intellect
alone but with the intellect inebriated by nectar.
As the traveller who has lost his way throws his
reins on his horse's neck and trusts to the instinct
of the animal to find his road, so must we do with
the divine animal who carries us through this world.
For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct,
new passages are opened for us into nature ; the
mind flows into and through things 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 whatever other procurers of
animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves of
such means as they can, to add this extraordinary
power to their normal powers ; and to this end they
prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, danc-
ing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming,
politics, or love, or science, or animal intoxication,
— which are several coarser or finer g-wasi-mechan-
ical substitutes for the true nectar, which is the rav-
ishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the
fact. These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal ten-
dency of a man, to his passage out into free space,
and they help him to escape the custody of that body

82 THE POET.

in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of in-
dividual relations in which he is enclosed. Hence
a great number of such as were professionally jex-
pressers of Beauty, as painters, poets, musicians,
and actors, have been more than others wont to lead
a life of pleasure and indulgence ; all but the few
who received the true nectar ; and, as it was a spu-
rious mode of attaining freedom, as it was an eman-
cipation not into the heavens but into the freedom
of baser places, they were punished for that advan-
tage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration.
But never can any advantage be taken of nature by
a trick. The spirit of the world, the great calm
presence of the Creator, comes not forth to the sor-
ceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision
comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and
chaste body. That is not an inspiration, which we
owe to narcotics, but some counterfeit excitement
and fury. Milton says that the lyric poet may
drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet,
he who shall sing of the gods and their descent
unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl.
For poetry is not ' Devil's wine,' but God's vnne.
It is with this as it is with toys. We fill the hands
and nurseries of our children with all manner of
dolls, drums, and horses ; mthdrawing their eyes
from the plain face and sufficing objects of nature,
the sun, and moon, the animals, the water, and

THE POET. 33

Stones, wliicli sliould be their toys. So the poet's
habit of living should be set on a key so low that
the common influences should delight him. His
cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight ; the
air shoidd suffice for his inspiration, and he should
be tijjsy with water. That spirit which suffices
quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such
from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-
stump and half-imbedded stone on which the dull
March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hun-
gry, and such as are of simple taste. If thou fill
thy brain with Boston and New York, with fash-
ion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded
senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find
no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the
pinewoods.

If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is not
inactive in other men. The metamorphosis excites
in the beholder an emotion of joy. The use of
symbols has a certain power of emancipation and
exhilaration for all men. "\Ye seem to be touched
by a wand which makes us dance and run about
happily, like children. We are like persons who
come out of a cave or cellar into the open air.
This is the effect on tis of tropes, fables, oracles,
and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating
gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found
within their world another world, or nest of worlds ;

34 THE POET.

for, the metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it
does not stop. I will not now consider how much
this makes the charm of algebra and the mathemat
ics, which also have their tropes, but it is felt in
every definition; as when Aristotle defines S2Kice
to be an immovable vessel in which things are con-
tained ; — or when Plato defines a line to be a flow-
ing point ; or figure to be a bound of solid ; and
many the like. What a joyful sense of freedom
we have when Vitruvius announces the old opinion
of artists that no architect can build any house
well who does not know something of anatomy.
When Socrates, in Charmides, tells us that the
soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations,
and that these incantations are beautiful reasons,
from which temperance is generated in souls ; when
Plato calls the world an animal, and Timaeus af-
firms that the plants also are animals ; or affirms
a man to be a heavenly tree, growing with his root,
which is his head, upward ; and, as George Chap-
man, following him, writes, —

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

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as "that wliite
flower which marks extreme old age ; " when Pro-
clus calls the universe the statue of the intellect ;
when Chaucer, in his praise of ' Gentilesse,' com-

TEE POET. 35

pares good blood in mean condition to fire, which,
though carried to the darkest house betwixt this
and the mount of Caucasus, will yet hold its natu-
ral office and bum as bright as if twenty thousand
men did it behold ; when John saw, in the Apoca-
lypse, the ruin of the world tlu-ough evil, and the
stars fall from heaven as the figtree casteth her
imtimely fruit ; when ^sop reports the whole cat-
alogue of common daily relations through the mas-
querade of birds and beasts ; — we take the cheer-
ful hint of the immortality of our essence and its
versatile habit and escapes, as when the gypsies say
of themselves "it is in vain to hang them, they
cannot die."

The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient
British bards had for the title of their order,
" Those who are free throughout the world." They
are free, and they make free. An imaginative
book renders us much more service at first, by stim-
tdating us through its tropes, than afterward when
we arrive at the precise sense of the author. I
think nothing is of any value in books excepting
the transcendental and extraordinary. If a man is
inflamed and carried away by his thought, to that
degree that lie forgets the authors and the public
and heeds only this one dream which holds him
like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you
may have all the argumertts and histories and criti-

36 THE POET.

cism. All the value wliicli attaches to Pythagoras,
Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, Kepler,
Swedenborg, Schelling, Oken, or any other who in-
troduces questionable facts into his cosmogony, as
angels, devils, magic, astrology, palmistry, mesmer-
ism, and so on, is the certificate we have of depar-
ture from routine, and that here is a new witness.
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 the liberty then
seems ; how mean to study, when an emotion com-
mimicates to the intellect the power to sap and up-
heave nature ; how great the perspective ! nations,
times, systems, enter and disappear like threads in
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 re-
ligion, in our opulence.

There is good reason why we should prize this
liberation. The fate of the poor shejiherd, who,
blinded and lost in the snow-storm, j^erishes in a
drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an
emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the
waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying.
The inaccessibleness of every thought but that we
are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it;
you are as remote when you are nearest as when
you are farthest. Every thought is also a prison ;

THE POET. 37

every heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love
the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in
an ode or in an action or in looks and behavior
has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our
chains and admits us to a new scene.

This emancipation is dear to all men, and the
power to impart it, as it must come from greater
depth and scope of thought, is a measure of intel-
lect. Therefore aU books of the imagination en-
dure, all which ascend to that truth that the writer
sees nature beneath him, and uses it as his expo-
nent. Every verse or sentence possessing this vir-
tue will take care of its own immortality. The re-
ligions of the world are the ejaculations 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 meaning ; neither may
he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same ob-
jects exponents of his new thought. Here is the
difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the
last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true
sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and
false. For all symbols are fluxional ; all language
is vehicidar and transitive, and is good, as ferries
and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and
houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in
the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol

38 THE POET.

for an universal one. Tlie morning-redness hap-
pens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob
Bfhmen, 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 pre-
fers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child,
or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweller polishing
a gem. Either of these, or of a myriad more, are
equally good to the person to whom they are sig-
nificant. Only they must be held lightly, and be
very willingly translated into the equivalent terms
which others use. And the mystic must be steadily
told, — All that you say is just as true without the
tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have
a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric, —
universal signs, instead of these village symbols, —
and we shall both be gainers. The history of
hierarchies seems to show that all religious error
consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid,
and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ
of language.

Swcdenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands
eminently for the translator of nature into thought.
I do not knov/ the man in history to whom things
stood so uniformly for words. Before him the
metamorj^hosis continually jjlays. Everj'-thing on
which his eye rests, obeys the impulses of moral
nature. The figs become grapes whilst he eat3

THE POET. 89

them. When some of his angels affirmed a trnth,
the laurel twig v/hich they held blossomed in their
hands. The noise which at a distance appeared
like gnashing and thumping, on coming nearer was
found to be the voice of disputants. The men in
one of his visions, seen in heavenly light, appeared
like dragons, and seemed in darkness ; but to each
other they appeared as men, and when the light
from heaven shone into their cabin, they com-
plained of the darkness, and were compelled to
shut the window that they might see.

There was this perception in him which makes
the poet or seer an object of awe and terror, name-
ly that the same man or society of men may wear
one aspect to themselves and their companions,
and a different aspect to higher intelligences. Cer-
tain priests, w^hom he describes as conversing very
learnedly together, appeared to the children who
were at some distance, like dead horses ; and many
the like misappearances. And instantly the mind
inquires whether these fishes under the bridge, yon-
der oxen in the pastm-e, those dogs in the yard, are
immutably fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear
to me. and perchance to themselves appear upright
men ; and whether I appear as a man to all eyes.
The Bramins and Pythagoras propounded the same
question, and if any poet has witnessed the trans-
formation he doubtless found it in harmony with

40 THE POET.

various experiences. We have all seen changes as
considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is the
poet and shall draw us with love and terror, who
sees through the flowing vest the firm nature, and
can declare it.

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe.
"VYe do not with sufficient plainness or sufficient
profoundness address ourselves to life, nor dare we
chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If
we filled the day with braveiy, we shoidd not
shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield
us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new
religion, the reconciler, whom all things await.
Dante's praise is that he dared to write his auto-
biogTaphy in colossal cipher, or into universality.
We have yet had no genius in America, with tp'an-
nous eye, which knew the value of our incompa-
rable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and
materialism of the times, another carnival of the
same gods whose picture he so much admires in
Homer ; then in the Middle Age ; then in Calvin-
ism. Banks and tariffs, the newspajDcr and caucus,
Methodism and Unitarianism, are flat and dvdl to
dull people, but rest on the same foundations of
wonder as the town of Troy and the temple of Del-
phi, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logroll-
ing, our stiunps and their politics, our fisheries
our Negroes and Indians, our boats and our repu

THE POET. 41

diations, the wrath of rogues and the pusillanimity
of honest men, the northern trade, the southern
planting, the western clearing, Oregon and Texas,
are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in our
eyes ; its ample geography dazzles the imagination,
and it will not wait long for metres. If I have not
found that excellent combination of gifts in my
countrymen which I seek, neither could I aid my-
self to fix the idea of the poet by reading now and
then in Chalmers's collection of five centuries of
English poets. These are wits more than poets,
though there have been poets among them. But
when we adhere to the ideal of the poet, we have
our difficidties even with Milton and Homer. Mil-
ton is too literary, and Homer too literal and his-
torical.

But I am not wise enough for a national criti-
cism, and must use the old largeness a little longer,
to discharge my errand from the muse to the poet
concerning his art.

Art is the path of the creator to his work. The
paths or methods are ideal and eternal, though few
men ever see them ; not the artist himself for years,
or for a lifetime, unless he come into the conditions.
The painter, the scidptor, the composer, the epic
rhapsodist, the orator, all partake one desire, namely
to express themselves symmetrically and abundant-
ly, not dwarfishly and f ragmentarily. They found

42 THE POET.

or put themselves in certain conditions, as, the
painter anil sculptor before some impressive human
figures ; the orator, into the assembly of the peo-
ple; and the others in such scenes as each has
found exciting to his intellect ; and each presently
feels the new desire. He hears a voice, he sees a
beckoning. Then he is ap^Drised, with wonder,
what herds of daemons hem him in. He can no
more rest; he says, with the old painter, " By God
it is in me and must go forth of me." He pursues
a beauty, half seen, which flies before him. The
poet pours out verses in every solitude. Most of
the things he says are conventional, no doubt ; but
by and by he says something which is original and
beautiful. That charms him. He would say noth-
ing else but such things. In our way of talking
we say ' That is yours, this is mine ; ' but the poet
knows well that it is not his ; that it is as strange
and beautiful to him as to you ; he would fain hear
the like eloquence at length. Once having tasted
this immortal ichor, he cannot have enough of it,
and as an admirable creative power exists in these
intellections, it is of the last importance that these
things get spoken. "What a little of all we know is
said ! What drops of all the sea of our science
are baled up ! and by what accident it is that these
are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature ]
Hence the necessity of speech and song ; hence

THE POET. 43

these throbs and heart-beatings in the orator, at
the door of the assembly, to the end namely that
thought 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, hissed and hooted, stand
and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that
c?ream-power which every night shows thee is thine
own ; a power transcending all limit and privacy,
and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of
the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, or
creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in txirn
arise and walk before him as exponent of his mean-
ing. Comes he to that power, liis genius is no
longer exhaustible. All the creatures by pairs and
by tribes pour into his mind as into a Noah's ark,
to come forth again to people a new world. This
is like the stock of air for our respiration or for
the combustion of our fireplace ; not a measure of
gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And
therefore the rich poets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shak-
speare, and Raphael, have obviously no limits to
their works except the limits of their lifetime, and
resemble a mirror carried through the street, ready
to render an image of every created thing.

O poet I a new nobility is conferred in groves
and pastures, and not in castles or by the sword-
blade any longer. The conditions are hard, but

44 THE POET.

equal. Tlioii shalt leave the world, and know the
muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the
times, customs, graces, politics, or ojsinions of men,
but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of
towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes,
but in nature the universal hours are counted by
succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by
growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou ab-
dicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be
content that others speak for thee. Others shall
be thy gentlemen and shall represent all courtesy
and worldly life for thee ; others shall do the great
and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close
hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the
Capitol or the Exchange. The world is fidl of re-
nunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine ;
thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long
season. This is the screen and sheath in which
Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou
shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall
console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt
not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in
thy verse, for an old shame before tlie holy ideal.
And this is the reward ; that the ideal shall be real
to thee, and the impressions of the actual world
shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not trouble-
some to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have
the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for

THE POET. 45

thy bath and navigation, without tax and without
envy ; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own,
and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only
tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-
lord ! air - lord ! Wherever snow falls or water
flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in
twilight, wherever the blue heaven is himg by
clouds or sown with stars, wherever are forms with
transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into
celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and
love, — there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for
thee, and though thou shouldst walk the world over,
thou shalt not be able to find a condition inoppor-
tune or ignoble.

EXPERIENCE.

The lords of life, the lords of life,—
I saw them pass,
In theii- own guise,
Like and unlike.
Portly and grim.
Use and Surprise,
Surface and Dream,
Succession swift, and spectral "Wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name ; —
Some to see, some to he 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, ' DarHng, never mind !
To-morrow they will wear another face.
The founder thou ! these are thy race ! '

n.

EXPERIENCE.

Wheee do we find ourselves? In a series of
which we do not know the extremes, and believe
that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on
a stair ; there are stairs below us, which we seem
to have ascended ; there are stairs above us, many
a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the
Genius which according to the old belief stands 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 cannot shake off the lethargy
now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime
about 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 as our perception.
Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not
know our place again. Did our birth fall in some
fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she
was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth
that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative
principle, and though we have health and reason,

VOL. ni. 4

60 ILLUSION.

yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation?
AVe have enough to live and bring the year about,
but not an ounce to impart or to invest. Ah that
our Genius were a little more of a genius ! We are
like millers on the lower levels of a stream, when
the factories above them have exhausted the water.
We too fancy that the uj^per people must have raised
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 whether we are busy or idle.
In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we
have afterwards discovered that much was accom-
plished and much was begun in us. All our days are
so unprofitable while they pass, that 't is Avonderf ul
where or when we ever got anything of this which
we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it
on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days
must have been intercalated somewhere, like those
that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris
might be born. It is said all martja-doms looked
mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a
romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark,
and the romance quits our vessel and hangs on
every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks
trivial, and we shun to i*ecord it. IMen seem to
have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual re-
treating and reference. ' Yonder uplands are rich

EXPERIENCE. 51

pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow,
but my field,' says the querulous farmer, ' only holds
the world together.' I quote another man's saying;
unluckily that other withdraws himself in the same
way, and quotes me. 'T is the trick of nature thus
to degrade to-day ; a good deal of buzz, and some-
where a resvdt slij)ped magically in. Every roof is
agieeable to the eye until it is lifted ; then we find
tragedy and moaning women and hard-eyed hus-
bands and deluges of lethe, and the men ask,
* What's the news?' as if the old were so bad.
How many individuals can we count in society? how
many actions ? how many opinions ? So much of
our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so
much retrosjDCct, that the pith of each man's genius
contracts itself to a very few hours. The history
of literature, — take the net result of Tiraboschi,
War ton, or Schlegel, — is a sum of very few ideas
and of very few original tales ; all the rest being
variation of these. So in this great society wide
lying around us, a critical analysis woidd find very
few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom
and gross sense. There are even few opinions, and
these seem organic in the speakers, and do not dis-
turb the universal necessity.

What opium is instilled into all disaster! It
shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at
last no rough rasping friction, but the most slippery

62 ILLUSION.

sliding surfaces ; we fall soft on a thought ; Ate
Dea is gentle, —

"Over men's heads walking aloft,
With tender feet treading so soft."

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not
half so bad with 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 and edges
of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and
coiuiterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is
to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest,
plays about the surface, and never introduces me
into the reality, for contact with which we would
even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was
it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come
in contact ? Well, souls never touch their objects.
An innavigable sea washes with silent waves be-
tween us and the things we aim at and converse
with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the
death of my son, now more than two years ago, I
seem to have 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 principal
debtors, the loss of my proi^eity would be a great
inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years ; but
it would leave me as it foimd me, — neither better
nor worse. So is it with this calamity ; it does not

^

EXPERIENCE. 53

toucli me ; sometliing which I fancied was a part of
me, which coiild not be torn away without tear-
ing me nor enlarged without enriching 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 into real nature. The Indian who was
laid under a curse that the wind should 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 the Para coats that shed every drop.
Notliing is left us now but death. We look to that
with a grim satisfaction, saying There at least is
reality that will not dodge us.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all ob-
jects, which lets them slip through our fingers then
when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhand-
some part of our condition. Nature does not like
to be observed, and likes that we shoidd be her
fools and playmates. We may have the sphere for
our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy.
Direct strokes she never gave us power to make ;
all our blows glance, all our hits are accidents.
Our relations to each other are oblique and cas-
ual.

j Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end
to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string
of beads, and as we pass through them they prove

54 TEMPERAMENT.

to be many-colored lenses which paint the world
their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its
focus. From the mountain you see the mountain.
We animate what we can, and we see only what
we animate.] Nature and hooks belong to the eyes
that see tKm. It depends on the mood of the
man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine
poem. There are always sunsets, and there is al-
ways genius ; but only a few hours so serene that
we can relish nature or criticism. The more or
less depends on structure or temperament. Tem-
perament is the iron wire on which the beads are
strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold
and defective nature ? Who cares what sensibility
or discrimination a man has at some time shown, if
he falls asleep in his chair ? or if he laugh and gig-
gle ? or if he apologize ? or is infected with ego-
tism ? or thinks of his dollar ? or cannot go by food ?
or has gotten a child in his boyhood ? Of what
use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too con-
cave and cannot find a focal distance within the
actual horizon of human life ? Of what use, if the
brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does not
care enough for results to stimulate him to experi-
ment, and hold him up in it ? or if the web is too
finely woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so
that life stagnates from too much reception without
due outlet? Of what use to make heroic vows of

EXPERIENCE. 65

amendment, If the same old law-breaker is to keep
them? What cheer can the religious sentiment
yield, when that is suspected to be secretly depend-
ent on the seasons of the year and the state of the
blood ? I knew a witty physician who foimd the
creed in the biliary duet, and used to affirm that if
there was disease in the liver, the man became a
Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became
a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the reluctant ex-
perience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility
neutralizes the promise of genius. We see young
men who owe us a new world, so readily and lav-
ishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt ;
they die young and dodge the account ; or if they
live they lose themselves in the crowd.

Temperament also enters fully into the system
of illusions and shuts us in a prison of glass which
we cannot see. There is an optical illusion about
every person we meet. In truth they are all crea-
tures of given temperament, which will appear in a
given character, whose boimdaries they will never
pass ; but we look at them, they seem alive, and we
presume there is impidse in them. In the moment
it seems impidse ; in the year, in the lifetime, it
turns out to be a certain uniform time which the
revolving barrel of the music-box must play. Men
resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it
as the evening wears on, that temper prevails over

56 TEMPERAMENT.

everything of time, place, and condition, and is in<
consumable in the flames of religion. Some modi-
fications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but
the individual texture holds its dominion, if not to
bias the moral judgments, yet to fix the measure of
activity and of enjoyment.

I thus express the law as it is read from the plat-
form of ordinary life, but must not leave it without
noticing the capital exception. For temjjerament
is a power wliich no man willingly hears any one
praise but himself. On the platform of physics we
cannot resist the contracting influences of so-called
science. Temperament puts all divinity to rout. I
know the mental proclivity of physicians. I hear
the chuckle of the phrenologists. Theoretic kid-
nappers and slave-drivers, they esteem each man
the victim of another, who winds him roimd his
finger by knowing the law of his being; and, by
such cheap signboards as the color of his beard or
the slope of his occiput, reads the inventory of his
fortunes and character. The grossest ignorance
does not disgust like this impudent knowingness.
The physicians say they are not materialists ; but
they are : — Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme
thinness : O so thin ! — But the definition of spir-
itual chould be, that which is its ovm evidence.
What notions do they attach to love ! what to relig-
ion ! One would not willingly pronounce these

EXPERIENCE. 57

words in their hearing, and give them the occasion
to profane them. I saw a gracious gentleman who
adapts his conversation to the form of the head of
the man he talks with ! I had fancied that the value
of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities ; in the
fact 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, ready to throw them
at the feet of my lord, whenever and in what dis-
guise soever he shall appear. I know he is in the
neighborhood, hidden among vagabonds. Shall I
preclude my future by taking a high seat and
kindly adapting my conversation to the shape of
heads? When I come to that, the doctors shall

buy me for a cent. ' But, sir, medical history ;

the report to the Institute ; the proven facts ! ' — I
distrust the facts and the inferences. Tempera-
ment is the veto or limitation-power in the consti-
tution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite
excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as
a bar to original equity. When virtue is in pres-
ence, all subordinate jDowers sleep. On its own
level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. I
see not, if one be once caught in this trap of so-
called sciences, any escape for the man from the
links of the chain of physical necessity. Given
such an embryo, such a history must follow. On
this platform one lives in a sty of sensualism, and

58 SUCCESSION.

woixld soon come to suicide. But it is impossible
that the creative power should exclude itself. Into
every intelligence there is a door which is never
closed, through which the creator passes. The in-
tellect, seeker of absolute truth, or the heart, lover
of absolute good, intervenes for our succor, and at
one whisper of these high powers we awake from
ineffectual struggles with this nightmare. We hurl
it into its own hell, and cannot again contract our-
selves to so base a state.

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity
of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we
wovdd anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand.
This onward trick of nature is too strong for us :
T*e7'0 si muove. AYhen at night I look at the
moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to
Lurry. Our love of the real draws us to perma-
nence, but health of body consists in circulation,
and sanity of mind in variety or facility of associa-
tion. AVe need change of objects. Dedication to
one thought is quickly odious. We house with the
insane, and must humor them ; then conversation
dies out. Once I took such delight in Montaigne
that I thought I should not need any other book ;
before that, in Shakspeare ; then in Plutarch ;
then in Plotinus ; at one time in Bacon ; afterwards
ill Goethe ; even in Bettine j but now I turn the

EXPERIENCE. 59

pages of either of them languidly, whilst I still
cherish their genius. So with pictures ; each will
Lear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot
retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased
in that manner. How strongly I have felt of pic-
tures that when you have seen one well, you must
take your leave of it ; you shall never see it again.
I have had good lessons from pictures which I have
since seen without emotion or remark. A deduc-
tion must be made from the opinion which even the
wise express on a new book or occurrence. Their
opinion gives me tidings of their mood, and some
vague guess at the new fact, but is nowise to be
trusted as the lasting relation between that intellect
and that thing. The child asks, 'Mamma, why
don't I like the story as well as when you told it
me yesterday ? ' Alas I child it is even so with the
oldest cherubim of knowledge. But will it answer
thy question to 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 late in respect to works of art and intellect), is
the plaint of tragedy wliich murmurs from it in re-
gard to persons, to friendship and love.

That immobility and absence of elasticity which
we find in the arts, we find with more pain in the
artist. There is no power of expansion in men.
Our friends early appear to us as representatives of

60 SUCCESSION.

certain ideas which they never pass or exceed.
They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought
and power, but they never take the single step that
would bring them there. A man is like a bit of
Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it
in your hand until you come to a parti cidar angle ;
then it shows deep and beautifid colors. There is
no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but
each has his special talent, and the mastery of suc-
cessfid men consists in adroitly keejiing themselves
where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be
practised. We do what we must, and call it by
the best names we can, and would fain have the
praise of having intended the result which ensues.
I cannot recall any form of man wdio is not super-
fluous sometimes. But is not this pitif id ? Life is
not worth the taking, to do tricks in.

Of course it needs the whole society to give the
symmetry we seek. The party-colored wheel must
revolve very fast to appear white. Something is
earned too by conversing with so much folly and
defect. In fuie, whoever loses, we are always of
the gaining party. Divinity is behind our failures
and follies also. The plays of children are non-
sense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with
the largest and solemnest things, with commerce,
government, church, marriage, and so with the liis-
tory of every man's bread, and the ways by which

EXPERIENCE. 61

he is to come by it. Like a bird wliicli alights no-
where, but hops perpetually from bough to bough,
is the Power wliich abides in no man and in no
woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and
for another moment from that one.

But what help from these fineries or pedantries ?
What help from thought ? Life is not dialectics.
We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough
of the futility of criticism. Our young peoj^le have
thought and written much on labor and reform, and
for all that they have written, neither the world nor
themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting
of life will not supersede muscular acti'vdty. If a
man should consider the nicety of the passage of a
piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At
Education-Farm the noblest theory of life sat on
the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite
powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or
pitch a ton of hay ; it woidd not rub down a horse ;
and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry.
A political orator wittily compared our party prom-
ises to western roads, which opened stately enough,
with planted trees on either side to tempt the trav-
eller, but soon became narrow and narrower and
ended in a squirrel-track and ran up a tree. So
does culture with us ; it ends in headache. Un-
speakably sad and barren does life look to those

62 SURFACE.

who a few months ago were dazzled with the splen-
dor of the promise of the times. " There is now
no longer any right course of action nor any self-
devotion left among the Iranis." Objections and
criticism we have had our fill of. There are objec-
tions to every course of life and action, and the
practical wisdom infers an indifferency, from the
omnipresence of objection. The whole frame of
things preaches indifferency. Do not craze your-
self with thinking, but go about j'our business any-
where. Life is not intellectual or critical, but
sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people
who can enjoy what they find, without question.
Nature hates peeping, and our mothers spealt her
very sense when they say, " Children, eat your vict-
uals, and say no more of it." To fill the hour, —
that is happiness ; to fill the hour and leave no crev-
ice for a repentance or an approval. IVe live amid
surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on
them. Under tlie oldest moiddiest conventions a
man of native force prospers just as well as in the
newest world, and that by skill of handling and
treatment. He can take hold anywhere. Life it-
self is a mixture of power and form, and will not
bear the least excess of either. To finish the mo-
ment, to find the journey's end in every step of the
road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is
wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics,

EXPERIENCE. 63

or of mathematicians if you will, to say that the
shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring
whether for so short a duration we were sprawling
in want or sitting high. Since our office is with
moments, let us husband them. Five minutes of to-
day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the
next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and
our own, to-day. Let us treat the men and women
well ; treat them as if they were real ; perhaps they
are. Men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose
hands are too soft and tremulous for successful la-
bor. It is a tempest of fancies, and the only bal-'
last I know is a respect to the present hour. With-
out any shadow of doubt, amidst this vertigo of
shows and politics, I settle myself ever the firmer in
the creed that we should not postpone and refer and
wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whom-
soever we deal mth, acceiJting our actual compan-
ions and circumstances, however humble or odious,
as the mystic officials to whom the universe has
delegated its whole pleasiu'e for us. If these are
mean and malignant, their contentment, which is
the last victory of justice, is a more satisfying echo
to the heart than the voice of poets and the casual
sympathy of admirable persons. I think that how-
ever a thoughtfid man may suffer from the defects
and absurdities of his company, he cannot without
affectation deny to any set of men and women a

64 SURFACE.

sensibility to extraordinary merit. The coarse and
frivolous have an instinct of superiority, if they
have not a sympathy, and honor it in their blind ca-
pricious way with sincere homage.

The fine young people despise life, but in me,
and in such as with me are free from dyspepsia, and
to whom a day is a sound and solid good, it is a
great excess of politeness to look scornful and to
cry for company. I am grown by sjmipathy a lit-
tle eager and sentimental, but leave me alone and
I should relish every hour and what it brought me,
the potluck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gos-
sip in the bar-room. I am thankful for small mer-
cies. I compared notes with one of my friends
who expects everything of the universe and is dis-
apjDointed when anything is less than the best, and
I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting
nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate
goods. I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary
tendencies. I find my accoimt in sots and bores
also. They give a reality to the circumjacent pic-
ture which such a vanisliing meteorous appearance
can ill sj^are. In the morning I awake and find the
old world, wife, babes, and mother. Concord and
Boston, the dear old spiritual world and even the
dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good
we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping
measures. The gieat gifts are not got by analysis.

EXPERIENCE, Qb

Everything good is on the highway. The middle
region of our being is the temperate zone. We
may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure
geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of
sensation. Between these extremes is the equator
of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry, — a narrow
belt. Moreover, in popular experience everything
good is on the highway. A collector peeps into all
the picture-shops of Europe for a landscape of Pous-
sin, a crayon-sketch of Salvator ; but the Transfig-
uration, the Last Judgment, the Communion of St.
Jerome, and what are as transcendent as these, are
on the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizii, or the
Louvre, where every footman may see them; to
say nothing of Nature's pictures in every street, of
sunsets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of
the human body never absent. A collector recently
bought at public auction, in London, for one hun-
dred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shak-
sj)eare ; but for nothing a school-boy can read Ham-
let and can detect secrets of highest concernment
yet unpublished therein. I think I will never read
any but the commonest books, — the Bible, Homer,
Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. Then we are im-
patient of so public a life and j)lanet, and run hither
and thither for nooks and secrets. The imagination
delights in the woodcraft of Indians, trappers, and
bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and

66 SURFACE.

not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the
wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the ex-
clusion reaches them also ; reaches the clim))ing, fly-
ing, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox
and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when
nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world
than man, and are just such superficial tenants of
the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy
shows astronomical intersi)aces betwixt atom and
atom, shows that the world is all outside ; it has no
inside.

The mid-worlcj is best. Nature, as we know her,
is no saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics,
Gentoos, and corn-eaters, she does not distinguish
by any favor. She comes eating and drinking and
sinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the
beautiful, are not children of our law ; do not come
out of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food,
nor punctually keep the commandments. If we
will be strong with her strength we must not har-
bor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too
from the consciences of other nations. We must
set up the strong present tense against all the ru-
mors of WTath, past or to come. So many things
are unsettled which it is of the first imjiortance to
settle ; — and, pending their settlement, we will do
as we do. Whilst the debate goes forward on the
equity of commerce, and will not be closed for a

EXPERIENCE. 67

century or two, New and Old England may keep
shop. Law of copyright and international copy-
right is to be discussed, and in the interim we will
sell oiu' books for the most we can. Exiiediency of
literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writ-
ing dowTi a thought, is questioned ; much is to say
on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou,
dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line
every hour, and between whiles add a line. Right
to hold land, right of property, is disputed, and
the conventions convene, and before the vote is
taken, dig away in your garden, and spend your
earnings as a waif or godsend to all serene and
beautiful purposes. Life itself is a bubble and a
skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it,
and as much more as they will, — but thou, God's
darling I heed thy private dream ; thou wilt not be
missed in the scorning and skepticism ; there are
enough of them ; stay there in thy closet and toil
until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy
sickness, they say, and thy puny habit require that
thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life
is a flitting state, 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 holds
thee dear, shall be the better.

Hmnan life is made up of the two elements^
power and form, and the proportion must be inva-

68 SURFACE.

riably kept if we would have it sweet and sound.
Each of these elements in excess makes a mischief
as hurtful as its defect. Everything runs to ex-
cess ; every good quality is noxious if unmixed,
and, to carry the danger to the edge of ruin, na-
ture causes each man's peculiarity to superabound.
Here, among the farms, we adduce the scholars as
examples of this treachery. They are nature's vic-
tims of expression. You who see the artist, the
orator, the poet, too near, and find their life no
more excellent than that of mechanics or farm-
ers, and themselves victims of partiality, very hol-
low and haggard, and pronounce them failures, not
heroes, but quacks, — conclude very reasonably
that these arts are not for man, but are disease.
Yet nature will not bear yo\x out. Irresistible na-
ture made men such, and makes legions more of
such, every day. You love the boy reading in a
book, gazing at a drawing or a cast ; yet what are
these millions who read and behold, but incipient
writers and sculptors ? Add a little more of that
quality which now reads and sees, and they will
seize the pen and chisel. And if one remembers
how innocently he began to be an artist, he per-
ceives that nature joined with his enemy. A man
is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk
is a hair's breadth. The wise tlu-ough excess of
wisdom is made a fool.

EXPERIENCE. 69

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might
keep forever these beautiful limits, and adjust our-
selves, once for all, to the perfect calculation of the
kingdom of known cause and effect. In the street
and in the newspapers, life appears so plain a busi-
ness that manly resolution and adherence to the
multiplication-table through all weathers will in-
sure success. But ah ! presently comes a day, or is
it only a haK-hour, with its angel-whispering, —
which discomfits the conclusions of nations and of
years ! To-morrow again every thing looks real
and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated,
common sense is as rare as genius, — is the basis
of genius, and experience is hands and feet to every
enterprise ; — and yet, he who should do his busi-
ness on this understanding would be quickly bank-
rupt. Power keeps quite another road than the
turnpikes of choice and will ; namely the subterra-
nean and invisible tunnels and channels of life. It
is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and doctors,
and considerate people ; there are no dupes like
these. Life is a series of surprises, 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 and the future. We would look about us,
but -ftdth grand politeness he draws down before us
an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another
behind us of purest sky. ' You will not remember,'

70 SURPRISE.

he seems to say, ' and you will not expect.' All
good conversation, manners, and action, come from
a spontaneity which forgets usages and makes the
moment great. Nature hates calculators ; her
methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man lives
by pulses ; our organic movements are such ; and
the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory
and alternate ; and the mind goes antagonizing on,
and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by cas-
ualties. Our chief experiences have been casual.
The most attractive class of people are those who
are powerful obliquely and not by the direct stroke ;
men of genius, but not yet accredited ; one gets the
cheer of their light without paying too great a tax.
Theirs is the beauty of the bird or the morning
light, and not of art. In the thought of genius
there is always a surprise ; and the moral sentiment
is well called " the newness," for it is never other ;
as new to the oldest intelligence as to the young
child ; — " the kingdom that cometh without obser-
vation." In like manner, for practical success,
there must not be too much design. A man will
not be observed in doing that which he can do
best. There is a certain magic about his properest
action which stupefies your powers of observation,
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 is an impossibility until

EXPERIENCE. 71

he is born ; every thing impossible until we see a
success. The ardors of piety agree at last with the
coldest skepticism, — that nothing is of us or our
works, — that all is of God. Nature will not spare
us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writing comes
by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I
would gladly be moral and keep due metes and
bounds, which I dearly love, and allow the most to
the will of man ; but 1 have set my heart on honesty
in this chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in
success or failure, than more or less of vital force
supplied from the Eternal. The residts of life are
uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach
much which the days never know. The persons
who compose our company, converse, and come and
go, and design and execute many things, and some-
what comes of it all, but an unlooked-for result.
The individual is always mistaken. He designed
many things, and drew in other persons as coadju-
tors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much,
and something is done ; all are a little advanced,
but the individual is always mistaken. It turns
out somewhat new and very unlike what he prom-
ised himseK.

The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of
the elements of human life to calculation, exalted
Chance into a divinity ; but that is to stay too long

72 REALITY.

at the spark, which glitters truly at one point, but
the universe is warm with the latency of the same
fire. The miracle of life which will not be ex-
pounded but will remain a miracle, introduces a
new element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir
Everard Home I think noticed that the evolution
was not from one central point, but coactive from
three or more points. Life has no memory. That
which proceeds in succession might be remembered,
but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a
deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious,
knows not 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 yet
hostile value, and now religious, whilst in the re-
ception of spiritual law. Bear with these distrac-
tions, with this coetaneous growth of the parts ;
they will one day be meynhers^ and obey one will.
On that one will, on that secret cause, they nail our
attention and hope. Life is hereby melted into an
expectation or a religion. Underneath the inhar-
monious and trivial particidars, is a musical per-
fection ; the Ideal journeying always with us, the
heaven without rent or seam. Do but observe the
mode of our illumination. When I converse with
a profound mind, or if at any time being alone I
have good thoughts, I do not at once arrive at sat-
isfactions, as when, being thirsty, I drink water ; or

EXPERIENCE. 73

go to the fire, being cold ; no ! but I am at first ap-
prised of my vicinity to a new and excellent region
of life. By persisting to read or to think, tliis re-
gion gives further sign of itself, as it were in
flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its pro-
found beauty and repose, as if the clouds that cov-
ered it parted at intervals and showed the ap-
proaching traveller the inland mountains, with the
tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base,
whereon flocks graze and shepherds pipe and dance.
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 behold what was there
already. I make ! O no ! I clap my hands in
infantine joy and amazement before the first open-
ing to me of this august magnificence, old with the
love and homage of innumerable ages, young wdth
the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert.
And what a future it opens ! I feel a new heart
beating with the love of the new beauty. I am
ready to die out of nature and be born again into
this new yet unapproachable America I have f oimd
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."

If I have described life as a flux of moods, I must
now add that there is that in us which changes not

74 REALITY.

and which ranks all sensations and states of mind.
The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale,
which identifies him now with the First Cause, and
now with the flesh of his body ; life above life, in
infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it
sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the
question ev^er is, not what you have done or for-
borne, but at whose command you have done or for-
borne it.

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these
are quaint names, too narrow to cover this un-
boimded substance. The baffled intellect must still
kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named,
— ineffable cause, which every fine genius has es-
sayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as,
Thales by water, Anaximenes by air, Anaxagoras
by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the
moderns by love ; and the metaphor of each has
become a national religion. The Chinese Mencius
has not been the least successful in his generali-
zation. " I fully understand language," he said,
"and nourish well my vast-flowing \dgor." — "I
beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor ? " —
said his companion. "The explanation," rej)lied
Mencius, "is difficult. This vigor is supremely
great, and in the highest degree unbending. Nour-
ish it correctly and do it no injury, and it will fill
up the vacancy between heaven and earth. This

EXPERIENCE. 75

vigor accords with and assists justice and reason,
and leaves no liimger." — In our more correct writ-
ing we give to this generalization the name of Be-
ing, and thereby confess that we have arrived as far
as we can go. Suffice it for the joy of the universe
that we have not arrived at a wall, but at intermi-
nable oceans. Our life seems not present so much
as prospective ; not for the affairs on which it is
wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor.
Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of fac-
ulty ; information is given us not to sell ourselves
cheap ; that we are very great. So, in particulars,
our greatness is always in a tendency or direction,
not in an action. It is for us to believe in the rule,
not in the exception. The noble are thus known
from the ignoble. So in accepting the leading of
the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning
the immortality of the soul or the like, but the uni-
versal ijnpulse to believe, that is the material cir-
cumstance and is the principal fact in the history
of the globe. Shall we describe this cause as that
which works directly ? The spirit is not helpless
or needful of mediate organs. It has plentifid
powers and direct effects. I am explained without
explaining, I am felt without acting, and where I
am not. Therefore all just persons are satisfied
with their own praise. They refuse to explain
themselves, and are content that new actions should

76 REALITY.

do them that office. They believe that we com-
municate without speech and above speech, and
that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to
our friends, at whatever distance ; for the influence
of action is not to be measured by miles. Why
should I fret myself because a circumstance has
occurred which hinders my presence where I was
expected ? If I am not at the meeting, my pres-
ence where I am shoidd be as useful to the com-
monwealth of friendship and wisdom, as would be
my presence in that place. I exert the same qual-
ity of power in all places. Thus journeys the
mighty Ideal before us ; it never was known to fall
into the rear. No man ever came to an experience
which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a
better. Onward and onward ! In liberated mo-
ments we know that a new pictm-e of life and duty
is already possible ; the elements already exist in
many minds aroimd you of a doctrine of life which
shall transcend any written record we have. The
new statement will comprise the skepticisms as well
as the faiths of society, and out of imbelief s a creed
shall be formed. For skef)ticisms are not gratui-
tous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirma^-
tive statement, and the new philosophy must take
them in and make affirmations outside of them,
just as much as it must include the oldest beliefs.
It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the

EXPERIENCE. 77

discovery we have made that we exist. That dis-
covery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards
we suspect our instruments. We have learned that
we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we
have no means of correcting these colored and dis-
torting lenses which we are, or of computing the
amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-
lenses have a creative power ; perhaps there are no
objects. Once we lived in what we saw ; now, the
rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens
to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, per-
sons, letters, religions, objects, successively tiunble
in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and
literature are subjective phenomena ; every evil and
every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The
street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the
fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery and
make them wait on his guests at table, so the cha-
grins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at
once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the
street, shopmen or bar-keepers in hotels, and
threaten or insult whatever is threatenable and
insultable in us. 'T is the same with our idolatries.
People forget that it is the eye which makes the
horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes
this or that man a tj'pe or representative of human-
ity, with the name of hero or saint. Jesus, the
"providential man," is a good man on whom many

78 SUBJECT OR THE ONE.

people are agreed that these optical laws shall take
effect. By love on one part and by forbearance to
press objection on the other part, it is for a time
settled that we will look at him in the centre of the
horizon, and ascribe to him the properties that will
attach to any man so seen. But the longest love
or aversion has a sjieedy term. The great and
crescive self, rooted in absolute nature, supplants
all relative existence and ruins the kingdom of
mortal friendship and love. Marriage (in what is
called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of
the inequality between every subject and every ob-
ject. The subject is the receiver of Godhead, and
at every comparison must feel his being enhanced
by that cryptic might. Though not in energy, yet
by presence, this maga2dne of substance cannot be
otherwise than felt ; nor can any force of intellect
attribute to the object the proper deity which sleeps
or wakes forever in every subject. Never can love
make consciousness and ascription equal in force.
There will be the same gulf between every me
and thee as between the original and the picture.
The universe is the bride of the soul. All pri-
vate sympathy is partial. Two human beings are
like globes, which can touch only in a point, and
whilst they remain in contact all other points of
each of the spheres are inert; their turn must
also come, and the longer a particular union lasti

EXPERIENCE. 79

the more energy of appetency the parts not in union
acquire.

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor
doubled. Any invasion of its unity would be
chaos. The soul is not twin-born but the only
begotten, and though revealing itself as child in
time, child in appearance, is of a fatal and imiver-
sal power, admitting no co-life. Every day, every
act betrays the ill-concealed deity. We believe in
ourselves as we do not believe in others. We per-
mit all things to ourselves, and that which we call
sin in others is experiment for us. It is an in^
stance of our faith in ourselves that men never
speak of crime as lightly as they think ; or every
man thinks a latitude safe for himself which is no-r
wise to be indulged to another. The act looks very
differently on the inside and on the outside ; in its
quality and in its consequences. Murder in the
murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and
romancers will have it ; it does not im settle him or
fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles ; it is
an act quite easy to be contemplated ; but in its
sequel it turns out to be a horrible jangle and con-
founding of all relations. Especially the crimes
that spring from love seem right and fair from
the actor's point of view, but when acted are foimd
destructive of society. No man at last believes
that he can be lost, or that the crime in him is as

80 SUBJECT OR THE ONE.

black as in the felon. Because the intellect qual-
ifies in our own case the moral judgments. For
there is no crime to the intellect. That is antino-
mian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as
fact. " It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder,"
said Napoleon, speaking the language of the intel-
lect. To it, the world is a problem in mathematics
or the science of quantity, and it leaves out praise
and blame and all weak emotions. All stealins: is
comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who
does not steal ? Saints are sad, because they behold
sin (even when they speculate), from the point of
view of the conscience, and not of the intellect ; a
confusion of thought. Sin, seen from the thought,
is a diminution, or less ; seen from the conscience
or wiU, it is pravity or had. The intellect names
it shade, absence of light, and no essence. The
conscience must feel it as essence, essential evil.
This it is not ; it has an objective existence, but no
subjective.

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color,
and every object fall successively into the subject
itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges ; all
things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so
I see ; use what lang-uage we will, we can never say
anything but what we are ; Hermes, Cadmus, Co-
lumbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are the mind's minis-
ters. Instead of feeling a poverty when we encoun«

EXPERIENCE. 81

ter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a
travelling geologist who passes through our estate
and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite,
in our brush pasture. The partial action of each
strong mind in one direction is a telescope for the
objects on which it is pointed. But every other
part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same ex-
travagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericity.
Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own
tail? If you could look with her eyes you might
see her surrounded with himdreds of figures per-
forming complex dramas, with tragic and comic is-
sues, long conversations, many characters, many ups
and downs of fate, — and meantime it is only puss
and her tail. How long before oiu' masquerade will
end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shout-
ing, and we shall find it was a solitary performance ?
A subject and an object, — it takes so much to
make the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude
adds nothing. What imports it whether it is Kep-
ler and the sphere, Columbus and America, a reader
and his book, or puss with her tail ?

It is true that all the muses and love and religion
bate these developments, and will find a way to
pimish the chemist who publishes in the parlor the
secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot say too
little of our constitutional necessity of seeing things
under private aspects, or saturated with our humors.

82 SUBJECT OR THE ONE.

And yet is the God the native of these bleak rocka.
That need makes in morals the capital virtue of
self-trust. We must hold hard to this poverty, how-
ever scandalous, and by more vigorous self -recover-
ies, after the sallies of action, possess our axis more
firmly. The life of truth is cold and so far mourn-
ful ; but it is not the slave of tears, contritions and
perturbations. 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. I have
learned that I cannot dispose of other people's
facts ; but I possess such a key to my o^\^l as per-
suades me, against all their denials, that they also
have a key to theirs. A sympathetic person is
placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drown-
ing men, who all catch at him, 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 not from their vices. Charity would be
wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. A
wise and hardy physician will say, Come out of
that., as the first condition of advice.

In this our talking America we are ruined by our
good nature and listening on all sides. This com-
pliance takes away the power of being greatly use-
ful. A man should not be able to look other than
directly and forthright. A preoccupied attention
is the only answer to the importunate frivolity of

EXPERIENCE. 85

other people; an attention, and to an aim which
makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine an-
swer, and leaves no appeal and no hard thoughts.
In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides of ^scliy-
lus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Furies
sleep on the threshold. The face of the god ex-
presses a shade of regret and compassion, but is calm
with the conviction of the irreconcilableness of the
two spheres. He is born into other politics, into
the eternal and beautiful. The man at his feet asks
for liis interest in turmoils of the earth, into which
his nature cannot enter. And the Eumenides there
lying express pictorially this disparity. The god is
surcharged with his divine destiny.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Sur-
prise, Reality, Subjectiveness, — these are threads
on the loom of time, these are the lords of life. I
dare not assume to give their order, but I name
them as I find them in my way. I know better than
to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a
fragment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very
confidently announce one or another law, which
throws itseK into relief and form, but I am too
young yet by some ages to compile a code. I gos-
sip for my hour concerning the eternal politics.
I have seen many fair pictures not in vain. A won-
derful time I have lived in. I am not the novice I

84 EXPERIENCE.

was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. Let who
will ask Where is the fruit ? I find a private fruit
sufficient. This is a fruit, — that I should not ask
for a rash effect from meditations, counsels and the
hiving of truths. I should feel it pitif id to demand
a result on this town and coimty, an overt effect
on the instant month and year. The effect is deep
and secular as the cause. It works on periods in
which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is recep-
tion ; I am and I have : but I do not get, and when
I have fancied I had gotten anything, I foimd I did
not. I worship with wonder the great Fortime.
My reception has been so large, that I am not an-
noyed by receiving tliis or that superabundantly.
I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the proverb,
In for a mill, in for a million. ^^Tien I receive a
new gift, I do not macerate my body to make the
account square, for if I shoidd die I coidd not make
the account square. The benefit overran the merit
the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since.
The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the re-
ceiving.

Also that hankering after an overt or practical
effect seems to me an apostasy. In good earnest
I am willing to spare this most unnecessary deal of
doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. Hard-
est roughest action is visionary also. It is but a
choice between soft and turbulent dreams. People

EXPERIENCE. 85

disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and
urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if
only I could know. That is an august entertain-
ment, and would suffice me a great while. To
know a little would be worth the expense of this
world. I hear always the law of Adrastia, " that
every soid which had acquired any truth, 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 ob-
serve that difference, and shall observe it. One
day I shall know the value and law of this dis-
crepance. But I have not found that much was
gained by manipular attempts to realize the world
of thought. Many eager persons successively make
an experiment in this way, and make themselves
ridiculous. They acquire democratic manners, they
foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse,
I observe that in the history of mankind there is
never a solitary example of success, — taking
their own tests of success. I say this polemically,
or in reply to the inquiry. Why not realize your
world ? But far be from me the despair which
prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism ; — since
there never was a right endeavor but it succeeded.
Patience and patience, we shall win at the last.
We must be very suspicious of the deceptions
of the element of time. It takes a good deal of

86 EXPERIENCE.

time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dol-
lars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and
an insight which becomes the light of our life. We
dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the house-
hold with our wives, and these things make no im-
pression, are forgotten next week ; but, in the soli-
tude to which every man is always returning, he
has a sanity and revelations which in his passage
into new worlds he will carry with him. Never
mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat ; up again,
old heart ! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet
for all justice ; and the true romance which the
world exists to realize will be the transformation of
genius into practical power.

CHARACTER.

The sun set ; but set not his hope :
Stars rose ; his faith was earlier up l
Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
Deeper and older seemed his eye :
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
He spoke, and words more soft than raia
Brought the Age of Gold again :
His action won such reverence sweet,
As hid all measure of the feat.

Work of his hand
He nor commends nor grieves I
Pleads for itself the fact ;
As unrepenting Nature leaves
Her every act.

in.

CHAEACTER.

I HAVE read that those who listened to Lord
Chatham felt that there was something finer in the
man than any thing which he said. It has been
comjilained of our brilliant English historian of the
French Revolution that when he has told all his
facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his esti-
mate of his genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cle-
omenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes, do not
in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir
Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Ra»
leigh, are men of great figure and of few deeds.
We cannot find the smallest part of the personal
weight of Washington in the narrative of his ex-
ploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is
too great for his books. This inequality of the
reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not
accoimted for by saying that the reverberation
is longer than the thunder-clap, but somewhat re-
sided in these men which begot an expectation that
outran all their performance. The largest part of

90 CHARACTER.

their power was latent. This is that which we call
Character, — a reserved force, which acts directly
by presence and without means. It is conceived
of as a certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or
Genius, by whose impulses the man is guided but
whose counsels he cannot impart ; which is com-
pany for him, so that such men are often solitary,
or if they chance to be social, do not need society
but can entertain themselves very well alone. The
purest literary talent appears at one time great, at
another time small, but character is of a stellar and
undiminishable greatness. What others effect by
talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes by
some magnetism. " Half his strength he put not
forth." His victories are by demonstration of su-
periority, and not by crossing of bayonets. He
conquers because his arrival alters the face of af-
fairs. " O lole ! how did you know that Hercules
was a god ? " " Because," answered lole, " I was
content the moment my eyes fell on him. When
I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see him
offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the char-
iot-race ; but Hercules did not wait for a contest ;
he conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or
whatever thing he did." Man, ordinarily a pen-
dant to events, only half attached, and that awk-
wardly, to the world he lives in, in these examples
appears to share the life of things, and to be an ex

CHARACTER. 91

presslon of tlie same laws which control the tides
aud the sun, numbers and quantities.

But to use a more modest illustration and nearer
home, I observe that in our political elections,
where this element, if it appears at all, can only
occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently under-
stand its incomparable rate. The people know
that they need in their representative much more
than talent, namely the power to make his talent
trusted. They cannot come at their ends by send-
ing to Congress a learned, acute, and fluent speaker,
if he be not one who, before he was appointed by
the people to represent them, was appointed by
Almighty God to stand for a fact, — invincibly
persuaded of that fact in himself, — so that the
most confident and the most violent persons learn
that here is resistance on which both impudence
and terror ^e wasted, namely faith in a fact. The
men who carry their points do not need to inquire
of their constituents what they should say, but are
themselves the country which they represent ; no-
where are its emotions or opinions so instant and
true as in them ; nowhere so pure from a selfish
infusion. The constituency at home hearkens to
their words, watches the color of their cheek, and
therein, as in a glass, dresses its own. Our public
assemblies are pretty good tests of manly force.
Our frank countrymen of the west and south have

92 CHARACTER.

a taste for character, and like to know whether the
New Englancler is a substantial man, or whether
the hand can pass through him.

Tlie same motive force appears in trade. There
are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the
State, or letters ; and the reason why this or that
man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the
man ; that is all anybody can tell you about it.
See him and you will know as easily why he suc-
ceeds, as, if you see Napoleoui, you woidd compre-
hend his fortune. In the new objects we recognize
the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, and not
dealing with it at second hand, through the percep-
tions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize
trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who
appears not so much a private agent as her factor
and Minister of Commerce. His natural probity
combines with his insight into the fabric of society
to put him above tricks, and he communicates to
all his own faith that contracts are of no private
interjaretation. The habit of his mind is a refer-
ence to standards of natural equity and public ad-
vantage ; and he inspires respect and the wish to
deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor
wliich attends him, and for the intellectual pastime
which the spectacle of so much ability affords.
This immensely stretched trade, which makes the
capes of the Southern Ocean his wharves and the

CHARACTER. 93

Atlantic Sea Ms familiar port, centres in his 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 morning, with that
knitted brow and that settled humor, which all his
desire to be courteous cannot shake off. I see
plainly how many firm acts have been done ; how
many valiant noes have this day been spoken,
when others would have uttered ruinous yeas. I
see, with the pride of art and skill of masterly
arithmetic and power of remote combination, the
consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of
the original laws of the world. He too believes
that none can supply him, and that a man must be
born to trade or he cannot learn it.

This virtue draws the mind more when it ap-
pears in action to ends not so mixed. It works
with most energy in the smallest companies and in
private relations. In all cases it is an extraordi-
nary and incomputable agent. The excess of phys-
ical strength is paralyzed by it. Higher natures
overpower lower ones by affecting them with a cer-
tain sleep. The faculties are locked up, and offer
no resistance. Perhaj)s that is the universal law.
When the high cannot bring up the low to itself,
it benimibs it, as man charms down the resistance
of the lower animals. Men exert on each other a
similar occult power. How often has the influence

94 CHARACTER.

of a true master realized all the tales of magic ! A
river of command seemed to run down from his
eyes into all those who beheld him, a torrent of
strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which
pervaded them with his thoughts and colored all
events with the hue of his mind. " What means
did you employ ? " was the question asked of the
wife of Concini, in regard to her treatment of Mary
of Medici ; and the answer was, " Only that influ-
ence which every strong mind has over a weak
one." Cannot Caisar in irons shuffle off the irons
and transfer them to the person of Hippo or Thra-
so the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so immu-
table a bond ? Suppose a slaver on the coast of
Guinea shoidd take on board a gang of negroes
which shoidd contain persons of the stamp of Tous-
saint L'Ouverture : or, let us fancy, under these
swarthy masks he has a gang of Washingtons in
chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will the rela-
tive order of the ship's company be the same ? Is
there nothing but rope and iron ? Is there no love,
no reverence ? Is there never a glimpse of right
in a poor slave-captain's mind ; and cannot these be
supposed available to break or elude or in any
manner overmatch the tension of an inch or two of
iron ring ?

This is a natural power, like light and heat, and
all nature cooperates with it. The reason why we

CHARACTER. 95

feel one man's presence and do not feel another's
is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of
being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
All individual natures stand in a scale, according
to the puritj of this element in them. The will of
the pure runs down from them into other natures,
as water runs down from a his/her into a lower ves-
sel. This natural force is no more to be withstood
than any other natural force. We can drive a
stone upward for a moment into the air, but it is
yet true that all stones will forever faU ; and what-
ever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft,
or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must
prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make it-
self believed. Character is this moral order seen
through the medium of an individual nature. An
individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty
and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large
no longer. Now, the imiverse is a close or pound.
All things exist in the man tinged with the man-
ners of his sold. With what quality is in him he
infuses all nature that he can reach ; nor does he
tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a
curve soever, all his regards return into his own
good at last. He animates all he can, and he sees
only what he animates. He encloses the world, as
the patriot does his country, as a material basis for
his character, and a theatre for action. A healthy

96 CHARACTER.

soul stands united with the Just and the True, as
the magnet arranges itself with the j^ole ; so that he
stands to all beholders like a transparent object be-
twixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys to-
wards the sun, journeys towards that person. He
is thus the medium of the highest influence to all
who are not on the same level. Thus men of char-
acter are the conscience of the society to which they
belong.

The natural measure of this power is the resist-
ance of circumstances. Imjiure men consider life
as it is reflected in opinions, events, and persons.
They cannot see the action until it is done. Yet
its moral element preexisted in the actor, and its
quality as right or wrong it was easy to predict.
Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive
and a negative pole. There is a male and a female,
a spirit and a fact, a north and a south. Spirit is
the positive, the event is the negative. Will is the
north, action the south pole. Character may be
ranked as having its natural place in the north. It
shares the magnetic currents of the system. The
feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative
pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the action.
They never behold a principle until it is lodged in
a person. They do not wish to be lovely, but to be
loved. Men of character like to hear of their faults ;
the other class do not like to hear of faults ; they

CHARACTER. 97

worship events ; secure to them a fact, a connection,
a certain chain of circumstances, and they will ask
no more. The hero sees that the event is ancil-
lary ; it must follow him. A given order of events
has no power to secure to him the satisfaction
which the imagination attaches to it ; the soul of
goodness escapes from any set of circumstances ;
whilst prosperity belongs to a certain mind, and
will introduce that power and victory which is its
natural fruit, into any order of events. No change
of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
We boast our emancipation from many supersti-
tions ; but if we have broken any idols it is through
a transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained,
that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Nep-
tune, or a mouse to Hecate ; that I do not tremble
before the Eumenides, or the Catholic 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, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or pov-
erty, or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or
of murder ? If I quake, what matters it what I
quake at ? Our proper vice takes form in one or
another shape, according to the sex, age, or temper-
ament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear,
will readily find terrors. The covetousness or the
malignity which saddens me when I ascribe it to so-
ciety, is my own. I am always environed by myself.

98 CHARACTER.

On the other part, rectitude is a perpetual victory,
celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, which
is joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to fly
to events for confirmation of our truth and worth.
The capitalist does not run every hour to 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 stocks have risen. The same
transport which the occurrence of the best events in
the best order would occasion me, I must learn to
taste purer in the perception that my position is
every hour meliorated, and does already command
those events I desire. That exultation is only to
be checked by the foresight of an order of things
so excellent as to throw all our prosperities into
the deepest shade.

The face which character wears to me is seK-
sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches ;
so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or
exiled, or imhappy, or a client, but as perpetual pa-
tron, benefactor, and beatified man. Character is
centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or
overset. A man should give us a sense of mass.
Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps,
its conversation into ceremonies and escapes. But
if I go to see an ingenious man I shall think my-
self poorly entertained if he give me nimble pieces
of benevolence and etic[uette ; rather he shall stand

CHARACTER. 99

stoutly in his place and let me apprehend i£ it were
only his resistance ; know that I have encountered
a new and positive quality ; — great refreshment
for both of us. It is much that he does not accept
the conventional opinions and practices. That non-
conformity will remain a goad and remembrancer,
and every inquirer will have to dispose of him, in
the first place. There is nothing real or useful
that is not a seat of war. Our houses ring with
laughter and personal and critical gossip, but it
helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable man, who
is a problem and a threat to society, whom it can-
not let pass in silence but must either worship or
hate, — and to whom all parties feel related, both
the leaders of opinion and the obscure and eccen-
tric, — he helps ; he puts America and Europe in
the wrong, and destroys the skepticism which says,
' man is a doll, let us eat and drink, 't is the best
we can do,' by illuminating the untried and un-
known. Acquiescence in the establishment and
appeal to the public, indicate infirm faith, heads
which are not clear, and which must see a house
built, before they can comprehend the plan of it.
The wise man not only leaves out of his thought
the many, bixt leaves out the few. Fountains, the
self-moved, the absorbed, the commander because
he is commanded, the assured, the primary, — they
are good ; for these annoimce the instant presence
of supreme power.

100 CUARACTER.

Our action should rest mathematically on our
substance. In nature there are no false valuations.
A pound of water in the ocean - tempest has no
more gravity than in a midsummer pond. All
things work exactly according to their quality and
according to their quantity ; attempt nothing they
cannot do, except man only. lie has pretension ;
he wishes and attempts things beyond Ins force. I
read in a book of English memoirs, " Mr. Fox
(afterwards Lord Holland) said, he must have the
Treasury ; he had served up to it, and would have
it." Xenophon and his Ten Thousand were quite
equal to what they attempted, and did it ; so equal,
that it was not suspected to be a grand and inimita-
ble exploit. Yet there stands that fact imrepeated,
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 of action can be
based. No institution wiU be better than the insti-
tutor. I knew an amiable and accomplished person
who undertook a practical reform, yet I was never
able to find in him the enterprise of love he took in
hand. He adopted it by car and by the imder-
standing from the books he had been reading. All
his action was tentative, a piece of the city carried
out into the fields, and was the city still, and no
new fact, and could not inspire enthusiasm. Had
there been something latent in the man, a terrible

CHARACTER. 101

tm demonstrated genius agitating and embarrassing
his demeanor, we had watched for its advent. It
is not enough that the intellect should see the evils
and their remedy. We shall still postpone our ex-
istence, nor take the gTound to which we are en-
titled, whilst it is only a thought and not a spirit
that incites us. We have not yet served up to it.

These are properties of life, and another trait is
the notice of incessant growth. Men should be in-
telligent and earnest. They must also make us feel
that they have a controlling happy future opening
before them, whose early twilights already kindle
in the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and
misreported ; he cannot therefore wait to unravel
any man's blunders ; he is again on his road, add-
ing new powers and honors to his domain and new
claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you if
you have loitered about the old things and have not
kept your relation to him by adding to your wealth.
New actions are the only apologies and explana-
tions of old ones which the noble can bear to offer
or to receive. If your friend has displeased you,
you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has
already lost all memory of the passage, and has
doubled his power to serve you, and ere you can
rise up again will burden you with blessings.

We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevo-
lence that is only measured by its works. Love is

102 CHARACTER.

inexhaustible, and if its estate is wasted, its gran-
ary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and the man,
though he sleep, seems to purify the air and his
house to adorn the landscajDC and strengthen the
laws. People always recognize this difference. We
know who is benevolent, by quite other means than
the amount of subscription to soup-societies. It is
only low merits that can be enumerated. Fear,
when your friends say to you what you have done
well, and say it through ; but when they stand with
uncertain timid looks of respect and half-dislike,
and must suspend their judgment for years to come,
you may begin to hojje. Those who live to the fu-
ture must always appear selfish to those who live to
the present. Therefore it was droll in the good
Eiemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to
make out a list of his donations and good deeds, as,
so many hundred thalers given to Stilling, to Hegel,
to Tischbein ; a lucrative place found for Professor
Voss, a post under the Grand Duke for Herder,
a pension for Meyer, two professors recommended
to foreign universities ; &c., &c. The longest list
of sjDecifieations of benefit woidd look very short.
A man is a poor creature if he is to be measured
so. For all these of course are exceptions, and the
rule and hodiernal life of a good man is benefac-
tion. The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred
from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the

CHARACTER. 103

way in which he had spent his fortune. " Each
hon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a
million of my own money, the fortune I inherited,
my salary and the large income derived from my
writings for fifty years back, have been expended
to instruct me in what I now know. I have besides
seen," &c.

I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to
enumerate traits of this simple and rapid power,
and we are painting the lightning with charcoal ;
but in these long nights and vacations I like to
console myself so. Nothing but itself can copy it.
A word warm from the heart enriches me. I sur-
render at discretion. How death-cold is literary
genius before this fire of life ! These are the
touches that reanimate my heavy soul and give it
eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where
I thought myself poor, there was I most rich.
Thence comes a new intellectual exaltation, to be
again rebuked by some new exhibition of charac-
ter. Strange alternation of attraction and repul-
sion ! Character repudiates intellect, yet excites
it ; and character passes into thought, is published
so, and then is ashamed before new flashes of moral
worth.

Character is nature in the highest form. It is
of no use to ape it or to contend with it. Some-
what is possible of resistance, and of persistence,

104 CHARACTER.

and of creation, to this power, which will foil all
emulation.

This masterj^iece is best where no hands but na-
ture's have been laid on it. Care is taken that the
greatly-destined shall slip up into life in the shade,
with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch and blazon
every new thought, every blushing emotion of young
genius. Two persons lately, very young children
of the most high God, have given me occasion for
thought. When I explored the source of their
sanctity and charm for the imagination, it seemed
as if each answered, ' From my nonconformity ; I
never listened to your people's law, or to what they
call their gospel, and wasted my time. I was con-
tent with the simple rural poverty of my own ;
hence this sweetness ; my work never reminds you
of that ; — is pure of that.' And nature advertises
me in such persons that in democratic America she
wiU not be democratized. How cloistered and con-
stitutionally sequestered from the market and from
scandal ! It was only this morning that I sent
away some wild flowers of these wood-gods. They
are a relief from literature, — these fresh draughts
from the sources of thought and sentiment ; as we
read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first
lines of written prose and verse of a nation. How
captivating is their devotion to their favorite books,
whether ^schylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or Scott,

CHARACTER, 105

as feeling tliat tliey have a stake in that book ;
who touches that, touches them ; — and especially
the total solitude of the critic, the Patmos of
thought from which he writes, in unconsciousness
of any eyes that shall ever read this writing.
Could they dream on still, as angels, and not wake
to comparisons and to be flattered ! Yet some
natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and
wherever the vein of thought reaches down into
the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Sol-
emn friends will warn them of the danger of the
head's being turned by the flourish of trimipets,
but they can afford to smile. I remember the in-
dignation of an eloquent INIethodist at the kind ad-
monitions of a Doctor of Di\dnity, — 'My friend,
a man can neither be j)raised nor insulted.' But
forgive the counsels ; they are very natural. I
remember the thought which occurred to me when
some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to
America, was, Have you been victimized in being
brought hither ? — or, prior to that, answer me this,
' Are you victimizable ? '

As I have said. Nature keeps these sovereignties
in her own hands, and however pertly our sermons
and disciplines would divide some share of credit,
and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she
goes her own gait and puts the wisest in the wrong.
She makes very light of gospels and prophets, as

106 CHARACTER.

one who has a great many more to produce and no
excess of time to spare on any one. There is a chiss
of men, individuals of which appear at long inter-
vals, so eminently endowed with insight and virtue
that they have been unanimously saluted as divine^
and who seem to he an accumulation of that power
we consider. Divine persons are character born,
or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are
victory organized. They are usually received with
ill-will, because they are new and because they set
a bound to the exaggeration that has been made of
the personality of the last divine person. Nature
never rhymes her children, nor makes two men
alike. When we see a great man we fancy a re-
semblance to some historical person, and predict
the sequel of his character and fortune ; a result
which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever .
solve the problem of his character according to our
prejudice, but only in his own high unprecedented
way. Character wants room ; must not be crowded
on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got
in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It
needs perspective, as a great building. It may not,
probably does not, form relations rapidly ; and we
should not require rash explanation, either on the
nopular ethics, or on our own, of its action.

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think
the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and

CHARACTER. 107

blood. Every trait which the artist recorded in
stone he had seen in life, and better than his copy.
We have seen many counterfeits, but we are born
believers in great men. How easily we read in
old books, when men were few, of the smallest
action of the patriarchs. We require that a man
shoidd be so large and coliunnar in the landscape,
that it should deserve to be recorded that he arose,
and girded up his loins, and departed to such a
place. The most credible pictures are those of
majestic men who prevailed at their entrance, and
convinced the senses ; as happened to the eastern
magian who was sent to test the merits of Zertusht
or Zoroaster. When the Yunani sage arrived at
Balkh, the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a
day on which the Mobeds of every country should
assemble, and a golden chair was placed for the
Yunani sage. Then the beloved of Yezdam, the
jDrophet Zertusht, advanced into the midst of the as-
sembly. The Yunani sage, on seeing that chief, said,
" This form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but
truth can proceed from them." Plato said it was
impossible not to believe in the children of the
gods, " though they should speak without probable
or necessary arguments." I should think myself
very unhappy in my associates if I could not credit
the best things in history. " John Bradshaw," says
Milton, " appears like a consul, from whom the

108 CHARACTER.

fasces are not to depart with the year ; so that not
on the tribunal only, but throughout his life, you
would regard him as sitting in judgment uj^on
kings." I find it more credible, since it is anterior
information, that one man should know heaven, as
the Chinese say, than that so many men should
know the world. " The virtuous prince confronts
the gods, without any misgiving. He waits a him-
dred ages tUl a sage comes, and does not doubt.
He who confronts the gods, without any misgi\dng,
knows heaven ; he who waits a hundred ages until
a sage comes, without doubting, knows men. Hence
the \artuous prince moves, and for ages shows em-
pire the way." But there is no need to seek remote
examples. He is a dull observer whose experience
has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as
well as of chemistry. The coldest precisian cannot
go abroad ^vithout encountering inexplicable influ-
ences. One man fastens an eye on him and the
graves of the memory render up their dead ; the
secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to
betray must be yielded ; — another, and he cannot
speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their
cartilages ; the entrance of a friend adds grace,
boldness, and eloquence to him ; and there are per-
sons he cannot choose but remember, who gave a
transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled
another life in liis bosom.

j

CHARACTER. 109

What is so excellent as strict relations of amity,
when they spring from this deep root ? The suf-
ficient reply to the skeptic who doubts the power
and the furniture of man, is in that possibility of
joyful intercourse with persons, which makes the
faith and practice of all reasonable men. I know
nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the
profound good understanding which can subsist,
after much exchange of good offices, between two
virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himseK and
sure of his friend. It is a happiness which post-
pones all other gratifications, and makes politics,
and commerce, and churches, cheap. For when
men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a
shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds,
with accomplishments, it should be the festival of
nature which all things announce. Of such friend-
ship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all
other things are symbols of love. Those relations
to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned
the romances of youth, become, in the progress of
the character, the most solid enjoyment.

If it were possible to live in right relations
with men ! — if we could abstain from asking any-
thing of them, from asking their praise, or help, or
pity, and content us with compelling them through
the virtue of the eldest laws ! Could we not deal
with a few persons, — with one person, — after

110 CHARACTER.

the unwritten statutes, and make an experiment of
their efficacy ? Conltl we not pay our friend the
compliment of truth, of silence, of forbearing?
Need we be so eager to seek him ? If we are re-
lated, 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 to each other, and cannot other-
wise : —

"When each the other sliall avoid,
Shall each by each he most enjoyed.

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods
must seat themselves without seneschal in our Ol^'m-
pus, and as they can instal themselves 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 the best. All the great-
ness of each is kept back atid every foible in pain-
ful activity, as if the Olympians should meet to ex-
change snuff-boxes.

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying
scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or com-
mand behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a

CHARACTER. Ill

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

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind ; a
friend is the hope of the heart. Our beatitude
waits for the fulfilment of these two in one. The
ages are opening this moral force. All force is the
shadow or symbol of that. Poetry is joyful and
strong as it draws its inspiration thence. Men
write their names on the world as they are filled
with this. History has been mean ; our nations
have been mobs ; we have never seen a man : that
divine form we do not yet know, but only the dream
and prophecy of such : we do not know the majestic
manners which belong to him, which appease and
exalt the beholder. We shall one day see that the
most private is the most public energy, that quality
atones for quantity, and grandeur of character acts
in the dark, and succors them who never saw it.
What greatness has yet appeared is beginnings and
encouragements to us in this direction. The history
of those gods and saints which the world has writ-
ten and then worshipped, are documents of charac-
ter. The ages have exulted in the manners of a
youth who owed nothing to fortune, and who was
hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the

112 CHARACTER.

pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendor
around the facts of his death which has transfigured
every particidar into an universal symbol for the
eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our
highest fact. But the mind requires a victory to
the senses ; a force of character which will convert
judge, jury, soldier, and king ; which will rule ani-
mal and mineral virtues, and blend with the courses
of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral
agents.

If we cannot attain at a bound to these gran-
deurs, at least let us do them homage. In society,
high advantages are set down to the possessor as
disadvantages. It reqmres the more wariness in
our private estimates. I do not forgive in my
friends the failure to know a fine character and to
entertain it with thankful hospitality. When at
last that wliich we have always longed for is arrived
and shines on us with glad rays out of that far ce-
lestial land, then to be coarse, then to be critical
and treat such a visitant with the jabber and sus-
picion of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems
to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion, this
the right insanity, when the soid no longer knows
its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are
due. Is there any religion but this, to know that
wherever in the wide desert of being the holy senti-
ment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms

CHARACTER. 113

for me ? if none sees it, I see it ; I am aware, if I
alone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms,
I will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my
gloom and my folly and jokes. Nature is indulged
by the presence of this guest. There are many
eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and
household virtues ; there are many that can discern
Genius on his starry track, though the mob is in-
capable ; but when that love which is all-suffering,
all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to it-
self that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this
world sooner than soil its white hands by any com-
pliances, comes into our streets and houses, — only
the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the
only compliment they can pay it is to own it.

MANNERS.

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

Again yourselves compose,
And now put all the aptness on
Of Figure, that Proportion

Or Color can disclose ;
That if those silent arts were lost,
Design and Picture, they might boast

From you a newer ground,
Instructed by the heightening sense
Of dignity and reverence

In their true motions foimd."

Ben Jonson.

IV.

MANNERS.

Half the world, it is said, knows not how the
other half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw
the Feejee islanders getting their dinner off human
bones; and they are said to eat their own wives
and children. The husbandry of the modern in-
habitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is
philosophical to a fault. To set up their house-
keeping nothing is requisite but two or three
earthen j)ots, a stone to gTind meal, and a mat
which is the bed. The house, namely a tomb, is
ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass
through the roof, and there is no door, for there is
no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the
house do not please them, they walk out and enter
another, as there are several hundreds at their
command. " It is somewhat singidar," adds Bel-
zoni, to whom we owe this account, " to talk of
happiness among people who live in sepulchres,
among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation
which they know nothing of." In the deserts of

118 MANNERS.

Borgoo the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like
cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is
compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of
bats and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bor-
noos have no proper names ; individuals are called
after their height, thickness, or other accidental
qualit}'', and have nicknames merely. But the salt,
the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these
horrible regions are visited, find their way into
countries where the purchaser and consumer can
hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals
and man-stealers ; countries where man serves hmi-
self with metals, wood, stone, glass, gmn, cotton,
silk, and wool ; honors himself vnth. architecture ;
writes laws, and contrives to execute his will
through the hands of many nations ; and, espe-
cially, establishes a select society, running through
all the countries of intelligent men, a self-consti-
tuted aristocracy, or fraternity of the best, which,
without written law or exact usage of any kind,
perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted isl-
and and adopts and makes its own whatever per-
sonal beauty or extraordinary native endowment
anywhere appears.

"What fact more conspicuous in modern history
than the creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is
that, and loyalty is that, and, in English literature
half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip

MANNERS. 119

Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The
word gentleman., which, like the word Christian,
must hereafter characterize the present and the few
preceding centuries by the importance attached to
it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable
properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have
got associated with the name, but the steady inter-
est of mankind in it must be attributed to the valu-
able properties which it designates. An element
which unites all the most forcible persons of every
country, makes them intelligible and agreeable to
each other, and is somewhat so precise that it is at
once felt if an indi'ddual lack the masonic sigTi, —
cannot be any casual product, but must be an av-
erage result of the character and faculties univer-
sally found in men. It seems a certain permanent
average ; as the atmosphere is a permanent compo-
sition, whilst so many gases are combined only to
be decompounded. Comme ilfaut., is the French-
man's description of good society : as we must he.
It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of
precisely that class who have most vigor, who take
the lead in the world of this hour, and though far
from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and
highest tone of human feeling, it is as good as the
whole society permits it to be. It is made of the
spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a
compound result into which every great force en-

120 MANNERS.

ters as an ingredient, namely virtue, wit, beauty,
wealth, and power.

There is something equivocal in all the words in
use to express the excellence of manners and so-
cial cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional,
and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the
cause. The word gentleman has not any correla-
tive abstract to express the quality. Gentility is
mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must
keep alive in the vernacular the distinction be-
tween yas^io??, a word of narrow and often sinister
meaning, and the heroic character which the gentle-
man imports. The usual words, however, must be
respected ; they will be found to contain the root
of the matter. The point of distinction in all this
class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and
the like, is that the flower and fruit, not the grain
of the tree, are contemplated. It is beauty which
is the aim this time, and not worth. The result is
now in question, although our words intimate well
enough the popular feeling that the appearance
supposes a substance. The gentleman is a man of
truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that
lordship in his behavior ; not in any manner de-
pendent and servile, either on persons, or opinions,
or possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real
force, the word denotes good -nature or benevo-
lence: manhood first, and then gentleness. The

MANNERS. 121

popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease
and fortune ; but that is a natural result of per-
sonal force and love, that they should possess and
dispense the goods of the world. In times of
violence, every eminent person must fall in with
many opportimities to approve his stoutness and
worth ; therefore every man's name that emerged
at all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in
our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal
force never goes out of fashion. That is still par-
amount to-day, and in the moving crowd of good
society the men of valor and reality are known
and rise to their natural place. The competition
is transferred from war to politics and trade, but
the personal force appears readily enough in these
new arenas.

Power first, or no leading class. In politics and
in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise
than talkers and clerks. God knows that all sorts
of gentlemen knock at the door ; but whenever
used in strictness and with any emphasis, the name
will be found to point at original energy. It de-
scribes a man standing in his own right and work-
ing after imtaught methods. In a good lord there
must first be a good animal, at least to the extent
of yielding the incomparable advantage of animal
spirits. The ruling class must have more, but
they must have these, giving in every company the

122 MANNERS.

sense of power, which makes things easy to he
done which daunt the wise. The society of the en-
ergetic 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 a sea-fight.
The intellect relies on memory to make some sup-
plies to face these extemporaneous squadrons. But
memory is a base mendicant with basket and
badge, in the presence of these sudden masters.
The rulers of society must be up to the work of the
world, and equal to their versatile office : men of
the right Caesarian pattern, who have great range of
affinity. I am far from belie\ang the tunid maxim
of Lord Falkland (" that for ceremony there must
go two to it ; since a bold fellow will go through
the cunningest forms"), and am of oj)inion that
the gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are
not to be broken through ; and only that plenteous
nature is rightfid master which is the comi)lenient
of whatever person it converses with. My gentle-
man gives the law where he is ; he will outpray
saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field,
and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good
company for pirates and good with academicians ;
so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him ;
he has the private entrance to all minds, and I
could as easily exclude myself, as him. The fa^

MANNERS. 123

moiis gentlemen of Asia and Europe have been of
tliis strong type ; Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius
Csesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lordli-
est personages. They sat very carelessly in their
chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value
any condition at a high rate.

A plentifid fortime is reckoned necessary, in the
popular judgment, to the completion of this man of
the world ; and it is a material deputy which walks
through the dance which the first has led. Money
is not essential, but this wide affinity is, which tran-
scends the habits of clique and caste and makes it-
self felt by men of all classes. If the aristocrat is
only valid in fashionable circles and not with truck-
men, he will never be a leader in fashion ; and if
the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms
with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall
perceive that he is already really of his own or-
der, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates,
and Epamiuondas, are gentlemen of the best blood
who have chosen the condition of poverty when
that of wealth was equally open to them. I use
these old names, but the men I speak of are my
contemporaries. Fortune will not supply to every
generation one of these well - appointed knights,
but every collection of men furnishes some exam-
ple of the class; and the politics of this country,
and the trade of every town, are controlled by these

124 MANNERS.

hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention
to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts
them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their
action popular.

The manners of this class are observed and
caught with devotion by men of taste. The asso-
ciation of these masters with each other and Avith
men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreea-
ble and stimulating. The good forms, the happiest
expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By
swift consent everything superfluous is di'opiDcd,
everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners
show themselves formidable to the uncidtivated
man. They are a subtler science of defence to
parry and intimidate ; but once matched by the
skill of the other party, they drop the point of the
sword, — points and fences disappear, and the youth
finds himself in a more transparent atmosj)here,
wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a
misunderstanding rises between the players. Man-
ners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments
and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our
dealing and conversation as a railway aids travel-
ling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of
the road and leaving nothing to be conquered but
pure space. These forms very soon become fixed,
and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the
more heed that it becomes a badge of social and

MANNERS. 125

civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fasliion, an
equivocal semblance, the most puissant, 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 the exclusive and polished circles. The
last are always filled or filling from the first. The
strong men usually give some allowance even to
the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find
in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer
of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the Fau-
bourg St. Germain ; doubtless with the feeling that
fashion is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion,
though in a strange way, represents all manly vir-
tue. It is virtue gone to seed : it is a kind of post-
humous honor. It does not often caress the great,
but the children of the great : it is a hall of the
Past. It usually sets its face against the great of
this hour. Great men are not commonly in its
halls ; they are absent in the field : they are work-
ing, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their
children ; of those who through the value and vir-
tue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name,
marks of distinction, means of cultivation and gen-
erosity, and in their physical organization a certain
health and excellence which secure to them, if not
the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy.

126 MANNERS.

The class of power, tlie working heroes, the Cortez,
the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festiv-
ity and permanent celebration of such as they ; that
fashion is funded talent ; is Mexico, Marengo, and
Trafalgar beaten out thin ; that the brilliant names
of fashion run back to just such busy names as their
own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the sowers,
their sons shall be the reapers, and tJieir sons, in
the ordinary course of things, must yield the pos-
session of the harvest to new competitors with
keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is re-
cruited from the comitry. In the year 1805, it is
said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbe-
cile. The city would have died out, rotted, and
ex23loded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from
the fields. It is only country which came to to\vn
day before yesterday that is city and court to-day.

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable re-
sults. These mutual selections are indestructible.
If they provoke anger in the least favored class,
and the excluded majority revenge themselves on
the excluding minority by the strong hand and
kill them, at once a new class finds itself at the top,
as certainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk : and
if the people should destroy class after class, imtil
two men only were left, one of these would be the
leader and would be involuntarily served and cop-
ied by the other. You may keep this nnnority out

MANNERS. 127

fif sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life,
and is one of the estates of the reahn. I am the
more struck with this tenacity, when I see its woi^k.
It respects the administration of such unimportant
matters, that we should not look for any dm-ability
in its rule. We sometimes meet men imder some
strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a
religious movement, and feel that the moral senti-
ment rules man and nature. We think all other
distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this
of caste or fashion for example ; yet come from
year to year and see how permanent that is, in this
Boston or New York life of man, where too it has
not the least countenance from the law of the land.
Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impas-
sable line. Here are associations whose ties go
over and under and through it, a meeting of mer-
chants, a military corps, a college class, a fire-club,
a professional association, a political, a religious
convention ; — the persons seem to draw insepara-
bly near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its
members will not in the year meet again. Each
returns to his degree in the scale of good society,
porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen.
The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion
may be objectless, but the nature of this union and
selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental.
Each man's rank in that perfect graduation de-

128 MANNERS.

pends on some symmetry in liis structure or some
agreement in liis structure to the symmetry of so-
ciety. Its doors unbar instantaneously to a natu-
ral claim of their owti kind. A natural gentleman
finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician
out who has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion un-
derstands itself ; good-breeding and personal supe-
riority of whatever country readily fraternize with
those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes
have distinguished themselves in London and Paris
by the purity of their tournure.

To say what good of fashion we can, it rests on
reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders ;
to exclude and mystify pretenders and send them
into everlasting ' Coventry,' is its delight. AVe
contemn in turn every other gift of men of the
world; but the habit even in little and the least
matters of not appealing to any but our own sense
of propriety, constitutes the foimdation of all chiv-
alry. There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so
it be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not
occasionally adopt and give it the freedom of its
saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if
it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded
ring. But so will Jock the teamster pass, in some
crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, as
long as his head is not giddy with the new circima-
stance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in

MANNERS. 129

waltzes and cotillons. For there Is nothing settled
in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the
energy of the individual. The maiden at her first
ball, the countryman at a city dinner, believes that
there is a ritual according to which every act and
compliment must be performed, or the failing party
must be cast out of this presence. Later they learn
that good sense and character make their own forms
every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or
refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with
children on the floor, or stand on their head, or
what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way ; and
that strong will is always in fashion, let who will
be unfashionable. All that fashion demands is
composure and seK-content. A circle of men per-
fectly well-bred woidd be a company of sensible
persons in which every man's native manners and
character appeared. If the fashionist have not this
quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of self-
reliance that we excuse in a man many sins if he
will show us a complete satisfaction in his position,
which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's
good opinion. But any deference to some eminent
man or woman of the world, forfeits all pri\dlege
of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing
to do with him ; I will speak with his master. A
man should not go where he cannot carry his whole
sphere or society with him, — not bodily, the whole

130 MANNERS.

circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He
should preserve in a new comj)any the same atti-
tude of mind and reality of relation which his daily
associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best
beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club.
" If you could see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on !

" But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his

belongings in some fashion, if not added as honor,
then severed as disgrace.

There will always be in society certain persons
who are mercuries of its approbation, and whose
glance will at any time determine for the curious
their standing in the world. These are the cham-
berlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness
as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and
allow them all their privilege. They are clear in
their office, nor could they be thus formidable with-
out their own merits. But do not measure the im-
portance of this class by their pretension, or imag-
ine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and
shame. They pass also at their just rate ; for how
can they otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort
of herald's office for the sifting of character?

As the first thing man requires of man is reality,
so that appears in all the forms of society. We
pointedly, and by name, introduce the parties to
each other. Know you l^efore all heaven and earth,
that this is Andrew, and this is Gregory, — they

MANNERS. 131

look each other in the eye ; they grasp each other's
hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is a
great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his
eyes look straight forward, and he assures the other
party, first of all, that he has been met. For what
is it that we seek, in so many visits and hospitali'
ties ? Is it your drajjeries, pictures, and decora-
tions? Or do we not insatiably ask. Was a man
in the house ? I may easily go into a great house-
hold where there is much substance, excellent pro-
vision for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not
encounter there any Amphitryon who shall subor-
dinate these appendages. I may go into a cottage,
and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I
have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. It
was therefore a very natural point of old feudal
etiquette that a gentleman who received a visit,
though it were of his sovereign, should not leave
his roof, but shoiJd wait his arrival at the door of
his house. No house, though it were the Tuileries
or the Esciunal, is good for anything without a
master. And yet we are not often gratified by this
hospitality. Every body we know surrounds him-
seK with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gar-
dens, equipage and all manner of toys, as screens
to interpose between himself and his guest. Does
it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive na-
ture, and dreaded nothing so much as a full ren'

132 MANNERS.

contre front to front with his fellow ? It were un-
merciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of these
screens, which are of eminent convenience, whether
the guest is too great or too little. We call to-
gether many friends who keep each other in play,
or by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the young
people, and guard our retirement. Or if perchance
a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose
eye we have no care to stand, then again we run
to our cm-tain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the
voice of the Lord God in the garden. Cardinal
Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, defended him-
self from the glances of Napoleon by an immense
pair of green spectacles. Napoleon remarked them,
and speedily managed to rally them off : and yet
Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough, with
eight hundred thousand troops at his back, to face
a pair of f reebom eyes, but fenced himself with eti-
quette and within triple barriers of reserve ; and,
as all the world knows from Madame de Stael, was
wont, when he foimd himself observed, to discharge
his face of all expression. But emperors and rich
men are by no means the most sldlful masters of
good manners. No rentroll nor army-list can dig-
nify skidking and dissimulation ; and the first point
of courtesy must always be truth, as really aU the
forms of good breeding point that way.

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

MANNERS. 133

lation, Montaigne's account of his journey into
Italy, and am struck with nothing more agreeably
than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His
arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of
France, is an event of some consequence. Wher-
ever he goes he pays a visit to whatever prince or
gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty
to himself and to civilization. When he leaves any
house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he
causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a per-
petual sign to the house, as was the custom of gen-
tlemen.

The complement of this graceful seK-respect, and
that of all the points of good breeding I most re-
quire and insist upon, is deference. I like that
every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I
prefer a tendency to stateliness to an excess of fel-
lowship. Let the incommunicable objects of nature
and the metaphysical isolation of man teach us in-
dependence. Let us not be too much acquainted.
I would have a man enter his house through a hall
filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he
might not want the hint of tranquillity and seK-
poise. We should meet each morning as from for-
eign countries, and, spending the day together,
shoidd depart at night, as into foreigii countries.
In all things I would have the island of a man in-
violate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking fi-om

134 MANNERS.

peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of
affection need invade this religion. This is myrrb
and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers
should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too
much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It
is easy to push tliis deference to a Chinese etiquette ;
but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate
fine qualities. A ge^itleman makes no noise ; a
lady is serene. Proportionate is our disgust at
those invaders who fill a studious house wath blast
and rmming, to seciu'e some paltry convenience.
Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his
neighbor's needs. Must we have a good understand-
ing with one another's palates ? as foolish people
who have lived long together know when each wants
salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes
for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for
sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to
hold out his plate as if I knew already. Every nat-
ural function can be dignified by deliberation and
privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves. The com-
pliments and ceremonies of our breeding should re-
call, however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny.
The flower of courtesy does not very well bide
handling, but if Ave dare to open another leaf and
explore what parts go to its conformation, we shall
find also an intellectual quality. To the leaders of
men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart

MANNERS. 135

must furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is
usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too
coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage
and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good-
breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
We imperatively require a perception of, and a
homage to beauty in our companions. Other vir-
tues are in request in the field and workyard, but a
certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those
we sit with. I could better eat with one who did
not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven
and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the
world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.
The same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if
with less rigor, into all parts of life. The average
spirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting
under certain limitations and to certain ends. It
entertains every natural gift. Social in its natm-e,
it respects everything which tends to unite men. It
delights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly
the love of measure or proportion. The person who
screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses
with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If
you wish to be loved, love measure. You must
have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will
hide the want of measure. This perception comes
in to polish and perfect the parts of the social in-
Btriunent. Society will pardon much to genius and

136 MANNERS.

special gifts, "but, being in its nature a convention,
it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to
coming together. That makes the good and bad of
manners, namely what helps or hinders fellowship.
For fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative ;
not good sense private, but good sense entertaining
company. It hates corners and sharp points of
character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary,
and gloomy people ; hates whatever can interfere
with total blending of parties ; whilst it values all
peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing,
which can consist with good fellowship. And be-
sides the general infusion of wit to heighten civil-
it}^, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever
welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to
its ride and its credit.

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival,
but it must be tempered and shaded, or that will
also offend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, and
quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick
perceptions. One may be too pimctual and too
precise. He must leave the omniscience of busi-
ness at the door, when he comes into the palace of
beauty. Society loves Creole natures, and sleej^y
languishing manners, so that they cover sense,
gi'ace and good-will: the air of drowsy strength,
which disarms criticism ; perhaps because such a
person seems to reserve himself for the best of the

MANNERS. 137

game, and not spend himself on surfaces ; an Ignor-
ing eye, which does not see the annoyances, shifts,
and inconveniences that cloud the brow and smother
the voice of the sensitive.

Therefore besides personal force and so much
perception as constitutes imerring taste, society de-
mands in its patrician class another element al-
ready intimated, which it significantly terms good-
nature,— expressing all degrees of generosity, from
the lowest willingness and facidty to oblige, up to
the heights of magnanimity and love. Insight we
must have, or we shall run against one another and
miss the way to our food ; but Intellect is selfish
and barren. The secret of success in society is a
certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is
not happy in the company cannot find any word
in his memory that will fit the occasion. All his
information is a little impertinent. A man who is
happy there, finds in every turn of the conversa^-
tion equally lucky occasions for the introduction of
that which he has to say. The favorites of society,
and what it calls whole souls, are able men and of
more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable
egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the com-
pany ; contented and contenting, at a marriage or a
funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shoot-
ing-match. England, which is rich in gentlemen,
furnished, in the beginning of the present century,

138 MANNERS.

a good model of that genius which the world loves,
in Mr. Fox, who added to his great abilities the
most social disposition and real love of men. Par-
liamentary history has few better passages than the
debate in which Burke and Fox separated in the
House of Commons ; when Fox urged on his old
friend the claims of old friendship with such ten-
derness that the house was moved to tears. An-
other anecdote is so close to my matter, that I must
hazard the story. A tradesman who had long
dunned liim for a note of three hundred guineas,
found him one day counting gold, and demanded
payment : — " No," said Fox, " I owe this money
to Sheridan ; it is a debt of honor ; if an accident
should happen to me, he has nothing to show."
" Then," said the creditor, " I change my debt into
a debt of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox
thanlicd the man for his confidence and paid him,
saying, " his debt was of older standing, and Sheri-
dan must wait." Lover of liberty, friend of the
Hindoo, friend of the African slave, he possessed a
great personal popularity; and Napoleon said of
him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805,
" Mr. Fox will always hold the first place in an
assembly at the Tuileries."

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of
courtesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as its
foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion rises to

MANNERS. 139

cast a species of derision on what we say. But I
will neither be driven from some allowance to Fash-
ion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief
that love is the basis of courtesy. We must obtain
that, if we can ; but by all means we must affirm
tins. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp
contrasts. Fashion, which affects to be honor, is
often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code.
Yet so long as it is the highest circle in the imagi-
nation of the best heads on the planet, there is
something necessary and excellent in it ; for it is
not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the
dupes of anything preposterous ; and the respect
which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and
sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which de-
tails of high life are read, betray the universality
of the love of cidtivated manners. I know that a
comic disparity woidd be felt, if we should enter
the acknowledged ' first circles ' and apply these
terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit to
the individuals actually found there. Monarchs
and heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not.
Fashion has many classes and many niles of probar
tion and admission, and not the best alone. There
is not only the right of conquest, which genius pre-
tends,— the individual demonstrating his natural
aristocracy best of the best ; — but less claims will
pass for the time ; for Fashion loves lions, and

140 3IANNERS.

points like Circe to her horned company. This
gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark ;
and that is my Lord Ride, who came yesterday
from Bagdat ; here is Captain Friese, from Cape
Turnagain ; and Captain Symmes, from the inte-
rior of the earth j and Monsieur Jovaire, who came
do\Mi this morning in a balloon ; Mr. Hobnail, the
reformer ; and Reverend Jul Bat, who has con-
verted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school ;
and Signor Torre del Greco, who extinguished Ve-
suvius by pouring into it the Bay of Naples ; Spahi,
the Persian ambassador ; and Tul "Wil Shan, the
exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new
moon. — But these are monsters of one day, and
to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and
dens ; for in these rooms every chair is waited for.
The artist, the scholar, and, in general, the clerisy,
win their way up into these places and get repre-
sented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest.
Another mode is to pass through all the degrees,
spending a year and a day in St. Michael's Square,
being steeped in Cologne water, and perfumed, and
dined, and introduced, and properly groimded in
all the biograjDhy and politics and anecdotes of the
boudoirs.

Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let
there be gi'otesque sculpture about the gates and
offices of temples. Let the creed and command-

MANNERS. 141

ments even have the saucy homage of parody. The
forms of politeness universally express benevolence
in superlative clegTees. What if they are in the
mouths of selfish men, and used as means of self-
ishness ? What if the false gentleman almost
bows the true out of the world ? What if the false
gentleman contrives so to address his companion
as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse,
and also to make them feel excluded ? Real ser-
vice wall not lose its nobleness. All generosity is
not merely French and sentimental; nor is it to
be concealed that living blood and a passion of
kindness does at last distinguish God's gentleman
from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout
is not wholly unintelligible to the present age :
" Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend
and persuaded his enemy : what his mouth ate, his
hand paid for : what his servants robbed, he re-
stored : if a woman gave him pleasure, he sup-
ported her in pain : he never forgot his children ;
and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his
whole body." Even the line of heroes is not ut-
terly extinct. There is still ever some admirable
person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who
jumps in to rescue a drowning man ; there is still
some absurd inventor of charities ; some guide and
comforter of runaway slaves ; some friend of Po-
land ; some Philhellene ; some fanatic who plants

142 MANNERS.

shade-trees for the second and third generation,
and orchards when he is grown old ; some well-con-
cealed piety ; some just man happy in an ill fame ;
some youth ashamed of the favors of fortime and
imj)atiently casting them on other shoidders. And
these are the centres of society, on which it returns
for fresh impidses. These are the creators of
Fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty
of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are,
in the theory, the doctors and apostles of tliis
church : ScijDio, and the Cid, and Sir Philij) Sid-
ney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant
heart who worshipped Beauty by word and by
deed. The persons who constitute the natural
aristocracy are not found in the actual aristocracy,
or only on its edge ; as the chemical energy of the
spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the
spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the senes-
chals, who do not know their sovereign when he
appears. The theory of society supj)oses the exist-
ence and sovereignty of these. It divines afar off
their coming. It says with the elder gods, —

" As Heaven and Earth are fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth,
In form and shape compact and beautiful;
So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads;
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us.

MANNERS. 143

And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness :

for, 't is the eternal law,

That first in beauty shall be first in might."

Therefore, witliiii the ethnical circle of good so-
ciety there is a narrower and higher circle, concen-
tration of its light, and flower of courtesy, to which
there is always a tacit appeal of pride and refer-
ence, as to its inner and imperial court ; the parlia-
ment of love and chivalry. And this is constituted
of those persons in whom heroic dispositions are
native ; with the love of beauty, the delight in so-
ciety, and the power to embellish the passing day.
If the indi\aduals who compose the purest circles of
aristocracy in Europe, the giiarded blood of cen-
turies, should pass in review, in such manner as
that we could at leisure and critically inspect their
beha\aor, we might find no gentleman and no lady;
for although excellent specimens of coui'tesy and
high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage,
in the particulars we should detect offence. Be-
cause elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.
There must be romance of character, or the most
fastidious exclusion of impertinencies will not avail.
It miLst be genius wliich takes that direction : it
must be not courteous, but courtesy. High be-
ha\aor is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott is
praised for the fidelity with which he painted the

144 MANNERS.

demeanor and conversation of the superior classes.
Certainly, kings and queens, nobles and great la-
dies, had some right to complain of the absurdity
that had been put in their mouths before the days
of Waverley; but neither does Scott's dialogue
bear criticism. His lords brave each other in
smart epigi'ammatic speeches, but the dialogue is
in costume, 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 easUy great, and he adds to so many titles
that of being the best-bred man in England and
in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we
are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners,
in the presence of a man or woman who have no
bar in their nature, but whose character emanates
freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful
form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful
behavior is better than a beautifid form : it gives
a higher pleasure than statues or pictures ; it is the
finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing
in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the
moral quality radiating from his countenance he
may abolish aU considerations of magnitude, and
in his manners equal the majesty of the world. I
have seen an individual whose manners, though
wholly within the conventions of elegant society,
were never learned there, but were original and

MANNERS. 145

commanding and held out protection and prosper-
ity ; one who did not need the aid of a court-suit,
but carried the holiday in his eye ; who exhilarated
the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes
of existence; who shook off the captivity of eti-
quette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured
and free as Robin Hood ; yet with the port of an
emperor, if need be, — calm, serious, and fit to
stand the gaze of millions.

The open air and the fields, the street and pub-
lic chambers are the places where Man executes his
will ; let him yield or divide the sceptre at the door
of the house. Woman, with her instinct of behav-
ior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any
coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of
that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment
which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall.
Our American institutions have been friendly to
her, and at this moment I esteem it a chief felicity
of this country, that it excels in women. A cer-
tain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the
men may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of
Woman's Rights. Certainly let her be as much
better placed in the laws and in social forms as the
most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so en-
tirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I
believe only lierseK can show iis how she shall be
served. The wonderful generosity of her senti-

YOL. lU. 10

146 MANNERS.

ments raises her at times into heroical and godlike
regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno,
or Poljnnnia; and by the firmness with which she
treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest
calculators that another road exists than that which
their feet know. But besides those who make
good in our imagination the place of muses and of
Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our
vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the
w^ne runs over and fills the house with perfume ;
who inspire us with courtesy ; w^ho unloose our
tongues and we speak ; who anoint our eyes and
we see ? We say things we never thought to have
said ; for once, our walls of habitual reserve van-
ished and left us at large ; we w- ere children play-
ing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep
us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for
weeks, and we shall be sunny poets and will write
out in many-colored words the romance that you
are. Was it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his
Persian Lilla, She was an elemental force, and as-
tonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her
day after day radiating, every instant, redundant
joy and grace on all around her ? She was a sol-
vent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous per-
sons into one society : like air or water, an element
of such a gi'cat range of affinities that it combines
readily with a thousand substances. Where she is

MANNERS. 147

present all others will be more than they are wont.
She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she
did, became her. She had too much sympathy and
desire to please, than that you could say her man-
ners were marked with dignity, yet no princess
could sm'pass her clear and erect demeanor on each
occasion. She did not study the Persian grammar,
nor the books of the seven poets, but all the poems
of the seven seemed to be written upon her. For
though the bias of her nature was not to thought,
but to sjanpathy, yet was she so perfect in her own
nature as to meet intellectual persons by the ful-
ness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments ;
believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with
all, all would show themselves noble.

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or
Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to
those who look at the contemporary facts for sci-
ence or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant
to all spectators. The constitution of our society
makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious youth
who have not found their names enrolled in its
Golden Book, and whom it has excluded from its
coveted honors and privileges. They have yet to
learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and rel-
ative : it is great by their allowance ; its proudest
gates v.'ill fly open at the approach of their com*age

148 MANNERS.

and virtue. For the present distress, however, of
those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyr-
annies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To
remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most
four, ^vill commonly relieve the most extreme sus-
ceptibility. For the advantages which fashion val-
ues are plants which thrive in very confined locali-
ties, in a few streets namely. Out of this precinct
they go for nothing ; are of no use in the farm, in
the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial so-
ciety, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in
friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.

But we have lingered long enough in these
painted courts. The worth of the thing signified
must vindicate our taste for the emblem. Every-
thing that is called fashion and courtesy hum-
bles itself before the cause and foimtain of honor,
creator of titles and dignities, namely the heart
of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire,
which, in all comitries and contingencies, will work
after its kind and conquer and exj)and all that
approaches it. Tliis gives new meanings to every
fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no gran-
deur but its own. What is rich ? Are you rich
enough to help anybody ? to succor the unfashion-
able and the eccentric? rich enough to make the
Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his con-
sul's paper which commends him " To the chai'i-

3IANNERS. 149

table," the swarthy Italian with his few broken
words o£ English, the lame pauper hunted, by over-
seers from town to towTi, even the poor insane or
besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble ex-
ception of your presence and your house from the
general bleakness and stoniness ; to make such feel
that they were greeted with a voice which made
them both remember and hope ? "VYhat is vulgar
but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive
reasons ? What is gentle, but to aUow it, and give
their heart and yoiu's one holiday from the national
caution ? Without the rich heart, "wealth is an
ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz could not afford
to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt
at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad and
deep that although his speech was so bold and free
with the Koran as to disgust all the dervishes, yet
was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane
man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who
had been mutilated imder a vow, or had a pet mad-
ness in his brain, but fled at once to him ; that great
heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the cen-
tre of the country, that it seemed as if the instinct
of all sufferers drew them to his side. And the
madness which he harbored he did not share. Is
noi this to be rich ? this only to be rightly rich ?

But I shall hear without pain that I play the
courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not

150 3fANNERS.

well understand. It is easy to see that what is
called by distinction society and fashion has good
laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary,
and much that is absurd. Too good for banning,
and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tra-
dition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to
settle its character. ' I overheard Jove, one day,'
said Silenus, ' talking of destroying the earth ; he
said it had failed ; they were all rogues and vixens,
who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days
succeeded each other. Minerva said she hoj^ed not ;
they were only ridicidous little creatures, with this
odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeter-
minate aspect, seen far or seen near ; if you called
them bad, they would appear so; if you called
them good, they would appear so ; and there was
no one person or action among them wliich would
not puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus, to
Imow whether it was fundamentally bad or good.*

GIFTS.

Gifts of one who loved me, -»
'T was high time they cqine ;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.

V.

GIFTS.

It is said that the world is in a state of bank-
ruptcy; that the world owes the world more than
the world can pay, and ought to go into chancery
and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency,
which involves in some sort all the population, to
be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christ-
mas and New Year and other times, in bestowing
gifts ; since it is always so jileasant to be generous,
though very vexatious to pay debts. But the im-
pediment lies in the choosing. If at any time it
comes into my head that a present is due from me
to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, mitil the
opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are al-
ways fit presents ; flowers, because they are a proud
assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the
utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast
with the somewhat stem countenance of ordinary
nature : they are like music heard out of a work-
house. Nature does not cocker us ; we are chil-
dren, not pets ; she is not fond ; everything is

154 GIFTS.

dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe uni-
versal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like
the frolic and interference of love and beauty.
Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though
we are not deceived by it, because it shows that
we are of importance enough to be courted. Some-
thing like that pleasure, the flowers give us : what
am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed ?
Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the
flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic val-
ues being attached to them. If a man should send
to me to come a hundred miles to visit him and
shoidd set before me a basket of fine summer-fruit,
I should think there was some proportion between
the labor and the reward.

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences
and beauty every day, and one is glad when an im-
perative leaves him no option ; since if the man at
the door have no shoes, you have not to consider
whether you could procure him a paint-box. And
as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or
drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it
is always a great satisfaction to supply these fii'st
wants. Necessity does everything well. In our con-
dition of universal dependence it seems heroic to
let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and
to give all that is asked, though at great inconven-
ience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to

GIFTS. 155

leave to others the office of punishing him. I can
think of many parts I should prefer playing to that
of the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the
rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed,
is that we might convey to some person that which
properly belonged to his character, and was easily
associated with him in thought. But our tokens
of compliment and love are for the most part bar-
barous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but
apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of
thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the
poet brings his poem ; the shepherd, his lamb ; the
farmer, corn ; the miner, a gem ; the sailor, coral
and shells ; the painter, his picture ; the girl, a
handkerchief of her o^vti sewino-. This is rig-ht and
pleasing, for it restores society in so far to the pri-
mary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed
in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of
his merifc. But it is a cold lifeless business when
you go to the shops to buy me something which
does not represent your life and talent, but a gold-
smith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who
represent kings, and a false state of property, to
make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind
of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-
mail.

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which
requii-es careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not

156 GIFTS.

the office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you
give tliem ? We wish to be self -sustained. We do
not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us
is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive
anything from love, for that is a way of receiving
it from ourselves ; but not from any one who as-
sumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat
which we eat, because there seems something of de-
grading 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 society if it do not give us, besides
earth and fire and water, opportunity, love, rever-
ence, and objects of veneration.

He is a good man who can receive a gift well.
We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both
emotions are unbecoming. Some violence I think
is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or
grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence
is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do
not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported ;
and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should
be ashamed that the donor should read my heart,
and see that I love his commodity, and not him.
The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the
giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto

GIFTS. 157

him. When the waters are at level, then my goods
pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all
mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this
pot o£ oil or this flagon of wine when all your oil
and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift
seems to deny ? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not
useful things, for gifts. This giving is flat usurpa-
tion, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrate-
ful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at aU
considering the value of the gift but looking back
to the greater store it was taken from, — I rather
sympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger
of my lord Timon. For the expectation of gratitude
is mean, and is continually pimished by the total in-
sensibility of the obliged person. It is a great hap-
piness to get off without injury and heart-burning
from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by
you. It is a very onerous business, this of being
served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you
a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that
which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never
thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your bene-
factors."

The reason of these discords I conceive to be that
there is no commensurability between a man and
any gift. You cannot give anything to a magnani-
mous person. After you have served him he at
once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. The

158 GIFTS.

ser\'ice a man renders his friend Is trivial and self-
ish compared with the serWee he knows his friend
stood in readiness to yield him, alilce before he had
begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared
with that good-wdU I bear my friend, the benefit it is
in my power to render him seems small. Besides,
our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so
incidental and at random that we can seldom hear
the acknowledgments of any person who would
thank us for a benefit, without some shame and
humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke,
but must be content with an oblique one ; we sel-
dom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct bene-
fit which is directly received. But rectitude scat-
ters favors on every side without knowing it, and
receives with wonder the thanks of all people.

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty
of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to
whom we must not affect to prescribe. Let him
give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There
are persons from whom we always expect faiiy-
tokens ; let us not cease to expect them. This is
prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal
rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be
bought and sold. The best of hospitality and of
generosity is also not in the will, but in fate. I find
that I am not much to you ; you do not need me ;
you do not feel me ; then am I thrust out of doors,

GIFTS. 1.59

though you proffer me house and lands. No ser-
vices are of any value, but only likeness. When I
have attempted to join myself to others by services,
it proved an intellectual trick, — no more. They
eat your service like apples, and leave you out.
But love them, and they feel you and delight in
you all the time.

I

NATURE.

The rounded world is fair to see,

Nine times folded in mystery :

Though baffled seers cannot impart

The secret of its laboring heart,

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.

Spirit that lurks each form within

Beckons to spirit of its kin ;

Self-kindled every atom glows.

And hints the future which it owes.

NATURE.

Theee are days whicli occur in tliis climate, at
almost any season of the year, whereiti the world
reaches its perfection ; when the air, the heavenly
bodies and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature
would indulge her offspring ; when, in these bleak
upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that
we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we
bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba ;
when everything that has life gives sign of satis-
faction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem
to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcy-
ons may be looked for with a little more assurance
in that pure October weather which we distinguish
by the name of the Indian smnmer. The day, im-
measurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and
warm wide fields. To have lived through all its
sunny hours, seems longevity enough. The soli-
tary places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates
of the forest, the surprised man of the world is
forced to leave his city estimates of great and

164 NATURE.

small, Mase and foolish. The knapsack of custom
falls off his back with the first step he takes into
these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames
our religions, and reality which discredits our he-
roes. Here we find Nature to be the circumstance
which dwarfs every other cii'cumstance, and judges
like a god all men that come to her. We have
crept out of our close and crowded houses into
the night and morning, and we see what majes-
tic beauties daily wi*ap us in their bosom. How
willingly we would escape the barriers which ren-
der them comparatively unpotent, escape the so-
phistication and second thought, and suffer nature
to intrance us. The tempered light of the woods
is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and
heroic. The anciently - reported spells of these
places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks,
and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye.
The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to
live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles.
Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated
on the divine sky and the immortal year. How
easily we might walk onward into the opening land-
scape, absorbed by new pictures and by thoughts
fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the rec-
ollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all
memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present,
and we were led in triumph by nature.

NATURE. 165

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober
and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and
native to us. We come to our own, and make
friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter
of the schools would persuade us to despise. We
never can part with it ; the mind loves its old home %
as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to
our eyes and hands and feet. It is firm water ; it
is cold flame ; what health, what affinity ! Ever
an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother
when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in
this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us,
and shames us out of our nonsense. Cities give
not the human senses room enough. We go out
daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon,
and require so much scope, just as we need water
for our bath. There are all degrees of natural in-
fluence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up
to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the im-
agination 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 there
is the sublime moral of autiunn and of noon. We
nestle in nature, and draw our living as parasites
from her roots and grains, and we receive glances
from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude
and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith
is the point in which romance and reality meet. I

166 NATURE.

think if we should be rapt away into all that we
dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel
and Uriel, the upjser sky woidd be all that would
remain of our furniture.

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in
which we have given heed to some natural object.
The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to
each crystal its perfect form ; the blowing of sleet
over a wide sheet of water, and over plains ; the
waving ryefield ; the mimic waving of acres of
houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and
ripple before the eye ; the reflections of trees and
flowers in glassy lakes ; the musical steaming odor-
ous south wind, which converts all trees to wind-
harps ; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in
the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the
walls and faces in the sittiugroom, — these are the
music and pictures of the most ancient religion.
My house stands in low land, with limited outlook,
and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my
friend to the shore of our little river, and ^\^th one
stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and
personalities, yes, and the world of villages and
personalities, behmd, and pass into a delicate realm
of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spot-
ted man to enter without novitiate and probation.
We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty ; we
dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes

NATURE. 167

are bathed in these lights and forms. A holi-
day, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest,
most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty,
power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, estab-
lishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds,
these delicately emerging stars, with their private
and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I
am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugli-
ness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have
early learned that they must work as enhancement
and sequel to this original beauty. I am overin-
structed for my return. Henceforth I shall be
hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am
grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no
longer Kve without elegance, but a countryman
shall be my master of revels. He who knows the
most ; he who knows what sweets and vii'tues are
in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,
and how to come at these enchantments, — is the
rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of
the world have called in nature to their aid, can
they reach the height of magnificence. This is the
meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-
houses, islands, parks and preserves, to back their
faulty personality with these strong accessories. I
do not wonder that the landed interest should be
invincible in the State with these dangerous auxil.
iaries. These bribe and invite ; not kings, not pal.

168 NATURE.

aces, not men, not women, but these tender and
poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard
what the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his
grove, his wine and his company, but the provocar
tion 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 horizon and the blue sky for the background
which save all our works of art, which were other-
wise bawbles. When the rich tax the poor with ser-
vility and obsequiousness, they should consider the
effect of men reputed to be the possessors of nature,
on imaginative minds. Ah ! if the rich were rich
as the poor fancy riches ! A boy hears a military
band play on the field at night, and he has kings
and queens and famous chivalry palpably before
him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill coun-
try, in the Notch Mountains, for example, which
converts the mountains into an -^olian harp, —
and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the
Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and aU divine
hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note be so
lofty, so haughtily beautiful ! To the poor young
poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society ; he is
loyal ; he respects the rich ; they are rich for the
sake of his imagination ; how poor his fancy would
be, if they were not rich! That they have some

NATURE. 169

high-fenced grove which they call a park ; that
they live in larger and better-garnished saloons
than he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only
the society of the elegant, to watering-places and to
distant cities, — these make the groundwork from
which he has delineated estates of romance, com-
pared with which their actual possessions are shan-
ties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays her
son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born
beauty by a radiation out of the air, and clouds,
and forests that skirt the road, — a certain haughty
favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a
kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power
of the air.

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and
Tempes so easily, may not be always foimd, 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 the sky and the
earth, and that is seen from the first hillock
as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The
stars at night stoop down over the brownest, home-
liest common with all the spiritual magnificence
which they shed on the Campagna, or on the mar-
ble deserts of Eg}"pt. The uproUed clouds and the
colors of morning and evening will transfigure

170 NATURE.

maples and alders. The difference between land-
scape and landscape is small, but there is great
difference in the beholders. There is nothing so
wonderfid in any particular landscape as the neces-
sity of being beautiful under which every landscape
lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beau-
ty breaks in everywhere.

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of
readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura
natiirata, or nature passive. One can hardly speak
directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach
in mixed companies what is called " the subject of
religion." A suscej^tible person does not like to in-
dulge his tastes in this kind without the apology of
some trivial necessity : he goes to see a wood-lot, or
to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral
from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling-piece
or a fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have
a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren
and unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than
his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally himt-
ers and inquisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose
that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indians
should furnish facts for, would take place in the
most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the "Wreaths"
and " Flora's chaplets " of the bookshops ; yet or-
dinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a
topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin

NATURE. 171

to write on nature, they fall Into eupliulsm. Fri-
volity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, who ought to
be represented in the mythology as the most con-
tinent of gods. I would not be frivolous before
the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I
cannot renounce the right of returning often to this
old topic. The multitude of false churches accred-
its the true religion. Literature, poetry, science are
the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, con-
cerning which no sane man can affect an indiffer-
ence or incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is
best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although,
or rather because there is no citizen. The sunset
is unlike anything that is imderneath it : It wants
men. And the beauty of nature must always seem
unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human
figures that are as good as itself. If there were
good men, there would never be this rapture in na-
ture. If the king is In the palace, nobody looks at
the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is
filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from
the people to find relief in the majestic men that
are suggested by the pictures and the architecture.
The critics who complain of the sickly separation
of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done,
must consider that our hunting of the picturesque
is Inseparable from our protest against false society.
Man is fallen ; nature is erect, and serves as a

172 NATURE.

differential tliermometer, detecting the presence or
absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault
of our dulness and selfishness we are looking up to
nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will
look up to us. We see the foaming brook with
compunction : if our owti life flowed with the right
energy, we shoidd shame the brook. The stream of
zeal sparkles with real fu-e, and not with reflex
rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly
studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes
astrology ; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to
show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy
and j)hysiology become phrenology and palmistry.

But taking timely warning, and leaving many
things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit
our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura natu-
ra?is, the quick cause before wliich all forms flee as
the driven snows ; itself secret, its works driven
before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancients
represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd.) and in
imdescribable variety. It publishes itself in crea-
tures, reaching from particles and spiculae through
transformation on transformation to the highest
symmetries, arriving at consummate results without
a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is a little mo-
tion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white
and deadly cold poles of the earth fi'om the prolific
tropical climates. All changes pass without vio-

NATURE. 173

lenee, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of
boundless space and boundless time. Geology has
initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught
us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange
our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large
style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of per-
spective. Now we learn what patient periods must
round themselves before the rock is formed ; then
before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race
has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into
soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora,
Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come in. How far
off yet is the trilobite ! how far the quadruped !
how inconceivably remote is man ! All didy arrive,
and then race after race of men. It is a long way
from granite to the oyster ; farther yet to Plato and
the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet
all must come, as surely as the first atom has two
sides.

Motion or change and identity or rest are the
first and second secrets of nature : — Motion and
Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written
on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. The
whirling bubble on the surface of a brook admits
us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky. Every
shell on the beach is a key to it. A little water
made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of
the simpler shells ; the addition of matter from

174 NATURE.

year to year arrives at last at the most complex
forms ; and yet so poor is nature with all her craft,
that from the beginning to the end of the universe
she has but one stuff, — but one stuff with its two
ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. Com-
pound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree,
man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same prop-
erties.

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns
to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws,
and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips
an animal to find its place and living in the earth,
and at the same time she arms and equips another
animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide crea-
tures ; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few
feathers she gives him a petty omnii^resence. The
direction is forever onward, but the artist still goes
back for materials and begins again with the first
elements on the most advanced stage : otherwise all
goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to
catch a glance of a system in transition. Plants are
the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor;
but they grope ever upward towards consciousness ;
the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan
their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The
animal is the novice and j)robationer of a more
advanced order. The men, though young, having
tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, aro

NATURE. 175

already dissipated : the maples and ferns are still
uncorrupt ; yet no doubt when they come to con-
sciousness they too will curse and swear. Flowers
so strictly belong to youth that we adult men soon
come to feel that their beautiful generations con-
cern not us : we have had our day ; now let the
children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we
are old bachelors with our ridicidous tenderness.

Things are so strictly related, that according to
the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts
and properties of any other may be predicted. If
we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city
wall would certify us of the necessity that man
must exist, as readily as the city. That identity
makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great in-
tervals on oiu' customary scale. We talk of devia-
tions from natural life, as if artificial life were not
also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in the
boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude
and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its
own ends, and is directly related, there amid es-
sences and billetsdoux, to Himmaleh mountain-
chains and the axis of the globe. If we consider
how much we are nature's, we need not be supersti-
tious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force
did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Na-
ture, who made the mason, made the house. We
may easily hear too much of rural influences. The

176 NATURE.

cool disengagecT air of natural objects makes them
envial)le to us, chafed and irritable creatures with
red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as
they if we camp out and eat roots ; but let us be
men instead of woodchucks and the oak and the
elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs
of ivory on carpets of silk.

Tliis guiding identity runs through all the sur-
prises and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes
every law. Man carries the world in his head, the
whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a
thought. Because the history of nature is charac-
tered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet and
discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in
natural science was divined by the presentiment of
somebody, before it was actually verified. A man
does not tie his shoe without recomizius; laws which
bind the farthest regions of nature : mo^n, plant,
gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers.
Common sense knows its own, and recognizes the
fact at first sight in chemical experiment. The
common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy and
Black, is the same common sense which made the
arrangements which now it discovers.

If the identity expresses organized rest, the coun-
ter action runs also into organization. The astron-
omers said, ' Give us matter and a little motion and
we will construct the universe. It is not enough

NATURE. 177

that we should have matter, we must also have
a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and
generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centrijj-
etal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand,
and we can show how all this mighty order grew.'
— ' A very unreasonable postulate, ' said the meta-
physicians, 'and a plain begging of the question.
Could you not prevail to know the genesis of pro-
jection, as well as the continuation of it ? ' Nature,
meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but,
right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls
rolled. It was no great affair, a mere push, but the
astronomers were right in making much of it, for
there is no end to the consequences of the act. That
famous aboriginal push propagates itself through
all the balls of the system, and through every atom
of every ball ; through all the races of creatures,
and throuo;h the history and performances of every
individual. Exaggeration is in the course of things.
Nature sends no creature, no man into the world
without adding a small excess of his proper quality.
Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the
impulse ; so to every creatiu-e nature added a little
violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to
put it on its way ; in every instance a slight gen-
erosity, a drop too much. Witliout electricity the
air would rot, and without tliis violence of direc-
tion which men and women have, without a spice of

VOL. UI. 12

178 NATURE.

big'ot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We
aim above the mark to hit the mark. Every act
hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And
when now and then comes along some sad, sharp-
eyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played,
and refuses to play but blabs the secret ; — how
then? Is the bird flown? O no, the wary Na-
ture sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier
youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold
them fast to their several aim ; makes them a little
wrong-headed in that direction in which they are
Tightest, and on goes the game again with new whirl,
for a generation or two more. The child with his
sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by
every sight and sound, without any power to com-
pare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle
or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon or a ginger-
bread-dog, individualizing ever}i;hing, generalizing
nothing, delighted with every new tiling, lies dowoi
at night overpowered by the fatigue which this day
of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Na-
tm-e has answered her purpose with the curly, dim-
pled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has
secured the S}Tnmetrical growth of the bodily frame
by all these attitudes and exertions, — an end of the
first importance, which could not be trusted to any
care less perfect than her own. This glitter, this
oj)aline lustre plays round the top of every toy to

NATURE. 179

his eye to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to
his good. We are made alive and kept alive by
the same arts. Let the stoics say what they please,
we do not eat for the good of li^dng, but because
the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The
vegetable life does not content itself with casting
from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills
the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that,
if thousands perish, thousands may plant them-
selves ; that hundreds may come up, that tens may
live to maturity ; that at least one may replace the
parent. All things betray the same calculated pro-
fusion. The excess of fear with which the animal
frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, start-
ing at sight of a snake or at a sudden noise, pro-
tects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms,
from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks
in marriage his private felicity and perfection, Avith
no prospective end ; and nature hides in his happi-
ness her own end, namely progeny, or the perpe-
tuity of the race.

But the craft with which the world is made, runs
also into the mind and character of men. No man
is quite sane ; each has a vein of folly in his com-
position, a slight determination of blood to the head,
to make sure of holding him hard to some one point
which nature had taken to heart. Great causes are
never tried on their merits ; but the cause is re-

180 NATURE.

duccd to particulars to suit the size of the partisans,
and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters.
Not less remarkable is the overfaith of each man in
the importance of what he has to do or say. The
poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he
utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken.
The strong, self-complacent Luther declares with
an emphasis not to be mistaken, that " God him-
self cannot do without wise men." Jacob Belunen
and George Fox betray their egotism in the perti-
nacity of their controversial tracts, and James Nay-
lor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the
Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify
himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and
shoes sacred. However this may discredit such per-
sons with the judicious, it helps them mth the peo-
ple, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to
their words. A similar experience is not infrequent
in private life. Each young and ardent person
writes a diary, in which, w'hen the hours of prayer
and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The
2)ages thus \\Titten are to him biu'ning and fragrant ;
he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the
morning star ; he wets them with his tears ; they
are saci'ed; too good for the world, and hai'dly yet
to be shown to the dearest friend. This is the man-
child that is born to the soul, and her life still cir-
culates in the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet

NATURE. 181

been cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins
to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experi-
ence, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes
the pages to his eye. Will they not bum his eyes ?
The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from
the writing to conversation, with easy transition,
which strikes the other party with astonishment and
vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself.
Days and nights of fervid life, of commimion with
angels of darkness and of light have engTaved their
shadowy characters on that tear-stained book. He
suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend.
Is there then no friend ? He cannot yet credit that
one may have impressive experience and yet may
not laiow how to put his private fact into literatiu-e :
and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other
tongues and ministers than we, that though we
should hold our peace the truth would not the less
be spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our
zeal. A man can only speak so long as he does
not feel Ms speech to be partial and inadequate.
It is partial, but he does not see it to be so whilst
he utters it. As soon as he is released from the
instinctive and particular and sees its partiality, he
shuts his mouth in disgust. For no man can wi-ite
anything who does not think that what he writes is
for the time the history of the world ; or do any-
thing well who does not esteem his work to be of

182 NATURE.

importance. My work may be of none, but T must
not think it of none, or I shall not do it with im-
punity.

In like manner, there is throughout nature some-
thing mocking, something that leads us on and on,
but arrives nowhere ; keeps no faith with us. All
promise outruns the performance. We live in a
system of approximations. Eyery end is prosj^ec-
tive of some other end, which is also temporary ;
a round and final success nowhere. We are en-
camjjed in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and
thirst lead us on to eat and to drink ; but bread and
wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us
hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is
the same with all our arts and performances. Our
music, our poetry, our language itself are not satis-
factions, but suggestions. The hmiger for wealth,
which reduces the planet to a garden, fools the
eager pursuer. What is the end sought? Plainly
to secvire the ends of good sense and beauty from
the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind.
But what an ojoerose method! What a train of
means to secure a little conversation ! This palace
of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen,
these stables, horses and equipage, this bank-stock
and file of mortgages ; trade to all the world, coun-
try-house and cottage by the waterside, all for a
little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual ! Could

NATURE. 183

it not be had as well by beggars on the high-
way? No, all these things came from successive
efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the
wheels of life, and give opportimity. Conversa-
tion, character, were the avowed ends ; wealth was
good as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the
smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door, brought
friends together in a warm and quiet room, and
kept the children and the dimier-table in a differ-
ent apartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the
ends; but it was known that men of thought and
virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or
could lose good time whilst the room was getting
warm in winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions
necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main
attention has been diverted to this object; the
old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove
friction has come to be the end. That is the ridi-
cule of rich men ; and Boston, London, Vienna, and
now the governments generally of the world are
cities and governments of the rich ; and the masses
are not men, hut poor men^ that is, men who would
be rich ; this is the ridicide of the class, that they
arrive with pains and sweat and fury nowhere ;
when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like
one who has interrupted the conversation of a
company to make his speech, and now has forgot-
ten what he went to say. The appearance strikes

184 NATURE.

the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aun-i
less nations. Were the ends of nature so great
and 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 in
woods and waters a certain enticement and flat-
tery, together with a failure to yield a present sat-
isfaction. This disappointment is felt in every
landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty
of the siunmer clouds floating feathery overhead,
enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege
of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much
the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking
to some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond.
It is an odd jealousy, but the poet finds himself
not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the
river, the bank of flowers before him does not seem
to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or
this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo
of the triumph that has passed by and is now at
its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the
neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field,
then in the adjacent woods. The present object
shall give you this sense of stillness that follows a
pageant wliich has just gone by. What splendid
distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and lovo.

NATURE, 185

Hness in the sunset ! But who can go where they
are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon?
Off they fall from the round world forever and
ever. It is the same among the men and women
as among the silent trees ; always a referred exist-
ence, an absence, never a presence and satisfac-
tion. Is it that beauty can never be grasped ? in
persons and in landscajDe is equally inaccessible?
The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wild-
est charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him.
She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star :
she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one
as he.

What shall we say of this omnipresent appear-
ance of that first projectile impidse, of this flattery
and balldng of so many well-meaning creatures?
Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe a
slight treachery and derision ? Are we not en-
gaged to a serious resentment of tliis use that is
made of us ? Are we ticlded trout, and fools of
nature ? One look at the face of heaven and earth
lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to \\iser
convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts it-
self into a vast promise, and will not be rashly ex-
plained. Her secret is untold. Many and many
an CEdipus arrives ; he has the whole mystery teem-
ing in his brain. Alas ! the same sorcery has spoiled
his skill ; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Hei

186 NATURE.

mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the
deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough
to follow it and report of the return of the curve.
But it also appears that our actions are seconded and
disposed to greater conclusions than we designed.
We are escorted on every hand through life by spir-
itual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait
for us. We cannot bandy words with Nature, or
deal with her as we deal with persons. If we meas-
ure our individual forces against hers we may easily
feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable des-
tiny. But if, instead of identifying ourselves with
the work, we feel that the soul of the worlanan
streams through us, we shall find the peace of the
morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fath-
omless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over
them, of life, preexisting within us in their highest
form.

The imeasiness which the thought of our help-
lessness in the chain of causes occasions us, residts
from looking too much at one condition of natui'e,
namely. Motion. But the drag is never taken from
the wheel. Wherever the impiUse exceeds, the Rest
or Identity insinuates its compensation. All over
the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self-
heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the
fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are
always engaged wdtli particulars, and often enslaved

NATURE. 187

to them, we bring with us to every experiment the
innate miiversal laws. These, while they exist in
the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature for-
ever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure
the insanity o£ men. Our servitude to particu-
lars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations.
We anticipate a new era from the invention of a
locomotive, or a balloon ; the new engine brings
with it the old checks. They say that by electro-
magnetism your salad shall be grown from the seed
whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner ; it is a sym-
bol of our modem aims and endeavors, of our con-
densation and acceleration of objects; — but noth-
ing is gained ; natiu'e cannot be cheated ; man's life
is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow
they slow. In these checks and impossibilities how-
ever we find our advantage, not less than in the im-
pulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are
on that side. And the knowledge that we traverse
the whole scale of being, from the centre to the
poles of nature, and have some stake in every possi-
bility, lends that sublime lustre to death, which
philosophy and religion have too outwardly and lit-
erally striven to express in the popidar doctrine of
the immortality of the soul. The reality is more
excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no dis-
continuity, no spent ball. The divine circulations
never rest nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of

188 NATURE.

a tliouglit, and turns to a thought again, as ice he-
comes water and gas. The world is mind precipi-
tated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping
again into the state of free thought. Hence the vir-
tue and pungency of the influence on the mind
of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized.
Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative,
speaks to man impersonated. That power which
does not respect quantity, which makes the whole
and the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile
to the morning, and distils its essence into every
drop of rain. Every moment instructs, and every
object ; for wisdom is infused into every form. It
has been poured into us as blood ; it convulsed us
as pain ; it slid into us as pleasure ; it enveloped us
in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful la-
bor ; we did not guess its essence until after a long
time.

POLITICS.

Gold and iron are good

To buy iron and gold ;

AU earth's fleece and food

For their like are sold.

Boded Merlin wise,

Proved Napoleon great, —

Nor kind nor coinage buys

Aught above its rate.

Fear, Craft, and Avarice

Cannot rear a State.

Out of dust to build

What is more than dust, -=

"Walls Amphion piled

Phoebus stabhsh must.

When the Muses nine

With the Virtues meet,

Find to theu' design

An Atlantic seat,

By green orchard boughs

Fended from the heat.

Where the statesman ploughs

Furrow 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.

VII.
POLITICS.

In dealing with the State we ought to remember
that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they
existed before we were born ; that they are not su-
perior to the citizen ; that every one of them was
once the act of a single man ; every law and usage
was a man's expedient to meet a particular case ;
that they all are imitable, all alterable ; we may
make as good, we may make better. Society is an
illusion to the young citizen. It lies before liim in
rigid repose, with certain names, men and institu-
tions rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round
which all arrange themselves the best they can.
But the old statesman knows that society is fluid ;
there are no such roots and centres, but any parti-
cle may suddenly become the centre of the move-
ment and compel the system to gyrate round it ; as
every man of strong will, like Pisistratus or Crom-
well, does for a time, and every man of truth, like
Plato or Paul, does forever. But politics rest on
necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with

192 POLITICS.

levity. Republics abound in young civilians who
believe that the laws make the city, that grave
modifications of the policy and modes of living and
emi)lo}Tnents of the popidation, that commerce, ed-
ucation, and religion, may be voted in or out ; and
that any measure, though it were absurd, may be
imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient
voices to make it a law. But the wdse know that
foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes
in the twisting ; that the State must follow and
not lead the character and progi-ess of the citizen ;
the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of ; and
they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity ;
and that the form of government which prevails is
the expression of what cultivation exists in the pop-
ulation which permits it. The law is only a mem-
orandum. We are superstitious, and esteem the
statute somewhat: so much life as it has in the
character of li\nng men is its force. The statute
stands there to say, Yesterday we agreed so and so,
but how feel ye this article to-day ? Oiu* statute
is a currency which we stamp with our own por-
trait : it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in pro-
cess of time will return to the mint. Nature is not
democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but despotic,
and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her
authority by the pertest of her sons ; and as fast as
the public mind is opened to more intelligence, the

POLITICS. 193

code is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks
not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime
the education of the general mind never stops.
The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic.
What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays,
and paints to-day, but shuns the ridicule of saying
aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public
bodies ; then shall be carried as grievance and bill
of rights through conflict and war, and then shall
be triumphant law and establishment for a hun-
dred years, until it gives place in tiu^ to new pray-
ers and pictures. The history of the State sketches
in coarse outline the progress of thought, and fol-
lows at a distance the delicacy of culture and of as-
piration.

The theory of politics which has possessed the
mind of men, and which they have expressed the
best they could in their laws and in their revolu-
tions, considers persons and property as the two ob-
jects for whose protection government exists. Of
persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being
identical in nature. This interest of course with
its whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the
rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their
access to reason, their rights in property are very
unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another
owns a county. This accident, depending primari-
ly on the skill and ^^Ttue of the parties, of which

VOL. 111. 13

194 POLITICS.

there is every degree, and secondarily on patrimo-
ny, falls unequally, and its rights of course are
unequal. Personal rights, universally the same,
demand a government framed on the ratio of the
census ; property demands a government framed
on the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who
has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by
an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall
drive them off ; and pays a tax to that end. Jacob
has no flocks or herds and no fear of the Midian-
ites, and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed fit
that Laban and Jacob should have equal rights to
elect the officer who is to defend their persons, but
that Laban and not Jacob should elect the officer
who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And if ques-
tion arise whether additional officers or watch-tow-
ers should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac,
and those who must sell part of their herds to buy
protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with
more right, than Jacob, who, because he is a youth
and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own ?

In the earliest society the proprietors made their
own wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners
in the direct way, no other opinion would arise in
any equitable community than that property should
make the law for property, and persons the law for
persons.

But property passes through donation or inherit

POLITICS. 195

ance to those who do 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 pat-
rimony, the law makes an ownership which will be
valid in each man's view according* to the estimate
which he sets on the public tranquillity.

It was not however found easy to embody the
readily admitted principle that property should
make law for property, and persons for persons ;
since persons and property mixed themselves in
every transaction. At last it seemed settled that
the rightful distinction was that the proprietors
should have more elective franchise than non-pro-
prietors, on the Spartan principle of " calling that
which is just, equal ; not that which is equal, just."

That principle no longer looks so seK-evident as
it appeared in former times, partly because doubts
have arisen whether too much weight had not been
allowed in the laws to property, and such a struc-
ture given to our usages as allowed the rich to en-
croach on the poor, and to keep them poor ; but
mainly because there is an instinctive sense, how-
ever obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole
constitution of property, on its present tenures, is
. njurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating
and degrading ; that truly the only interest for the
consideration of the State is persons ; that property
will always follow persons ; that the highest end of

196 POLITICS.

government is the culture of men ; and that if men
can he educated, the institutions will share their
improvement and the moral sentiment will write
the law of the land.

If it be not easy to settle the equity of this ques-
tion, the peril is less when we take note of our nat-
ural defences. We are kept by better guards than
the \dgilance of such magistrates as we commonly
elect. Society always consists in greatest part of
young and foolish persons. The old, who have
seen through the hy[30crisy of courts and statesmen,
die and leave no wisdom to their sons. They be-
lieve their own newspaper, as their fathers did at
their age. AVith such an ignorant and deceivable
majority, States would soon nm to ruin, but that
there are limitations beyond which the folly and
ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their
laws, as well as men ; and things refuse to be trifled
with. Property will be protected. Corn will not
grow miless it is planted and manui'ed ; but the
farmer will not plant or hoe it unless the chances
are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest
it. Under any forms, persons and property must
and will have their just sway. They exert their
power, as steadily as matter its atti'action. Cover
up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and
subdivide it ; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas ; it
will always weigh a pound ; it will always attract

POLITICS. 197

and resist other matter by the full virtue of one
pound weight : — and the attributes of a person, his
wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any
law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force,
— if not overtly, then covertly ; if not for the law,
then against it ; if not wholesomely, then poison-
ously ; with right, or by might.

The boundaries of personal influence it is impos-
sible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or super-
natural force. Under the dominion of an idea
which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil
freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of
persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A
nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or con-
quest can easily confound the arithmetic of statists,
and achieve extravagant actions, out of all propor-
tion to their means ; as the Greeks, the Saracens,
the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have
done.

In like manner to every particle of property be-
longs its own attraction. A cent is the representa-
tive of a certain quantity of corn or other commod-
ity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal
man. It is so much warmth, so much bread, so
much water, so much land. The law may do what
it will with the owTier of property ; its just power
will still attach to the cent. The law may in a
mad freak say that all shall have power except the

198 POLITICS.

owners of property ; they shall have no vote.
Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will,
year after year, write every statute that respects
property. The non-proprietor will be the scribe
of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do,
the whole power of property will do, either through
the law or else in defiance of it. Of course I speak
of all the property, not merely of the great estates.
When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens,
it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds
their accumulations. Every man owns something,
if it is only a cow, or a wheel-barrow, or his arms,
and so has that property to dispose of.

The same necessity which secures the rights of
person and property against the malignity or folly
of the magistrate, determines the form and meth-
ods of governing, which are projDer to each nation
and to its habit of thought, and nomse transferable
to other states of society. In this country we are
very vain of our political institutions, which are
singular in this, that they sprung, within the mem-
ory of living men, from the character and condition
of the people, which they still express with suffi-
cient fidelity, — and we ostentatiously prefer them
to any other in history. They are not better, but
only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting
the advantage in modern times of the democratic
form, but to other states of society, in which relig.

POLITICS. 199

ion consecrated tlie monarchical, that and not this
was expedient. Democracy is better for us, be-
cause the religious sentiment of the present time
accords better with it. Born democrats, we are no-
wise qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our
fathers livins; in the monarchical idea, was also rel-
atively right. But our institutions, though in coin-
cidence with the spirit of the age, have not any
exemption from the practical defects which have
discredited other forms. Every actual State is
corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too
well. What satire on government can equal the
severity of censure conveyed in the word politic,
which now for ages has signified cunning.) intimat-
ing that the State is a trick ?

The same benign necessity and the same practi-
cal abuse appear in the parties, into which each
State divides itself, of opponents and defenders of
the administration of the government. Parties are
also founded on instincts, and have better gmides to
their own humble aims than the sagacity of their
leaders. They have nothing perverse in their ori-
gin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation.
We might as wisely reprove the east wind or the
frost, as a political party, whose members, for the
most part, could give no account of their position,
but stand for the defence of those interests in
which they find themselves. Our quarrel mth

200 POLITICS.

them begins when they quit this deep natural
ground at the bidding of some leader, and obeying
personal considerations, throw themselves into the
maintenance and defence of points nowise belong-
ing to their system. A party is perpetually cor-
rupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the as-
sociation from dishonesty, we cannot extend the
same charity to their leaders. They reap the re-
wards of the docility and zeal of the masses which
they direct. Ordinarily our parties are parties of
circumstance, and not of principle ; as the planting
interest in conflict with the commercial ; the paTty
of capitalists and that of operatives : j^arties which
are identical in their moral character, and which
can easily change ground with each other in the
support of many of their measures. Parties of
principle, as, religious sects, or the party of free-
trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery,
of abolition of capital punishment, — degenerate
into personalities, or would inspire enthusiasm.
The \dce of our leading parties in this country
(which may be cited as a fair specimen of these so-
cieties of opinion) is that they do not plant them-
selves on the deep and necessary grounds to which
they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves
to fury in the carrying of some local and momen-
tary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth.
Of the two great parties which at this hour almost

POLITICS. 201

share tlie nation between tliem, I slionlcl say that
one has the best cause, and the other contains the
best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the relig-
ious man, will of course wish to cast his vote with
the democrat, for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for
the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code,
and for facilitating in every manner the access of
the yoimg and the poor to the sources of wealth
and power. But he can rarely accept the persons
whom the so-called popular party propose to him
as representatives of these liberalities. They have
not at heart the ends which give to the name of
democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The
spirit of our American radicalism is destructive
and aimless : it is not loving ; it has no ulterior and
divine ends, but is destructive only out of hatred
and selfishness. On the other side, the conserva-
tive party, composed of the most moderate, able,
and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and
merely defensive of property. It vindicates no
right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime,
it proposes no generous policy ; it does not build,
nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion,
nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor
emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the
Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party,
when in power, has the world any benefit to expect
in science, art, or hiunanity, at all commensurate
with the resources of the nation.

202 POLITICS.

I do not for these defects despair of our republic.
We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance.
In the strife of ferocious parties, human nature al-
ways finds itself cherished ; as the children of the
convicts at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy
a moral sentiment as other children. Citizens of
feudal states are alai'med at om* democratic institu-
tions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more
cautious among ourselves are learning from Euro-
peans to look with some terror at our turbulent
freedom. It is said that in our license of constru-
ing the Constitution, and in the despotism of pub-
lic opinion, we have no anchor ; and one foreign
observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the
sanctity of Marriage among us ; and another thinks
he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames
expressed the popidar security more wisely, when
he compared a monarchy and a republic, sajang
that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well,
but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the
bottom ; whilst a republic is a raft, which would
never sink, but then your feet are always in water.
No forms can have any dangerous importance whilst
we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes
no difference how many tons weight of atmosphere
presses on our heads, so long as the same pressure
resists it witliin the lungs. Augment the mass a
thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long

POLITICS. 203

as reaction is equal to action. The fact o£ two
poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is
universal, and each force by its own activity devel-
ops the other. Wild liberty develops iron con-
science. Want of liberty, 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 shoidd not exist, and only justice satisfies all.

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent neces-
sity which sliines through all laws. Human nature
expresses itself in them as characteristically as in
statues, or songs, or railroads ; and an abstract of
the codes of nations woidd be a transcript of the
common conscience. Governments have their ori-
gin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one
is seen to be reason for another, and for every other.
There is a middle measure which satisfies all pai*-
ties, be they never so many or so resolute for their
own. Every man finds a sanction for his simplest
claims and deeds, in decisions of his own mind,
which he calls Truth and Holiness. In these de-
cisions all the citizens find a perfect 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 public aid each is entitled to claim. This truth
and justice men presently endeavor to make appli-

204 POLITICS.

cation of to the measuring of land, the apportion*
ment of service, the protection of life and property.
Their first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward.
Yet absolute right is the first governor ; or, every
government is an imjDure theocracy. The idea
after which each commimity is aiming to make and
mend its law, is the will of the wise man. The
wise man it cannot find in nature, and it makes awk-
ward but earnest efforts to secure his government
by contrivance ; as by causing the entire people to
give their voices on every measure ; or by a double
choice to get the representation of the whole ; or
by a selection of the best citizens ; or to secm-e the
advantages of efficiency and internal peace by con-
fiding the government to one, who may himself
select his agents. All forms of government sym-
bolize an immortal government, common to all dy-
nasties and independent of numbers, perfect where
two men exist, perfect where there is only one
man.

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement
to him of the character of his fellows. My right
and my ^vrong is their right and their wrong.
Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from
what is imfit, my neighbor and I shall often agTce
in our means, and work together for a time to one
end. But whenever I find my dominion over my
self not sufficient for me, and undertake the direo.

POLITICS. 205

tion of lilm 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 cannot ex-
press adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie,
and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and
nature cannot maintain the assumption ; it must be
executed by a practical lie, namely by force. Tliis
undertakino; for another is the blunder which stands
in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world.
It is the same thing in nmubers, as in a pair, only
not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a
great difference between my setting myself down to
a self-control, and my going to make somebody else
act after my views; but when a quarter of the
human race assume to tell me what I must do, I
may be too much disturbed by the circumstances
to see so clearly the absurdity of their command.
Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic
beside private ones. For any laws but those which
men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put
myself in the place of my child, and we stand in
one thought and see that things are thus or thus,
that perception is law for him and me. We are
both there, both act. But if, without carrying him
into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guess-
ing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will
never obey me. This is the history of governments,
»— one man does something wliich is to bind an*

206 POLITICS.

other. A man who cannot be acquainted with me,
taxes me ; looking from afar at me ordains that a
part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical
end, — not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Be-
hold the consequence. Of all debts men are least
willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on
government ! Everywhere they think they get
their money's worth, except for these.

Hence the less government we have the better,
— the fewer laws, and the less confided power.
The antidote to this abuse of formal Government
is the influence of private character, the growth of
the Individual ; the appearance of the principal to
supersede the proxy ; the appearance of the wise
man ; of whom the existing government is, it must
be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all
things tend to educe ; which freedom, cidtivation,
intercourse, revolv^tions, go to form and deliver, is
character ; that is the end of Nature, to reach unto
this coronation of her king. To educate the wise
man the State exists, and with the appearance of
the wise man the State expires. The appearance
of character makes the State unnecessary. The
wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or
navy, — he loves men too well ; no bribe, or feast,
or palace, to draw friends to him ; no vantage
ground, no favorable circmnstance. He needs no
library, for he has not done thinking ; no church,

POLITICS. 207

for lie is a prophet ; no statute book, for lie lias tlie
lawgiver ; no money, for lie is value ; no road, for
he is at home where he is ; no experience, for the
life of the creator shoots through him, and looks
from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he
who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of
all men unto him needs not husband and educate
a few to share with him a select and poetic life.
His relation to men is angelic ; his memory is
myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and
flowers.

We think our civilization near its meridian, but
we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morn-
ing star. In our barbarous society the influence of
character is in its infancy. As a political power, as
the rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from
their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected.
Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it ; the Annual
Register is silent ; in the Conversations' Lexicon
it is not set down ; the President's Message, the
Queen's Speech, have not mentioned it; and yet
it is never nothing. Every thought which genius
and piety throw into the world, alters the world.
The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through
all their frocks of force and simulation, the pres-
ence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and
ambition is confession of this divinity; and suc-
cesses in thoso fields are the poor amends, the fig-

208 POLITICS.

leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide
its nakedness. I find the lilce unwilling homage in
all quarters. It is because we know how much is
due from us that we are impatient to show some
petty talent as a substitute for worth. AVe are
haunted by a conscience of tliis right to grandeur
of character, and are false to it. But each of us
has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or grace-
fid, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That
we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves for
not reaching the mark of a good and equal life.
But it does not satisfy «s, whilst we thrust it on
the notice of our companions. It may throw dust
in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow,
or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we
walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Oiu' tal-
ent is a sort of expiation, and we are constrained
to reflect on our splendid moment with a certain
humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one
act of many acts, a fair expression of our perma-
nent energy. Most persons of ability meet in so-
ciety with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to
say, ' I am not aU here.' Senators and presidents
have climbed so high with pain enough, not be-
cause they think the place specially agreeable, but
as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their
manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is
their compensation to themselves for being of a

POLITICS. 209

poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they
cau. Like one class of forest animals, they have
nothing but a prehensile tail ; climb they must, or
crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured
that he could enter into strict relations with the
best persons and make life serene 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 pom-
pous as those of a politician ? Surely nobody would
be a charlatan who covdd 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 of his own constitu-
tion; which work with more energy than we be-
lieve whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The
movement in this direction has been very marked
in modern history. Much has been blind and dis-
creditable, but the nature of the revolution is not
affected by the vices of the revolters ; for this is
a purely moral force. It was never adopted by
any party in history, neither can be. It separates
the individual from all party, and unites him at the
same time to the race. It promises a recognition
of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or
the security of property. A man has a right to be
employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered.
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never

VOL. III. 14

210 POLITICS.

been tiied. "We must not Imagine that all things
are lapsing into confusion if every tender protest-
ant he not compelled to bear his part in certain
social conventions ; nor doubt that roads can be
built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured,
when the government of force is at an end. Are
our methods now so excellent that all competition is
hopeless ? could not 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, according to the order of nature, which
is quite suj)erior to our will, it stands thus ; there
will always be a government of force where men
are selfish ; and when they are pure enough to ab-
jure the code of force they will be wise enough to
see how these public ends of the post-office, of the
highway, of commerce and the exchange of prop-
erty, of museimas and libraries, of in^itutions of
art and science can be answered.

We live in a very low state of the world, and
pay imwilling tribute to governments founded on
force. There is not, among the most religious and
instructed men of the most religious and civil na-
tions, a reliance on the moral sentiment and a suf-
ficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade
them that society can be maintained without artifi-
cial restraints, as weU as the solar system ; or that

POLITICS. 211

the private citizen might be reasonable and a good
neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.
What is strange too, there never was in any man
sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire
him with the broad design of renovating the State
on the principle of right and love. All those w^ho
have pretended this design have been partial re-
formers, and have admitted in some manner the
suj^remacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind
a single human being who has steadily denied the
authority of the laws, on the simple gTound of his
own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius
and full of faith as they are, are not entertained
except avowedly as air-pictures. If the indi\ddual
who exhibits them dare to think them practicable,
he disgusts scholars and churchmen ; and men of
talent and women of superior sentiments cannot
hide their contempt. Not the less does nature con-
tinue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of
this enthusiasm, and there are now men, — if in-
deed I can speak in the plural number, — more ex-
actly, I will say, I have just been conversing with
one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience
will make it for a moment appear impossible that
thousands of human beings might exercise towards
each other the grandest and simplest sentiments,
as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.

NOMINALIST AND REALISTo

In countless upward-striving waves

The moon-drawn tide-wave strives :

In thousand far-transplanted grafts

The parent fruit survives ;

So, in the new-born inUlions,

The perfect Adam Uves.

Not less are summer mornings dear

To every child they wake,

And each with novel life his sphere

Fills for his proper sake.

VIII.
NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

I CANNOT often enough say that a man is only a
relative and representative nature. Each is a hint
of the truth, but far enough from being that truth
which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests
to us. If I seek it in him I shall not find it. Could
any man conduct into me the pure stream of that
which he pretends to be ! Long afterwards I find
that quality elsewhere which he promised me. The
genius of the Platonists is intoxicating to the stu-
dent, yet how few particvdars of it can I detach
from all their books. The man momentarily stands
for the thought, but will not bear examination ; and
a society of men will cursorily represent well enough
a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry
or beauty of manners ; but separate 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
man realizes. We have such exorbitant eyes that
on seeing the smallest arc we complete the curve,
and when the curtain is lifted from the diagram

216 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

which it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that
no more was drawn than just that fragment of an
arc which we first beheld. We are greatly too lib-
eral in our construction of each other's faculty and
promise. Exactly what the parties have already
done they shall do again ; but that which we in-
ferred from their nature and inception, they will
not do. That is in nature, but not in them. That
happens in the world, which we often witness in
a public debate. Each of the sj)eakers expresses
himself imperfectly ; no one of them hears much
that another says, such is the preoccupation of mind
of each ; and the audience, who have only to hear
and not to speak, judge very wisely and superiorly
how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of the de-
baters to his own affair. Great men or men of great
gifts you shall easily find, but spnmetrical men
never. When I meet a pure intellectual force or a
generosity of affection, I believe here then is man ;
and am presently mortified by the discovery that
tliis individual is no more available to his own or to
the general ends than his companions ; because the
power which drew my respect is not supported by
the total symphony of his talents. All persons exist
to 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

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 217

of his body is small or deformed. I observe a per-
son who makes a good public appearance, and con-
clude thence the perfection of his private character,
on which this is based ; but he has no private char-
acter. He is a gracefvd cloak or lay-figure for holi-
days. All our poets, heroes, and saints, fail utterly
in some one or in many parts to satisfy our idea,
fail to draw our spontaneous interest, and so leave
us without any hope of realization but in our own
future. Our exaggeration of all fine characters
arises from the fact that we identify each in turn
with the soul. But there are no such men as we
fable ; no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor An-
gelo, nor Washington, such as we have made. We
consecrate a great deal of nonsense because it was
allowed by great men. There is none without his
foible. I believe that if an angel should come to
chant the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too
much gingerbread, or take liberties with private
letters, or do some precious atrocity. It is bad
enough that our geniuses cannot do anything use-
ful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society
who has fine traits. He is admired at a distance,
but he cannot come near without appearing a crip-
ple. The men of fine parts protect themselves by
solitude, or by courtesy, or by satire, or by an acid
worldly manner ; each concealing as he best can
his incapacity for useful association, but they want
either love or self-reliance.

218 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

Our native love of reality joins with this experi-
enee to teacli us a little reserve, and to dissuade
a too sudden surrender to the brilliant qualities of
persons. Young people admire talents or particu-
lar excellences ; as we grow older we value total
powers and effects, as the impression, the quality,
the spirit of men and things. The genius is all.
The man, — it is his system : we do not try a soli-
tary word or act, but his habit. The acts which
you praise, I praise not, since they are departures
from his faith, and are mere compliances. The
magnetism which arranges tribes and races in one
polarity is alone to be respected ; the men are steel-
filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle, and say,
' O steel-filing number one ! what heart-drawings
I feel to thee ! what prodigious virtues are these of
thine ! how constitvitional to thee, and incommuni-
cable ! ' Whilst we speak the loadstone is with-
drawn ; down falls our filing in a heap with the
rest, and we continue our mummery to the "VNTctched
shaving. Let us go for universals ; for the mag-
netism, not for the needles. Human life and its
persons are poor empirical pretensions. A personal
influence is an ignis fatuus. If they say it is great,
it is great ; if they say it is small, it is small ; you
see it, and you see it not, by turns ; it borrows all
its size from the momentary estimation of the sjDcak-
ers : the AViU-of-the-wisp vanishes if you go too

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 219

near, vanishes if you go too far, and only blazes at
one angle. Who can tell if Washington be a great
man or no ? Who can tell if Franklin be ? Yes,
or any but the twelve, or six, or three great gods
of fame ? And they too loom and fade before the
eternal.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two
elements, having two sets of faculties, the particu-
lar and the catholic. We adjust our instrument
for general observation, and sweep the heavens as
easily as we pick out a single figure in the terres-
trial landscape. We are practically skilful in de-
tecting elements for which we have no place in our
theory, and no name. Thus we are very sensible
of an atmospheric influence in men and in bodies
of men, not accounted for in an arithmetical ad-
dition of all theii" measurable properties. There
is a genius of a nation, which is not to be foimd
in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes
the society. England, strong, punctual, practical,
well-spoken England I should not find if I shoidd
go to the island to seek it. In the parliament,
in the play-house, at dinner-tables, I might see a
great number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conven-
tional, proud men, — many old women, — and not
anywhere the Englishman who made the good
speeches, combined the accurate engines, and did
the bold and nervous deeds. It is even worse in

220 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

America, wliere, from tlie intellectual quickness of
the race, the genius of the country is more splen-
did in its promise and more slight in its perform-
ance. Webster cannot do the work of Webster.
We conceive distinctly enough the French, the
Spanish, the German genius, and it is not the less
real that perhaps we should not meet in either of
those nations a single individual who corresponded
with the type. We infer the spirit of the nation
in great measure from the language, which is a
sort of monument to which each forcible individual
in a course of many hundred years has contributed
a stone. And, universally, a good example of this
social force is the veracity of language, which can-
not be debauched. In any controversy concerning
morals, an aj^peal may be made with safety to the
sentiments which the language of the peoj^le ex-
presses. Proverbs, words, and grammar-inflections
convey the public sense with more purity and pre-
cision than the wisest individual.

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the
Realists had a good 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 it of poetry. The day-laborer is
reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale,
yet he is saturated with the laws of the world

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 221

His measures are the hours ; morning and night,
solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy and all
the lovely accidents of nature play through his
mind. Money, which represents the prose of life,
and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without
an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful
as roses. Property keej)s the accounts of the world,
and is always moral. The property will be found
where the labor, the wisdom, and the ^drtue have
been in nations, in classes, and (the whole life-time
considered, with the compensations) in the individ-
ual also. How wise the world appears, when the
laws and usages of nations are largely detailed, and
the completeness of the mimicipal system is consid-
ered! Nothing is left out. If you go into the
markets and the custom-houses, the insurers' and
notaries' of&ces, the offices of sealers of weights and
measures, of inspection of provisions, — it will ap-
pear as if one man had made it all. Wherever
you go, a wit like your own has been before you,
and has realized its thoiight. The Eleusinian mys-
teries, the Egyptian architecture, the Indian as-
tronomy, the Greek sculpture, show that there al-
ways were seeing and knowing men in the planet.
The world is fvill of masonic ties, of guilds, of se-
cret and public legions of honor ; that of scholars,
for example ; and that of gentlemen, fraternizing
with the upper class of every coimtry and every
culture.

222 NOMINALrST AND REALIST.

I am very ruucli struck in literature by the ap-
pearance that one person ^^Tote all the books ; as if
the editor of a journal planted his body of report-
ers in different parts of the field of action, and re-
lieved some by others from time to time ; but there
is such equality and identity both of judgment and
point of view in the narrative that it is plainly
the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman.
I looked into Poise's Odyssey yesterday : it is as
correct and elegant after our canon of to-day as if
it were newly written. The modernness 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 the whole over the members in my use of
books. I find the most pleasure in reading a book
in a manner least flattering to the author. I read
Proclus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read a
dictionary, for a mechanical helj) to the fancy and
the imagination. I read for the lustres, as if one
should use a fine picture in a chromatic experiment,
for its rich colors. 'T is not Proclus, but a piece of
nature and fate that I explore. It is a greater joy
to see the author's author, than himself. A higher
pleasure of the same kind I found lately at a con-
cert, where I went to hear Handel's Messiah. As

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 223

the master overpowered the littleness and incapa-
bleness of the performers and made them conduc-
tors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe
what efforts natm-e was making, through so many
hoarse, wooden, and imperfect persons, to produce
beautifid voices, fluid and soid-giiided men and
women. The genius of nature was paramount at
the oratorio.

This preference of the genius to the parts is the
secret of that deification of art, which is found in
all superior minds. Art, in the artist, is propor-
tion, or a habitual respect to the whole by an eye
loving beauty in details. And the wonder and
charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it de-
notes. Proportion is almost impossible to human
beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate.
In conversation, men are encumbered -wdth person-
ality, and talk too much. In modem sculpture,
picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous ;
the artist works here and there and at all points,
adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of
his thought. Beautiful details we must have, or no
artist ; but they must be means and never other.
The eye must not lose sight for a moment of the
purpose. Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and
the cool reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in it.
When they grow older, they respect the argument.

We obey the same intellectual integrity when we

224 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

study in exceptions the law of the world. Anom-
alous facts, as the never quite obsolete rumors of
magic and demonology, and the new allegations of
phrenologists and neurologists, are of ideal use.
They are good indications. Homoeopathy is insig-
nificant as an art of healing, but of great value as
criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the
time. So with Mesmerism, Swedenborgism, Fou-
rierism, and the Millennial Church ; they are poor
pretensions enough, but good criticism on the sci-
ence, philosophy, and preaching of the day. For
these abnormal insights of the adepts ought to be
normal, and things of course.

All things show us that on every side we are very
near to the best. It seems not worth while to exe-
cute with too much pains some one intellectual, or
aesthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dream
will scatter, and we shall burst into universal power.
The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring
of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting we beguile
the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and
with crimes.

Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the
agents with which 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 the surfaces.
I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but some*

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 225

times I must pincli myself to keep awake and pre-
serve the due decorum. They melt so fast iuto each
other that they are like grass and trees, and it needs
an effort to treat them as individuals. Though the
uninsj)ired man certainly finds persons a conven-
iency in household matters, the divine man does not
respect them ; he sees them as a rack of clouds, or
a fleet of ripples which the wind drives over the sur-
face of the water. But this is flat rebellion. Na-
ture will not be Buddhist : she resents generalizing,
and insults the philosopher in every moment with a
million of fresh particidars. It is all idle talking :
as much as a man is a whole, so is he also a part ;
and it were partial not to see it. What you say in
your pompous distribution only distributes you into
your class and section. You have not got rid of
parts by denying them, but are the more partial.
You are one thing, but Nature is one thing and the
other thing, in the same moment. She will not re-
main orbed in a thought, but rushes into persons ;
and when each jjerson, inflamed to a fury of person-
ality, would conquer all things to his poor crotchet,
she raises up against him another person, and by
many persons incarnates again a sort of whole.
She will have all. Nick Bottom cannot play all
the parts, work it how he may ; there will be some-
body else, and the world will be round. Everything

must have its flower or effort at the beautifid,
VOL. in. 15

226 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

coarser or finer according to its stuff. They re-
lieve and recommend each other, and the sanity of
society is a balance of a thousand insanities. She
punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an in-
duction which is rare and casual. We like to come
to a height of land and see the landscape, just as we
value a general remark in conversation. But it is
not the intention of Nature that we should live by
general views. We fetch fire and water, run about
all day among the shops and markets, and get our
clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the
victims of these details ; and once in a fortnight we
arrive perhaps at a rational moment. If we were
not thus infatuated, if we saw the real from hour
to hour, we should not be here to write and to read,
but should have been burned or frozen long ago.
She would never get anything done, if she suffered
admirable Crichtons and vmiversal geniuses. She
loves better a wheelwright who dreams all night of
wheels, and a groom who is part of his horse ; for
she is full of work, and these are her hands. As
the frugal farmer takes care that his cattle shall
eat down the rowen, and swine shall eat the waste
of his house, and poultry shall pick the crumbs, —
so our economical mother dispatches a new genius
and habit of mind into every district and condition
of existence, plants an eye wherever a new ray of
light can fall, and gathering up into some man

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 227

every property in the universe, establishes thou-
sandfold occult mutual attractions among her off-
spring, that aU this wash and waste of power may
be imparted and exchanged.

Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this in-
carnation and distribution of the godhead, and
hence Nature has her maligners, as if she were
Circe; and Alphonso of Castile fancied he could
have given useful advice. But she does not go un-
provided ; she has hellebore at the bottom of the
cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of des-
pots. The recluse thinks of men as having his
manner, or as not having his manner ; and as hav-
ing degTees of it, more and less. But when he
comes into a public assembly he sees that men have
very different manners from his own, and in their
way admirable. In his childhood and youth he has
had many checks and censures, and thinks mod-
estly enough of his own endowment. When after-
wards he comes to unfold it in propitious circum-
stance, it seems the only talent; he is delighted
with his success, and accounts himself already the
fellow of the great. But he goes into a mob, into
a banking house, into a mechanic's shop, into a
mill, into a laboratory, into a ship, into a camp, and
in each new place he is no better than an idiot ;
other talents take place, and rule the hour. The
rotation which whirls every leaf and pebble to the

228 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

niericllan, reaches to every gift of man, and we all
take turns at the top.

For Xature, who abhors mannerism, has set her
heart on breaking up all styles and tricks, and it
is so much easier to do what one has done before
than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual
tendency to a set mode. In every conversation,
even the highest, there is a certain trick, which
may be soon learned by an acute person and then
that particular style continued indefinitely. Each
man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would
impose his idea on others ; and their trick is their
natural defence. Jesus woidd absorb the race;
but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps
humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.
Hence the immense benefit of party in politics, as
it reveals faidts of character in a chief, which the
intellectual force of the persons, with ordinary op-
portunity and not hurled into aphelion by hatred,
coidd not have seen. Since we are all so stupid,
what benefit that there should be two stupidities !
It is like that brute advantage so essential to as-
tronomy, of having the diameter of the earth's or-
bit for a base of its triangles. Democracy is mo-
rose, and runs to anarchy, but in the State and in
the schools it is indispensable to resist the consol-
idation of all men into a few men. If John was
perfect, why are you and I alive ? As long as any

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 229

man exists, there is some need of him ; let him
fight for his o^Ti. A new poet has appeared ; a
new character approached us ; why should we re-
fuse to eat bread until we have found his regiment
and section in our old army-files ? Why not a new
man ? Here is a new enterprise of Brook Farm,
of Skeneateles, of Northampton : why so impatient
to baptize them Essenes, or Port-Royalists, or
Shakers, or by any known and effete name ? Let
it be a new way of living. Why have only two or
three ways of life, and not thousands ? Every-
man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. We
came tliis time for condiments, not for corn. We
want the great genius only for joy ; for one star
more in our constellation, for one tree more in our
grove. But he tliinks we wish to belong to him, as
he wishes to occupy us. He greatly mistakes us.
I think I have done well if I have acquired a new
word from a good author ; and my business with
him is to find my own, though it were only to melt
him dowTi into an epithet or an image for daily
use: —

" Into pair.t •n'ill I grind tliee, my bride ! "

To embroil the confusion, and make it impossi-
ble to arrive at any general statement, — when we
have insisted on the imperfection of indi\dduals,
our affections and our experience lu-ge that every

230 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

individual is entitled to honor, and a very generous
treatment is sure to be repaid. A recluse sees only
two or three persons, and allows them all their
room ; they spread themselves at large. The states-
man looks at many, and compares the few habitu-
ally wdth others, and these look less. Yet are they
not entitled to this generosity of reception ? and is
not munificence the means of insight ? For though
gamesters say that the cards beat all the players,
though they were never so skilful, yet in the con-
test we are now considering, the players are also
the game, and share the power of the cards. If
you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you
are out of your reckoning, and instead of the poet,
are censuring your own caricature of him. For
there is somewhat spheral and infinite in every
man, especially in every genius, which, if you can
come very near him, sports wuth all your limita-
tions. For rightly every man is a channel through
which heaven floweth, and whilst I fancied I was
criticising him, I was censuring or rather terminat-
ing my own sold. After taxing Goethe as a cour-
tier, artificial, unbelieving, worldly, — I took up
this book of Helena, and found him an Indian of
the wilderness, a piece of pure nature like an apple
or an oak, large as morning or night, and virtuous
as a brier-rose.

But care is taken that the whole tune shall be

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 231

played. If we were not kept among surfaces,
everything would be large and universal ; now the
excluded attributes burst in on us with the more
brightness that they have been excluded. " Your
turn now, my turn next," is the rule of the game.
The universality being hindered in its primary
form, comes in the secondary form of all sides;
the points come in succession to the meridian, and
by the speed of rotation a new whole is formed.
Nature keeps herself whole and her representation
complete in the experience of each mind. She
suffers no seat to be vacant in her college. It is
the secret of the world that aU things subsist and
do not die but only retire a little from sight and
afterwards return again. Whatever does not con-
cern 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. Eeally, aU things
and persons are related to us, but according to
our nature they act on us not at once but in suc-
cession, and we are made aware of their presence
one at a time. All persons, all things which we
have known, are here present, and many more than
we see ; the world is f uU. As the ancient said, the
world is a ^9?e7i«m or solid ; and if we saw all
things that really surroimd us we should be impris-
oned and unable to move. For though nothing is
impassable to the soul, but aU things are pervious

232 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

to it and like highways, yet this is only whilst the
soul does not see them. As soon as the soul sees
any object, it stops before that object. Therefore
the divine Providence which keeps the universe
open in every direction to the soul, conceals all the
furniture and all the persons that do not concern a
particidar soul, from the senses of that individual.
Tlirough solidest eternal things the man finds his
road as if they did not subsist, and does not once
suspect their being. As soon as he needs a new
object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer at-
tempts to pass through it, but takes another way.
When he has exhausted for the time the nom-ish-
ment to be drawn from any one person or thing,
that object is withdrawn from his observation, and
though still in his immediate neighborhood, he does
not suspect its presence. Nothing is dead : men
feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals
and mournful obituaries, and there they stand look-
ing out of the window, sound and well, m some new
and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is
very well alive : nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet,
nor Aristotle ; at times we believe we have seen
them all, and could easily tell the names under
which they go.

If we cannot make volimtary and conscious
steps in the admirable science of universals, let us
see the parts wisely, and infer the genius of nature

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 233

from tlie best particulars with a becoming charity.
What is best in each kind is an index of what
should be the average of that thing. Love shows
me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in
my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal
depth of good in every other direction. It is com-
monly said by farmers that a good pear or apple
costs no more time or pains to rear than a poor
one; 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 is made up of the intermixture and
reaction of these two amicable powers, whose mar-
riage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies
and tends to abolish the other. We must reconcile
the contradictions as we can, but their discord and
their concord introduce wild absurdities into our
thinking and speech. No sentence will hold the
whole truth, and the only way in which we can be
just, is by giving ourselves the lie ; Speech is bet-
ter than silence ; silence is better than speech ; —
All things are in contact ; every atom has a sphere
of repulsion ; — Things are, and are not, at the
same time ; — and the like. All the universe over,
there is but one thing, this old Two-Face, creator-
creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any
proposition may be affirmed or denied. Very fitly
therefore I assert that every man is a partialist ;

234 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

that nature secures Mm as an instrument by self-
conceit, preventing the tendencies to religion and
science ; and now further assert, that, each man's
genius being nearly and affectionately explored, he
is justified in his individuality, as his nature is
found to be immense ; and now I add that every
man is a universalist also, and, as our earth, whilst
it spms on its own. axis, spins all the time around
the sun through the celestial spaces, so the least of
its rational children, the most dedicated to his pri-
vate affair, works out, though as it were under
a disguise, the universal problem. We fancy men
are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pump-
kin in the field goes through every point of pump-
kin history. The rabid democrat, as soon as he is
senator and rich man, has ripened beyond possibil-
ity of sincere radicalism, and unless he can resist
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, he woidd be damned
but he would begin as agitator."

We hide this imiversality if we can, but it ap-
pears at all points. We are as ungrateful as chil-
dren. There is nothing we cherish and strive to
draw to us but in some hour we turn and rend it.
We keep a running fire of sarcasm at ignorance
and the life of the senses ; then goes by, perchance,
a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and happy, and

NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 235

making the commonest offices beautiful by the en-
ergy and heart with which she does them ; and see-
ing this we admire and love her and them, and say,
' Lo ! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dis-
sipated or too early ripened by books, philosophy,
religion, society, or care ! ' insinuating a treachery
and contempt for all we had so long loved and
wrought in ourselves and others.

If we could have any security against moods !
If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his
words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and
join the crusade could have any certificate that to-
morrow his prophet shall not imsay his testimony !
But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and
never interposes an adamantine syllable ; and the
most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if
the ark of God wpre carried forward some furlongs,
and planted there for the succor of the world, shall
in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the same
speaker, as morbid ; " I thought I was right, but I
was not," — and the same immeasurable credulity
demanded for new audacities. If we were not of
all opinions I if we did not in any moment shift the
platform on which we stand, and look and speak
from another ! if there could be any regidation,
any ' one-hour-rule,' that a man should never leave
his point of view without sound of trumpet. I
am always insincere, as always knowing there are
other moods.

236 NOMINALIST AND REALIST.

How sincere and confidential we can be, saying
all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling
that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the
parties to know each other, although they use the
same words ! My companion assumes to know my
mood and habit of thought, and we go on from
explanation to exj)lanation until all is said which
words can, and we leave matters just as they were
at first, because of that vicious assumption. Is it
that every man believes every other to be an in-
curable partialist, and himself a universalist ? I
talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers ; I en-
deavored to show my good men that I liked every-
thing by turns and nothing long ; that I loved the
centre, but doated on the superficies ; that I loved
man, if men seemed to me mice and rats ; that I
revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan
world stood its ground and died hard ; that I was
glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would
not live in their arms. Could they but once under-
stand that I loved to know that they existed, and
heartily wished them God-speed, yet, out of my
poverty of life and thought, had no word or wel-
come for them when they came to see me, and
could well consent to their living in Oregon for
any claim I felt on them, — it would be a great
satisfaction.

NEW ENGLAND REFOEMERS.

In the suburb, in the town,
On the railway, in the square.
Came a beam of goodness down
Doubling daylight everywhere :
Peace now each for malice takes,
Beauty for his sinful weeds.
For the angel Hope aye makes
Him an angel whom she leads.

NEW ENGLAND REEORMEES.

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

Whoever has had opportunity of acquaintance
with society in New England during the last twen-
ty-five years, with those middle and with those lead-
ing sections that may constitute any just represen-
tation of the character and aim of the commimity,
will have been struck with the great activity of
thought and experimenting. His attention must be
commanded by the signs that the Church, or relig-
ious party, is falling from the Church nominal, and
is appearing in temperance and non-resistance socie-
ties ; in movements of abolitionists and of social-
ists ; and in very significant assemblies called Sab-
bath and Bible Conventions ; composed of idtraists,
of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent,
and meeting to call in question the authority of the
Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the Church. In
these movements nothing was more remarkable
than the discontent they begot in the movers. The
spirit of protest and of detachment drove the mem-
bers of these Conventions to bear testimony against

240 NEW EX GLAND REFORMERS.

the Church, and immediately afterwards to declare
their discontent with these Conventions, their inde-
pendence of their colleagues, and their impatience
of the methods whereby they were working. They
defied each other, like a congi-ess of kings, each of
whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own
that made concert unprofitable. What a fertility
of projects for the salvation of the world ! One
apostle thought all men should go to farming, and
another that no man shoidd buy or sell, that the use
of money was the cardinal evil ; another that the
mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink
damnation. These made imleavened bread, and
were foes to the death to fermentation. It was in
vain urged by the housewife that God made yeast,
as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as
dearly as he loves vegetation ; that fermentation
develops the saccharine element in the grain, and
makes it more palatable and more digestible. No ;
they wish the jDure wheat, and ^^^ll die but it shall
not ferment. Stop, dear nature, these incessant
advances of thine ; let us scotch these ever-rolling
wheels ! Others attacked the system of agricul-
ture, the use of animal manures in farming, and
the tyranny of man over brute nature ; these abuses
polluted his food. The ox must be taken from the
plough and the horse from the cart, the hundred
acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 241

walk, wlierever boats and locomotives will not carry
him. Even the insect world was to be defended, —
that had been too long neglected, and a society for
the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosqui-
tos was to be incorporated without delay. With
these appeared the adepts of homoeopathy, of hy-
dropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their
wonderful theories of the Christian miracles I Oth-
ers assailed particular vocations, as that of the law-
yer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of
the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the
institution of marriage as the fountain of social
evils. Others devoted themselves to the worrjdng
of churches and meetings for public worship ; and
the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder
puritans seemed to have their match in the plenty
of the new harvest of reform.

With this din of opinion and debate there was a
keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic life
than any we had known ; there was sincere protest-
ing against existing evils, and there were changes
of emplopnent dictated by conscience. No doubt
there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of backslid-
ing might occur. But in each of these movements
emerged a good residt, a tendency to the adoption
of simpler methods, and an assertion of the suffi-
ciency of the private man. Thus it was directly in
the spirit and genius of the age, what happened in

VOL. ni. 16

242 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

one instance when a church censured and threatened
to excommunicate one of its members on account
of the somewhat hostile part to the church which
his conscience led him to take in the anti-slavery busi-
ness ; the threatened individual immediately ex-
communicated the church, in a public and formal
process. This has been several times repeated: it
was excellent when it was done the first time, but
of course loses all value when it is copied. Every
project in the history of reform, no matter how vio-
lent and surprising, is good when it is the dictate
of a man's genius and constitution, but very dull
and suspicious when adopted from another. It is
right and beautiful in any man to say, ' I will take
this coat, or this book, or this measure of com of
yours,' — in whom we see the act to be original,
and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him ;
for then that taking will have a giving as free and
divine ; but we are very easily disposed to resist
the same generosity of speech when we miss origi-
nality and truth to character in it.

There was in all the practical activities of New
England for the last quarter of a century, a grad-
ual withdrawal of tender consciences from the so-
cial organizations. There is observable throughout,
the contest between mechanical and spiritual meth-
ods, but with a steady tendency of the thoughtful
and %artuous to a deeper belief and reliance on spir-
itual facts.

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 243

In politics for example it is easy to see the pro-
gress of dissent. The country is full of rebellion ;
the country is full of kings. Hands oif ! let there
be no control and no int«^rference in the adminis-
tration of the affairs of this kingdom of me.
Hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party
of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that ex-
periment, in the face of what appear incontestable
facts. I confess, the motto of the Globe news-
paper is so attractive to me that I can seldom find
much appetite to read what is below it in its col-
umns : " The world is governed too much." So
the country is frequently affording solitary exam-
ples of resistance to the government, solitary nul-
lifiers, who throw themselves on their reserved
rights ; nay, who have reserved all their rights ;
who reply to the assessor and to the clerk of court
that they do not know the State, and embarrass the
courts of law by non-juring and the commander-
in-chief of the militia by non-resistance.

The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent ap.
peared in civil, festive, neighborly, and domestic
society. A restless, prying, conscientious criticism
broke out in unexpected quarters. Who gave me
the money with which I bought my coat ? Why
should professional labor and that of the counting-
house be paid so disproportionately to the labor of
the porter and woodsawyer? This whole business

244 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it consti-
tutes false relations between men ; inasmuch as I
am prone to count myself relieved of any respon-
sibility to behave well and nobly to that person
whom I pay with money ; whereas if I had not that
commodity, I should be put on my good behaWor
in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to
man, as being liimself his only certificate that he
had a right to those aids and services which each
asked of the other. Am I not too protected a per-
son ? is there not a wide disparity between the lot
of me and the lot of thee, my poor brother, my
poor sister ? Am I not defrauded of my best cul-
ture in the loss of those gjinnastics which manual
labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute ?
I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth
conventions of society ; I do not like the close air
of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a
prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and
luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.
The same insatiable criticism may be traced in
the efforts for the reform of Education. The pop-
ular education has been taxed with a want of truth
and nature. It was complained that an education
to things was not given. We are students of
words : we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and
recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come
out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words,

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 245

and do not know a thing. We cannot use our
hands, or oui* legs, or our eyes, or our arms.
We do not know an edible root in the woods, we
cannot 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, of a
dog, of a snake, of a spider. The Roman rule was
to teach a boy nothing 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 as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish,
or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at
all events, and not be painful to his friends and
fellow-men. The lessons of science should be ex-
perimental also. The sight of a planet through a
telescope is worth all the course on astronomy ; the
shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outv^alues
all the theories ; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the
firing of an artificial volcano, are better than vol-
umes of chemistry.

One of the traits of the new spirit is the in-
quisition it fixed on our scholastic devotion to the
dead lang-uages. The ancient languages, with great
beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of
genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain
likeminded men, — Greek men, and Roman men, —
in all coimtries, to their study ; but by a wonderful
drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of

246 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

all men. Once (say two centuries ago), Latin and
Greek had a strict relation to all the science and
culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics
had a momentary importance at some era of activ-
ity in physical science. These things became ste-
reotyped as education, as the manner of men is.
But the Good Spirit never cared for the colleges,
and though all men and boys were now drilled in
Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, it had quite left
these shells high and dry on the beach, and was
now creating and feeding other matters at other
ends of the world. But in a hundred high schools
and colleges this warfare against common sense
still goes on. Four, or six, or ten years, the pupil
is parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he
leaves the University, as it is ludicrously styled, he
shuts those books for the last time. Some thou-
sands of yoimg men are graduated at our colleges in
this country every year, and the persons who, at
forty years, still read Greek, can all be coimted on
your hand. I never met with ten. Four or five
persons I have seen who read Plato.

But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal
talent of this country should be directed in its best
years on studies w^hich lead to nothing? What
was the consequence? Some intelligent j^ersons
said or thought, 'Is that Greek and Latin some
spell to conjure with, and not words of reason ? If

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 247

the physician, the lawyer, the divine, never use it
to come at their ends, I need never learn it to come
at mine. Conjuring is gone out o£ fashion, and I
will omit this conjugating, and go straight to af-
fairs.' So they jumped the Greek and Latin, and
read law, medicine, or sermons, without it. To
the astonishment of all, the self-made men took
even ground at once with the oldest of the regidar
graduates, and in a few months the most conserva-
tive circles of Boston and New York had quite
forgotten who of their gownsmen was college-bred,
and who was not.

One tendency appears alike in the philosophical
speculation and in the rudest democratical move-
ments, through all the petulance and all the puer-
ility, the wish, namely, to cast aside the superfluous
and arrive at short methods ; urged, as I suppose,
by an intuition that the human spirit is equal to
all emergencies, alone, and that man is more often
injured than helped by the means he uses.

I conceive this gradual casting off of material
aids, and the indication of gi'owing trust in the
private self-supplied powers of the indi\adual, to
be the affirmative princii^le of the recent philos-
ophy, and that it is feeling its owti profound truth
and is reaching forward at this very hour to the
happiest conclusions. I readily concede that in
this, as in every period of intellectual activity,

248 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

there has been a noise of denial and protest ; much
was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by
those who were reared in the old, before they could
begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer
perishes in his removal of rubbish ; and that makes
the oifensiveness of the class. They are partial;
they are not equal to the work they pretend. They
lose their way ; in the assaidt on the kingdom of
darkness they expend all their energy on some
accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of
benefit. It is of little moment that one or two or
twenty errors of our social 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 :
he has become tediously good in some j^articular
but negligent or narrow in the rest ; and hypocrisy
and vanity are often the disgusting result.

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment
better than the establishment, and conduct that
in the best manner, than to make a sally against
evil by some single improvement, without sup-
porting it 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 no
part of society or of life better than any other

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 249

part. All our things are right and wrong together.
The wave of e\'il washes all our institutions alike.
Do you complain of our Marriage ? Our marriage
is no worse than our education, our diet, our trade,
our social customs. Do you complain of the laws
of Property ? It is a pedantry to give such impor-
tance to them. Can we not play the game of life
with these 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 of love, and
property will be universality. No one gives the
impression of superiority to the institution, which
he must give who will reform it. It makes no
difference what you say, you must make me feel
that you are aloof from it ; by your natural and
supernatural advantages do easily see to the end
of it, — do see how man can do without it. Now
all men are on one side. No man deserves to be
heard against property. Only Love, only an Idea,
is against property as we hold it.

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor
to waste all my time in attacks. If I should go
out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment
X 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 to my manners, or
to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.
"When we see an eager assailant of one of these

250 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking
him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue ?
Is virtue piecemeal ? This is a jewel amidst the
rags of a beggar.

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 place and in
another,^ wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul
finds itself, there it will do what is next at hand,
and by the new quality of character it shall put
forth it shall abrogate that old condition, law or
school in which it stands, before the law of its
own mind.

If partiality was one fault of the movement
party, the other defect was their reliance on Asso-
ciation, Doubts such as those I have intimated
drove many good persons to agitate the questions
of social reform. But the revolt against the spirit
of commerce, the spirit of aristocracy, and the
inveterate abuses of cities, did not appear jjossible
to individuals ; and to do battle against numbers
they armed themselves with numbers, and against
concert they relied on new concert.

Following or advancing beyond the ideas of St.
Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three communities
have already been formed in Massachusetts on
kindred plans, and many more in the country at
large. They aim to give every member a share in

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 251

the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor
and to talent, and to unite a liberal culture with
an education to labor. The scheme offers, by the
economies of associated labor and expense, to make
every member rich, on the same amount of proper-
ty that, in separate families, woidd leave every
member poor. These new associations are com-
posed of men and women of superior talents and
sentiments ; yet it may easUy be questioned wheth-
er such a community will draw, except in its begin-
nings, the able and the good ; whether those who
have energy will not prefer their chance of superi-
ority and power in the world, to the humble cer-
tainties of the association ; whether such a retreat
does not promise to become an asylum to those who
have tried and failed, rather than a field to the
strong ; and whether the members will not necessa-
rily be fractions of men, because each finds that he
cannot enter it without some compromise. Friend-
ship and association are very fine things, and a
grand phalanx of the best of the human race, band-
ed for some catholic object ; yes, excellent ; but re-
member that no society can ever be so large as one
man. He, in his friendship, in his natural and mo-
mentary associations, doubles or multiplies himself ;
but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to
two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the
stature of one.

252 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

But the men of less faith could not thus believe,
and to such, concert appears the sole specific of
strength. I have failed, and you have failed, but
perhaps together we shall not fail. Our house-
keeping is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a
phalanx, a community, might be. Many of us have
differed in opinion, and we could find no man who
could make the truth plain, but possibly a college,
or an ecclesiastical council, might. I have not been
able either to persuade my brother or to prevail
on myself to disuse the traffic or the potation of
brandy, but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence
might effectually restrain us. The candidate my
party votes for is not to be trusted with a dollar,
but he will be honest in the Senate, for we can
bring public opinion to bear on him. Thus concert
was the specific in all cases. But concert is neither
better nor worse, neither more nor less potent, than
indi\adual force. All the men in the world cannot
make a statue walk and speak, cannot make a drop
of blood, or a blade of grass, any more than one
man can. But let there be one man, let there be
truth in two men, in ten men, then is concert for
the first time possible ; because the force which
moves the world is a new quality, and can never be
furnished by adding whatever quantities of a differ-
ent kind. "What is the use of the concert of the
false and the disunited ? There can be no concert

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 253

in two, where there is no concert in one. When
the individual is not individual, but is dual ; when
his thoughts look one way and his actions another ;
when his faith is traversed b} his habits ; when his
will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his sense ;,
when with one hand he rows and with the other
backs water, what concert can be ?

I do not wonder at the interest these projects in-
spire. The world is awaking to the idea of union,
and these experiments show what it is thinking of.
It is and will be magic. Men will live and com-
municate, and plough, and reap, and govern, as by
added ethereal power, when once they are united ;
as in a celebrated experiment, by expiration and
respiration exactly together, four persons lift a
heavy man from the ground by the little finger
only, and without sense of weight. But this union
must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is
to be reached by a reverse of the methods they
use. The imion is only perfect when all the uniters
are isolated. It is the imion of friends who live in
different streets or to"svns. Each man, if he attempts
to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped
and diminished of his proportion ; and the stricter
the union the smaller and the more pitiful he is.
But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and
place the secret soul ; he will go up and dowTi doing
the works of a true member, and, to the astonish-

254 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

ment of all, the work will be done with concert,
though no man spoke. Government will be ada-
mantine without any governor. The union must be
ideal in actual individualism.

I pass to the indication in some particulars of
that faith in man, which the heart is preaching to
us in these days, and which engages the more re-
gard, from the consideration that the specidations
of one generation are the history of the next fol-
lowing.

In allud^ing just now to our system of education,
I spoke of the deadness of its details. But it is
open to gi'aver criticism than the palsy of its mem-
bers : it is a system of despair. The disease with
which the human mind now labors is want of faith.
Men do not believe in a power of education. We
do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in
man, and we do not try. We renounce all high
aims. We believe that the defects of so many
perverse and so many frivolous people who make
up societj^ are organic, and society Is a hospital of
incvirables. A man of good sense but of little faith,
whose compassion 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 re^
mark is too honest, and comes from the same ori-
gin as the maxim of the tyrant, " If you would rule

NEW EXGLAND REFORMERS. 255

the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I
notice too that the ground on which eminent public
servants urge the claims of popular education is
fear ; ' This coimtry is filling uj) with thousands
and millions of voters, and you must educate them
to keep them from our throats,' We do not be-
lieve that any education, any system of philosoph}',
any influence of genius, will ever give depth of in-
sight to a superficial mind. Ha\ang settled our-
selves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to
procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. AVe adorn
the victim with manual skill, his tongue with lan-
guages, his body with inoffensive and comely man-
ners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of
limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is it
strange that society should be devoured by a secret
melancholy which breaks through all its smiles and
all its gayety and games ?

But even one step farther our infidelity has gone.
It appears that some doubt is felt by good and wise
men whether reaUy the happiness and probity of
men is increased by the cidture of the mind in those
disciplines to which we give the name of education.
Unhappily too the doubt comes from scholars, from
persons who have tried these methods. In their
experience the scholar was not raised by the sa-
cred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used
them to selfish ends. He was a profane person,

256 NEW ENGLAND REFOmTERS.

and became a showman, turning liis gifts to a mar-
ketable use, and not to his own sustenance and
growth. It was found that the intellect coidd be
independently developed, that is, in separation from
the man, as any single organ can be invigorated,
and the resvdt was monstrous. A canine appetite
for knowledge was generated, which must still be
fed but was never satisfied, and this knowledge, not
being directed on action, never took the character
of substantial, humane truth, blessing those whom
it entered. It gave the scholar certain powers of
expression, the power of speech, the power of po-
etry, of literary art, but it did not bring him to
peace or to beneficence.

When the literary class betray a destitution of
faith, it is not strange that society should be dis-
heartened and sensualized by unbelief. What rem-
edy ? Life must be lived on a higher plane. We
must go up to a higher platform, to which we are
always invited to ascend ; there, the whole aspect
of things changes. I resist the skepticism of our
education and of our educated men. I do not be-
lieve that the differences of opinion and character
in men are organic. I do not recognize, beside the
class of the good and the wise, a permanent class
of skejjtics, or a class of conservatives, or of malig-
nants, or of materialists. I do not believe in two
classes. You remember the story of the poor wo-

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 257

man wlio importuned King Philip of Macedon to
gTant her justice, which Philip refused : the woman
exclaimed, " I appeal : " the king, astonished, asked
to whom she appealed : the woman replied, " From
Philip drimk to Philip sober." The text will suit
me very well. I believe not in two classes of men,
but in man in two moods, in Philip drimk and
Philip sober. I think, according to the good-
hearted word of Plato, "Unwillingly the soid is
deprived of truth." Iron conservative, miser, or
thief, no man is but by a supposed necessity which
he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight. The
sold lets no man go without some visitations and
holydays of a diviner presence. It would be easy
to show, by a narrow scanning of any man's biog-
raphy, that we are not so wedded to our paltry per-
formances of every kind but that every man has at
intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in
comparing them with his belief of what he shoidd
do ; — that he puts himself on the side of his ene-
mies, listening gladly to what they say of him, and
accusing liimseK of the same things.

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite
hope, which degrades all it has done ? Genius
counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own
idea it never executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, the
Doric column, the Roman arch, the Gothic minster,
the German anthem, when they are ended, the

VOL. III. 17

258 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

master casts behind lilm. How sinks the song in
the waves of melody wliich 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 triimiphs of his art he tiu'ns with desire to this
greater defeat. Let those admire who will. With
silent joy he sees himself to be 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 chil-
dren of virtue, — and feel their inspirations in our
happier hours. Is not every man sometimes a rad-
ical in politics ? Men are conservatives when they
are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious.
They are conservatives after dinner, or before tak-
ing their rest ; when they are sick, or aged : in the
morning, or when their intellect or their conscience
has been aroused ; when they hear music, or when
they read poetry, they are radicals. In the circle
of the rankest tories that could be collected in Eng-
land, Old or New, let a powerful and stimulating
intellect, a man of great heart and mmd act on
them, and very quickly these frozen conservators
will yield to the friendly influence, these hopeless
will begin to hope, these haters will begin to love,
these immovable statues will begin to spin and re-
volve. I cannot help recalling the fine anecdote

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 259

which Warton relates of Bishop Berkeley, when he
was preparing to leave England with his plan of
planting the gospel among the American savages.
"Lord Bathurst told me that the members of the
Scriblerus club being met at his house at dinner,
they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also his
guest, on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, hav-
ing listened to the many lively things they had to
say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed
his plan with such an astonishing and animating
force of eloquence and enthusiasm that they were
struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose up all to-
gether with earnestness, exclaiming, ' Let us set out
with him immediately.' " Men in all ways are bet-
ter than they seem. They like flattery for the mo-
ment, but they know the truth for their own. It is
a foolish cowardice which keeps us from trusting
them and speaking to them rude truth. They re-
sent your honesty for an instant, they wiU thank
you for it always. What is it we 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 nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, in-
stead of ghosts and phantoms. We are weary of
gliding ghostlike through the world, which is itseK
so slight and unreal. We crave a sense of reality,
though it come in strokes of pain. I exjjlain so, —
by this manlike love of truth, — those excesses and

260 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

errors into wliich souls of great vigor, but not equal
insight, often fall. They feel the poverty at the
bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world.
They know the speed with which they come straight
through the thin masquerade, and conceive a dis-
gust at the indigence of nature : Eousseau, Mira-
beau, Charles Fox, Napoleon, Byron, — and I could
easily add names nearer home, of raging riders, who
drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of living
to forget its illusion : they would know the worst,
and tread the floors of hell. The heroes of ancient
and modern fame, Cimon, Themistocles, Alcibiades,
Alexander, Caesar, have treated life and fortime as
a game to be well and skilfully played, but the
stake not to be so valued but that any time it could
be held as a trifle light as air, and thrown up.
Caesar, just before the battle of Pharsalia, dis-
courses with the Eg}q3tian priest concerning the
foimtains of the Nile, and offers to quit the army,
the empire, and Cleopatra, if he will show him
those mysterious sources.

The same magnanimity shows itself in our social
relations, in the preference, namely, which each
man gives to the society of superiors over that of
his equals. All that a man has will he give for
right relations with his mates. All that he has
will he give for an erect demeanor in every com-
pany and on each occasion. He aims at such

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 261

things as his neighbors prize, and gives his days
and nights, his talents and his heart, to strike a
good stroke, to acquit himself in all men's sight as
a man. The consideration of an eminent citizen,
of a noted merchant, of a man of mark in his pro-
fession ; a naval and military honor, a general's
commission, a marshal's baton, a ducal coronet, the
laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, the acknowl-
edgment of eminent merit, — have this lustre for
each candidate that they enable him to walk erect
and unashamed in the presence of some persons be-
fore whom he felt himself inferior. Having raised
himself to this rank, having established his equal-
ity with class after class of those with whom he
would live well, he still finds certain others be-
fore whom he cannot possess himself, because they
have somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat
purer, which extorts homage of him. Is his ambi-
tion pure ? then will his laurels and his possessions
seem worthless : instead of avoiding these men who
make his fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him
and seek their society only, woo and embrace this
his humiliation and mortification, imtil he shall
know why his eye sinks, his voice is husky, and his
brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence. He
is sure that the soid which gives the lie to all
things will tell none. His constitution will not
mislead him. If it cannot carry itself as it ought,

262 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

high and unmatchable in the presence of any man ;
if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweet-
ness and dignity of his life do here withdraw and
accompany him no longer, — it is time to under-
value what he has valued, to dispossess himself of
what he has acquired, and with Caesar to take in
his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and
saj, " All these will I relinquish, if you will show
me the fountains of the Nile." Dear to us are
those who love us ; the swift moments we spend
with them are a compensation for a great deal of
misery ; they enlarge our life ; — but dearer are
those who reject us as unworthy, for they add an-
other life : they build a heaven before us whereof
we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new
powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us
to new and unattempted performances.

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 he wishes that the same
healing should not stop in his thought, but should
penetrate his will or active power. The selfish
man suffers more from his selfishness than he from
whom that selfishness withholds some important
benefit. AVhat he most wishes is to be lifted to
some higher platform, that he may see beyond his
present fear the transalpine good, so that his fear,
his coldness, his custom may be broken up like

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 263

fragments of ice, melted and carried away in the
great stream of good will. Do you ask my aid ?
I also wish to be a benefactor. I wish more to be
a benefactor and servant than you wish to be
served by me ; and surely the greatest good fortune
that could befall me is precisely to be so moved by
you that I should say, ' Take me and all mine, and
use me and mine freely to your ends ! ' for I could
not say it otherwise than because a great enlarge-
ment had come to my heart and mind, which made
me superior to my fortunes. Here we are para-
lyzed with fear ; we hold on to our little properties,
house and land, office and money, for the bread
which they have in our experience yielded us, al-
though we confess that our being does not flow
through them. We desire to be made great ; we
desire to be touched with that fire which shall com-
mand this ice to stream, and make our existence a
benefit. If therefore we start objections 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 drive you to drive us into your meas-
ures. We wish to hear ourselves confuted. We
are haunted with a belief that you have a secret
which it would higliliest advantage us to learn, and
we woidd force you to impart it to us, though it
should bring us to prison or to worse extremity.
Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every

264 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. i

man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no
pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of
the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy
and profanation. There is no skepticism, no athe-
ism but that. Coidd it be received into common
belief, suicide would unpeople the planet. It has
had a name to live in some dogmatic theology, but
each man's iimocence and his real liking of his
neighbor have kept it a dead letter. I remember
standing at the polls one day when the anger of
the political contest gave a certain grimness to the
faces of the independent 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 consider-
ate observers, looking at the masses of men in their
blameless and in their equivocal actions, will assent,
that in spite of selfishness and frivolity, the gen-
eral purpose in the great number of persons is fidel-
ity. The reason why any one refuses his assent to
your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design,
is in you : he refuses to accept you as a bringer of
truth, because though you think you have it, he
feels that you have it not. You have not given him
the authentic sign.

If it were worth while to run into details this
general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting
Spirit, it would be easy to adduce illustration in

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 265

particulars of a man's equality to the Church, of
his equality to the State, and of his equality to
every other man. It is yet in all men's memory
that, a few years ago, the liberal churches com-
plained that the Calvinistic church denied to them
the name of Christian. I think the complaint was
confession : a religious chui'ch would not complain.
A religious man, like Behmen, Fox, or Sweden-
borg is not irritated by wanting the sanction of the
Church, but the Church feels the accusation of his
presence and belief.

It only needs that a just man shoidd walli in our
streets to make it appear how pitiful and inarti-
ficial a contrivance is our legislation. The man
whose part is taken and who does not wait for
society in anj'tliing, has a power which society can-
not choose but feel. The familiar experiment caUed
the hydrostatic paradox, in which a capillary col-
umn of water balances the ocean, is a symbol of the
relation of one man to the whole family of men.
The wise Dandamis, on hearing the lives of Soc-
rates, Pythagoras and Diogenes read, " judged
them to be great men every way, excepting that
they were too much subjected to the reverence of
the laws, which to second and authorize, true vir-
tue must abate very much of its original vigor."

And as a man is equal to the Church and equal
to the State, so he is equal to every other man.

2GG NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

The disparities of power in men are superficial;
and all frank and searching conversation, in which
a man lays himself open to his brother, apprises
each of their radical unity. When two persons sit
and converse in a thoroughly good understanding,
the remark is sure to be made, See how we have
disputed about words ! Let a clear, apprehensive
mind, such as every man knows among his friends,
converse with the most commanding poetic genius,
I think it would appear that there was no inequal-
ity such as men fancy, between them ; that a per-
fect understanding, a like receiving, a like perceiv-
ing, abolished differences ; and the poet would con-
fess that liis creative imagination gave him no deep
advantage, but only the superficial one tliat he
could express himself and the other could not ; that
his advantage was a Imack, which might impose on
indolent men but could not impose on lovers of
truth ; for they know the tax of talent, or what a
price of greatness the power of expression too often
pays. I believe it is the conx'iction of the purest
men that the net amount of man and man does not
much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his
companion in some facidty. His want of skill in
other directions has added to his fitness for his own
work. Each seems to have some compensation
yielded to him by his infirmity, and every hinder-
ance operates as a concentration of his force.

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 267

These and tlie like experiences intimate that
man stands in strict connection with a higher fact
never yet manifested. There is power over and
behind us, and we are the channels of its commu-
nications. We seek to say thus and so, and over
our head some spirit sits which contradicts what
we say. We would persuade our fellow to this
or that ; another self within our eyes dissuades
him. That which we keep back, this reveals. In
vain we compose our faces and our words ; it holds
uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and
he answers civilly to us, but believes the spirit.
We exclaim, ' There 's a traitor 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 first and last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet
so tenacious, that although I have never expressed
the truth, and although I have never heard the
expression of it from any other, I know that the
whole truth is here for me. What if I cannot
answer your questions ? I am not pained that I
cannot frame a reply to the question. What is the
operation we call Providence ? There lies the un-
spoken thing, present, omnipresent. Every time
we converse we seek to translate it into speech,
but whether we hit or whether we miss, we have
the fact. Every discourse is an approximate an-
swer : but it is of small consequence that we do

268 N£]V ENGLAND REFORMERS.

not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides
for contemplation forever.

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall
make themselves good in time, the man who shall
be born, whose advent men and events prej^are and
foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connection
with a higher life, with the man within man : shall
destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his native
but forgotten methods, shall not take counsel of
flesh and blood, but shall rely on the Law alive
and beautiful which w^orks over our heads and
under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our suc-
cess when we obey it, and of our ruin when we
contravene it. Men are all secret believers in it,
else the word justice would have no meaning : they
believe that the best is the true ; that right is done
at last ; or chaos would come. It rewards actions
after their nature, and not after the design of the
agent. ' Work,' it saith to man, ' in every hour,
paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou
canst not escape the reward : whether thy work be
fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so
only it be honest work, done to thine own appro-
bation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well
as to the thought : no matter how often defeated,
you are born to victory. The reward of a thing
well done, is to have done it.'

As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond

NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS. 269

surfaces, and to see how this high will prevails
without an exception or an interval, he settles him-
self into serenity. He can already rely on the laws
of gravity, that every stone will fall where it is
due ; the good globe is faithful, and carries us
securely through the celestial spaces, anxious or
resigned, we need not interfere to help it on : and
he will learn one day the mild lesson they teach,
that our own orbit is all our task, and we need not
assist the administration of the universe. Do not
be so impatient to set the town right concerning
the unfounded pretensions and the false reputation
of certain men of standing. They are laboring
harder to set the town right concerning themselves,
and -^ill certainly succeed. Suppress for a few
days your criticism on the insufficiency of this or
that teacher or experimenter, and he will have
demonstrated his insufficiency to aU men's eyes.
In like manner, let a man fall into the divine cir-
cuits, and he is enlarged. Obedience to his genius
is the only liberating influence. We wish to escape
from subjection and a sense of inferiority, and we
make seK-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, only
by the freest activity in the way constitutional to
him, does an angel seem to arise before a man and
lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the
prison.

270 NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.

That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and
wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and
the endeavor to realize oui* aspirations. The life
of man is the true romance, which when it is val-
iantly conducted will yield the imagination a higher
joy than any fiction. All around us what powers
are wrapped up under the coarse mattings of cus-
tom, and all wonder prevented. It is so wonderful
to our neurologists that a man can see without his
eyes, that it does not occur to them that it is jast
as wonderful that he shoiUd see with them ; and
that is ever the difference between the wise and the
unwise : the latter wonders at what is unusual, the
wise man wonders at the usual. Shall not the
heart which has received so much, trust the Power
by which it lives ? May it not quit other leadings,
and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently
and taught it so much, secure that the future will
be worthy of the past ?

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