Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep forever these
beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, 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 business that manly
resolution and adherence to the multiplication-table through all
weathers will insure success. But ah! presently comes a day, or is
it only a half-hour, with its angel-whispering,--which discomfits the
conclusions of nations and of years! Tomorrow again everything 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 business on
this understanding would be quickly bankrupt. Power keeps quite another
road than the turnpikes of choice and will; namely the subterranean 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 with
grand politeness he draws down before us an impenetrable screen
of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. 'You will not
remember,' 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 casualties. 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.
Familiar as the voice of the mind
is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is
that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men,
but what _they_ thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that
gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the
lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without
notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting
lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous
impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry
of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the
time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from
another.
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he
must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to
him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given
to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and
none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until
he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes
much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory
is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray
should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half
express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us
represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good
issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work
made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his
heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done
otherwise shall give him no peace.
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
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. Nothing 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 objects, which lets them
slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most
unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to be observed,
and likes that we should 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 casual.
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 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 books belong to the eyes that see them. 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 always genius; but only a few hours so
serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends
on structure or temperament. Temperament 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
giggle? or if he apologize? or is infected with egotism? 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 concave 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 experiment, and hold him up in
it?
Always do what you are afraid to do.
The
silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear!
Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you
live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.
The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have
wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have
chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile
yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the
common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of
people in those actions whose excellence is that they outrun sympathy
and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother, because
it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you
find that prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own act,
and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and
extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high
counsel that I once heard given to a young person,—“Always do what you
are afraid to do.” A simple manly character need never make an apology,
but should regard its past action with the calmness of Phocion, when he
admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his
dissuasion from the battle.
There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation
in the thought—this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation
and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I
should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure?
Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money. Greatness
once and for ever has done with opinion. We tell our charities, not
because we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they have
great merit, but for our justification. It is a capital blunder; as you
discover when another man recites his charities.
To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor
of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an
asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at
ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great
multitude of suffering men.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
What journeys and measurements,--Niebuhr and Müller and Layard,--to
identify the plain of Troy and Nimroud town! And your homage to Dante
costs you so much sailing; and to ascertain the discoverers of America
needs as much voyaging as the discovery cost. Poor child! that flexile
clay of which these old brothers moulded their admirable symbols was
not Persian, nor Memphian, nor Teutonic, nor local at all, but was
common lime and silex and water, and sunlight, the heat of the blood,
and the heaving of the lungs; it was that clay which thou heldest but
now in thy foolish hands, and threwest away to go and seek in vain in
sepulchres, mummy-pits, and old book-shops of Asia Minor, Egypt, and
England. It was the deep to-day which all men scorn; the rich poverty,
which men hate; the populous, all-loving solitude, which men quit
for the tattle of towns. HE lurks, _he_ hides,--_he_ who is success,
reality, joy, and power. One of the illusions is that the present hour
is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every
day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly,
until he knows that every day is Doomsday. ’Tis the old secret of the
gods that they come in low disguises. ’Tis the vulgar great who come
dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in
their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior. In the Norse
legend of our ancestors, Odin dwells in a fisher’s hut, and patches
a boat. In the Hindoo legends, Hari dwells a peasant among peasants.
In the Greek legend, Apollo lodges with the shepherds of Admetus; and
Jove liked to rusticate among the poor Ethiopians. So, in our history,
Jesus is born in a barn, and his twelve peers are fishermen. ’Tis the
very principle of science that Nature shows herself best in leasts;
’twas the maxim of Aristotle and Lucretius; and, in modern times, of
Swedenborg and of Hahnemann. The order of changes in the egg determines
the age of fossil strata. So it was the rule of our poets, in the
legends of fairy lore, that the fairies largest in power were the least
in size.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful,
determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see
that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character
dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror we
do not think much of any one battle or success. We see that we had
exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is not
convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much
impression. People say sometimes, ‘See what I have overcome; see how
cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black
events.’ Not if they still remind me of the black event. True conquest
is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear as an early cloud of
insignificant result in a history so large and advancing.
The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget
ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our
sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in
short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without
enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The
great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the
strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. “A man,” said
Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he
is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the
semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their
dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of
wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames
and generosities of the heart.
XI.
INTELLECT
Go, speed the stars of Thought
On to their shining goals;—
The sower scatters broad his seed,
The wheat thou strew’st be souls.
INTELLECT
Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in
the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water
dissolves wood and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire
dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method,
and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its resistless
menstruum.
There is a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Speak your latent
conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due
time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us
by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind
is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is
that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men,
but what _they_ thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that
gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the
lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without
notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting
lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous
impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry
of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the
time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from
another.
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he
must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to
him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given
to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and
none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until
he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes
much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory
is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray
should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half
express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us
represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good
issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work
made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his
heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done
otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not
deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no
invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your
contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done
so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,
betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated
at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their
being.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
In 1848 I had the privilege of hearing Professor Faraday deliver, in the
Royal Institution in London, a lecture on what he called
Diamagnetism,--by which he meant _cross-magnetism_; and he showed us
various experiments on certain gases, to prove that whilst, ordinarily,
magnetism of steel is from north to south, in other substances, gases,
it acts from east to west. And further experiments led him to the theory
that every chemical substance would be found to have its own, and a
different, polarity. I do not know how far his experiments and others
have been pushed in this matter, but one fact is clear to me, that
diamagnetism is a law of the _mind_, to the full extent of Faraday's
idea; namely, that every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new
direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other
mind;--as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new
countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character.
Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral
sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him
in a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes
him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call
this specialty the _bias_ of each individual. And none of us will ever
accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to
this whisper which is heard by him alone. Swedenborg called it the
_proprium_,--not a thought shared with others, but constitutional to the
man. A point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this
tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and that
it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and
attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle,
which points always in one direction to his proper path, with more or
less variation from any other man's. He is never happy nor strong until
he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to
watch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have the
entire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, or
hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, or
need never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect,
genius; in practice, talent;--not to imitate or surpass a particular man
in _his_ way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method,
style, wit, eloquence.
Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.
You forget that the
quiet which now sleeps in cities and in farms, which lets the wagon go
unguarded and the farmhouse unbolted, rests on the perfect understanding
of all men that the musket, the halter and the jail stand behind there,
ready to punish any disturber of it. All admit that this would be the
best policy, if the world were all a church, if all the men were the best
men, if all would agree to accept this rule. But it is absurd for one
nation to attempt it alone.’[122]
In the first place, we answer that we never make much account of
objections which merely respect the actual state of the world at this
moment, but which admit the general expediency and permanent excellence
of the project. What is the best must be the true; and what is true—that
is, what is at bottom fit and agreeable to the constitution of man—must
at last prevail over all obstruction and all opposition. There is no
good now enjoyed by society that was not once as problematical and
visionary as this. It is the tendency of the true interest of man to
become his desire and steadfast aim.
But, further, it is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put
trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. We have all grown up in the
sight of frigates and navy-yards, of armed forts and islands, of arsenals
and militia. The reference to any foreign register will inform us of the
number of thousand or million men that are now under arms in the vast
colonial system of the British Empire, of Russia, Austria and France; and
one is scared to find at what a cost the peace of the globe is kept. This
vast apparatus of artillery, of fleets, of stone bastions and trenches
and embankments; this incessant patrolling of sentinels; this waving of
national flags; this reveille and evening gun; this martial music and
endless playing of marches and singing of military and naval songs seem
to us to constitute an imposing actual, which will not yield in centuries
to the feeble, deprecatory voices of a handful of friends of peace.
Thus always we are daunted by the appearances; not seeing that their
whole value lies at bottom in the state of mind. It is really a thought
that built this portentous war-establishment, and a thought shall
also melt it away.
We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
If there ever was a country where eloquence was a power, it is in the
United States. Here is room for every degree of it, on every one of its
ascending stages,--that of useful speech, in our commercial,
manufacturing, railroad, and educational conventions; that of political
advice and persuasion on the grandest theatre, reaching, as all good men
trust, into a vast future, and so compelling the best thought and
noblest administrative ability that the citizen can offer. And here are
the service of science, the demands of art, and the lessons of religion
to be brought home to the instant practice of thirty millions of people.
Is it not worth the ambition of every generous youth to train and arm
his mind with all the resources of knowledge, of method, of grace, and
of character, to serve such a constituency?
RESOURCES.
RESOURCES.
MEN are made up of potences. We are magnets in an iron globe. We have
keys to all doors. We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of
discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no
duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension
waiting to be struck; the earth sensitive as iodine to light; the most
plastic and impressionable medium, alive to every touch, and, whether
searched by the plough of Adam, the sword of Cæsar, the boat of
Columbus, the telescope of Galileo, or the surveyor's chain of Picard,
or the submarine telegraph, to every one of these experiments it makes a
gracious response. I am benefited by every observation of a victory of
man over nature,--by seeing that wisdom is better than strength; by
seeing that every healthy and resolute man is an organizer, a method
coming into a confusion and drawing order out of it. We are touched and
cheered by every such example. We like to see the inexhaustible riches
of Nature, and the access of every soul to her magazines. These examples
wake an infinite hope, and call every man to emulation. A low, hopeless
spirit puts out the eyes; scepticism is slow suicide. A philosophy which
sees only the worst; believes neither in virtue nor in genius; which
says 'tis all of no use, life is eating us up, 'tis only question who
shall be last devoured,--dispirits us; the sky shuts down before us.
When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.
Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a
single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time,
the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; herein
resembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of our
nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a
time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the
grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or
indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration
of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison
also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong
wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of
your horizon.
Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, and to
liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or
science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that
fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition
and subtraction. When we are young we spend much time and pains in
filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry,
Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall
have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories
at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get
no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola,
whose arcs will never meet.
Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity of the
intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the
intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It
must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence
can rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation or
disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in
every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest
fact. The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension
and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual
proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk with accomplished
persons who appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the
turf, the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only
their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral
and complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of
strangeness she may put on.
The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.
If it cannot carry itself as it ought, high and
unmatchable in the presence of any man; if the secret oracles whose
whisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life do here withdraw and
accompany him no longer,--it is time to undervalue 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 say, "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 another 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. What 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 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 enlargement had come to my heart and mind, which made me superior
to my fortunes. Here we are paralyzed 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, although 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 command this ice to stream, and
make our existence a benefit.
He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his fathers. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth.
We are stung by
the desire for new thought; but when we receive a new thought it is
only the old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own we
instantly crave another; we are not really enriched. For the truth was
in us before it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the
profound genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every
product of his wit.
But if the constructive powers are rare and it is given to few men to
be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending holy ghost,
and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the
whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A
self-denial no less austere than the saint’s is demanded of the
scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all things for that, and
choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby
augmented.
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take
which you please,—you can never have both. Between these, as a
pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates
will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political
party he meets,—most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and
reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of
truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and
afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite
negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to
the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a
candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law
of his being.
The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes to find
the man who can yield him truth. He shall then know that there is
somewhat more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is
the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man. As long as I hear truth I am
bathed by a beautiful element and am not conscious of any limits to my
nature. The suggestions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The
waters of the great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But if I
speak, I define, I confine and am less. When Socrates speaks, Lysis and
Menexenus are afflicted by no shame that they do not speak.
Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of question, that the angel is shown.
In such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of rectitude: a
bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so that not the unjust
wishes of those who love us, shall impair our freedom, but we shall
resist for truth’s sake the freest flow of kindness, and appeal to
sympathies far in advance; and,--what is the highest form in which we
know this beautiful element,--a certain solidity of merit, that has
nothing to do with opinion, and which is so essentially and manifestly
virtue, that it is taken for granted, that the right, the brave, the
generous step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending it.
You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not
praise an angel. The silence that accepts merit as the most natural
thing in the world, is the highest applause. Such souls, when they
appear, are the Imperial Guard of Virtue, the perpetual reserve, the
dictators of fortune. One needs not praise their courage,--they are the
heart and soul of nature. O my friends, there are resources in us on
which we have not drawn. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing a
threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the
majority,--demanding not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but
comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice,--comes
graceful and beloved as a bride. Napoleon said to Massena, that he was
not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the
dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination,
and he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged crises,
in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of
question, that the angel is shown. But these are heights that we can
scarce remember and look up to, without contrition and shame. Let us
thank God that such things exist.
And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched
fire on the altar. The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The
question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all attempts to project
and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith
makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to
contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the
French to the goddess of Reason,--to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and
ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new
life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For, if once
you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The
remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and
evermore, soul. A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can
uplift and vivify.
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the
suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I
was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me
with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, “What have I
to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?”
my friend suggested,—“But these impulses may be from below, not from
above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the
Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred
to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily
transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my
constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry
himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were
titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we
capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead
institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways
me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the
rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of
philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful
cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes,
why should I not say to him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy
wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never
varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible
tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite
at home.’ Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is
handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some
edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached,
as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and
whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim_. I hope
it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in
explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude
company.
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none.
Good and bad are but names very readily
transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my
constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry
himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were
titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we
capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead
institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways
me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the
rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of
philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful
cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes,
why should I not say to him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy
wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never
varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible
tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite
at home.’ Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is
handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some
edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached,
as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and
whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim_. I hope
it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in
explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude
company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my
obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they _my_ poor?
I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the
dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I
do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual
affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be;
but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of
fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now
stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I
confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a
wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float round the
globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which it was written,
amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to
integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a
slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive
us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of
one man reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the
most distant climates.
We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that
only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The
prudence which secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by
one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another, but
they are reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, persons,
property and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in the
soul, and if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become
some other thing,—the proper administration of outward things will
always rest on a just apprehension of their cause and origin; that is,
the good man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted the politic
man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the
liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. On the most
profitable lie the course of events presently lays a destructive tax;
whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient
footing and makes their business a friendship. Trust men and they will
be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great,
though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of
trade.
So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not
consist in evasion or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk
in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself
up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst apprehension,
and his stoutness will commonly make his fear groundless. The Latin
proverb says, “In battles the eye is first overcome.” Entire
self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life
than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers of
men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given to it, and who
have stepped aside from the path of the ball.
The life of truth is cold.
If you could look with her eyes you might see her
surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with
tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups
and downs of fate,--and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long
before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and
shouting, 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 Kepler 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 hate these
developments, and will find a way to punish 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. And yet is the God the native of these
bleak rocks. That need makes in morals the capital virtue of self-trust.
We must hold hard to this poverty, however scandalous, and by more
vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of action, possess our axis
more firmly. The life of truth is cold and so far mournful; 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 own as
persuades 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
drowning 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 compliance takes away the power of being
greatly useful. A man should not be able to look other than directly
and forthright.
I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.
Do you think the
porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for
you? Every body knows as much as the savant. The walls of rude minds
are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day
bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in the degree in
which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning
the modes of living and thinking of other men, and especially of those
classes whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of school
education.
This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes
richer and more frequent in its informations through all states of
culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when we not only observe,
but take pains to observe; when we of set purpose sit down to consider
an abstract truth; when we keep the mind’s eye open whilst we converse,
whilst we read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret law of some
class of facts.
What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself in
the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I
blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he
meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. For example,
a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind
without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long
time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all
but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say I will walk abroad,
and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but
cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and
composed attitude of the library to seize the thought. But we come in,
and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced,
the truth appears. A certain wandering light appears, and is the
distinction, the principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes because we
had previously laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the
intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now
expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the
blood,—the law of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains,
and now you must forbear your activity and see what the great Soul
showeth.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say I think, I am, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old
things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now,
and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made
sacred by relation to it,—one as much as another. All things are
dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle
petty and particular miracles disappear. If therefore a man claims to
know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of
some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe
him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and
completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast
his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries
are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and
space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is
light: where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an
impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful
apologue or parable of my being and becoming.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say
‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window
make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what
they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There
is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown
flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its
nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But
man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround
him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and
strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not
yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what
David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price
on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote
the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the
men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting
the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point
of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them
and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words
as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It
is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be
weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory
of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his
voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of
the corn.
